In a situation when the university students during the coronavirus crisis in North Macedonia can only use electronic devices to attend lectures and take exams, there is the very important segment of the communication with their teachers – that is very often almost left out.

While in most of the cases the students manage to achieve normal two-way communication with their professors, in other cases, when they cannot get the expected response by e-mail, the students turn to the social networks or to calling their professors on the phone.

Meta.mk talked with several students about the alternatives for communication with the professors, whenever a situation like that occurs. Evgenija Jovanovska, student at the Faculty of Philology “Blaže Koneski – Skopje” says that her Department has an older generation of professors and they all are managing well the online lectures, but the problem is that the professors either are not responding at all or delay their replies to the e-mails sent by the students.

“Once I missed a lecture since the professor sent an email at 11 pm with a link to the lecture. Another time, there was a situation when I didn’t receive the email with the link for the lecture at all – nor teh materials for the next lecture. In this case, we are forced to ask for assistance from colleagues, which is something you cannot always rely on, since not everyone wants to help you,” said Jovanovska for Meta.mk.

In cases such as this, as Jovanovska said, students often communicate among each other in Facebook groups,  where links and materials are sent in case one of them didn’t receive them.

But there is the problem of the elective subjects, especialy when professors’ feedback is lacking.

Similar complaints and experiences can be seen in the Facebook groups created by the students themselves. They are mostly divided into groups created by the majors, but at some colleges, there are general groups where the members are all students from the all departments at the same college.

They visit the groups so they can consult or inform themselves about exams, colloquiums, school books, scripts, schedules, and also about contacts with professors. So, comments and posts such as these naturally occur:

“Is there a student who has been able to achieve at least a visual contact with professor…….lately? Is there someone who knows when her office hours are scheduled and whether someone has her phone number? asks one of the students…

source: Meta