LEARNING BY DOING: CHALLENGES AND ACHIEVEMENTS DURING A YEAR OF ONLINE TEACHING
LEARNING BY DOING: CHALLENGES AND ACHIEVEMENTS DURING A YEAR OF ONLINE TEACHING

Summary/Abstract: As academics with over 10 years’ experience in teaching students and having benefited from technological advances, we thought we were on top of things, as the methods we used proved to be successful, in onsite education. Then, the lockdown imposed by the pandemic forced us to redefine our instructor profiles, and to adapt resources, methods and means of communication to online education. By maintaining a constant connection with our students and asking for feedback, we were able to gradually develop the most appropriate methods, in order to provide them with a complete learning experience. The paper presents practices developed and applied in online teaching of electronics to 1st and 2nd year students. The practices refer to the weekly activities during the semester (course, lab, seminar), as well as to the final exam. Throughout the entire semester, the focus was on cultivating students’ abilities to apply, synthesize, and interpret the information, knowing that the resources are always available, even during the exam. Challenges that occurred when shifting to online education were addressed by making changes in scheduling, knowledge transfer, weekly assignments, exam structure and method, student activity monitoring, resource availability, collecting feedback, student- student and student-teacher interaction. Comparing the results of the final evaluation to the ones from previous years, when all the activities were face-to-face, shows an increase of the pass rates with 10% for the open-book exam. The percentage of high grades (9 and 10) remains similar. These values, together with the positive feedback received from the students, prove that we successfully managed to turn the challenges of online teaching into achievements.

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