CIVIL actively follows the activities related to the start of the 2020/2021 school year, which will in the most part be online.For this purpose, we contacted many teachers involved in the educational process, with questions in regards to how prepared the educational system is for “migrating” into the virtual process.

The first to respond to our question was Ajet Rexhepi, a secondary school professor in the Municipal Secondary School “Drita” in Kichevo.

Regarding the question of whether and how much online teaching can replace physical presence in school classes and how it will affect the students, Professor Rexhepi says that during a pandemic and uncertainty in terms of the health situation in the country, online teaching is a necessary evil, and a loss of a few months, or even worse, a year, must not be allowed simply because of this fact.

 “Students already have experience with online teaching from the last quarter of the previous school year. Perhaps the insufficient organization and non-unification back then led to skepticism. However, this time it concerns a completely unified platform that satisfies all aspects of the education process, and I, personally, think that the students will get used to it very quickly and that the platform will give the expected results” he added.

Rexhepi believes that the implementation of the strategy for online teaching is progressing according to the outlined pace and that all levels of training, starting from the training of the 30 national trainers, up to the training of the school staff, has passed in the best order. According to him, the feedback is positive.

 “It is clear that not everyone accepts novelties in the same way. However, I am sure that in a short period of time all users will see that this is something which will benefit all participants in the educational process” states Rexhepi.

In regards to the experience with online teaching so far, and what the relationship between the students and professors is like, Rexhepi says that all teachers and professors have had some experience in the last part of the previous school year, and that even though the platform is something new for most, it still provides implementation of experience acquired so far on other platforms as well.

 “As to the relationship between teachers/professors and students, it is still a sensitive subject. In most cases, here the individual approach of the teacher or the professor should be taken into consideration. What is very important regarding the platform is the fact that unlike most of the approaches used for distance learning last year, it allows interactions with students using video conference links, a possibility for continuous and easy sharing of materials and etc.” adds Rexhepi.

The Ministry of Education and Science prepared the National Platform for Distance Learning, which Rexhepi believes is a long-expected and very important novelty, and that such platforms are used in almost all educational institutions in the world.

“The greatness of this platform is that in our country it will be common for all primary and secondary schools. That means that it will have around 270 000 users, counting all students and staff. The expectations are high, but at the same time, there is certain fear among new users. It is possible that because of the size of all this that at the beginning there could be certain difficulties from a technical aspect, but all of that will be solved quickly and as we go. I still believe that the benefits of the platform should be much more of a topic of discussion, rather than the fear and skepticism surrounding the implementation of this and this kind of project. The platform as such, will be used much longer regardless of the situation and the possibility for physical presence of students. Therefore, the benefits will be far-reaching. I believe that in a month or two, we will all grow so used to the platform that working without it, even if we continue with classes with physical presence, will be much harder”, considers Professor Rexhepi.

CIVIL calls on citizens to share their experience for a better educational process in our country. 

Angela Petrovska

Translation: N. Cvetkovska