In Albania, the online learning and teaching methodology is being considered as a viable long-term alternative by the Ministry of Education Sports and Youth (MASR) in the aftermath of COVID19 crisis.  

In the burst of the current crisis, HEI (High Education Institutions) played a crucial role when requested to assist the Ministry of Education Sports and Youth in piloting, testing and assessing the performance of the existing IT platforms – namely on their compliance with the requirements of an infrastructure that supported a database for didactic material for students.

Undeniably, HEIs faced difficulties during the preparatory phase, such as IT infrastructure preparation and initial assessment when making the teaching materials available online, but they have succeeded to implement these platforms for the bachelor and master students, by using Google classroom (mostly in public universities), Moodle, Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams.  

The current remaining challenge faced by HEIs is to address the constrains encountered for those academic activities that require physical participation, such as laboratories and professional practices.

While Professors revised the academic curricula to cope with the reality needs of online teaching/learning situation, preliminary statistics at national level show that, during the last week of March, the online delivery of lectures, exercises, seminars and course assignments reached about 55.000 students from public HEIs and 10.000 from private – these numbers remained steady until 20 April.

Still, HEIs identified cases where students have faced difficulties – related to poor/none internet access, home conditions and material possession – and its staff sought to guarantee their due support.  A special financial contribution has been made available to the academic staff serving a reference point for identifying and solving all the issues observed.

HEIs governing bodies are monitoring the implementation of the teaching/learning process over the respective online platforms, while seeking to guarantee access to all students and continuously making improvements on the relevant infrastructure(s). The overall mission is to ensure the compliance with academic standards of teaching.

The next short-term challenges for HEIs vary from practical and immediate ones to some long-term societal scope:

•    The reopening of the academic year, in terms of respecting the rules of social distances and hygiene; •    Conducting the exams, which will require adaptations to the relevant regulations; •    A legal framework that regulates the distance / online learning; •    Engage the institutions in projects and experiences that allow for the creation of online platforms to store relevant materials, to enable them to cope with this or similar challenges.

Finally, worthy to be reported are the two earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.7 and 6.4 (Richter scale) that hit Albania in September and November, respectively. These facts, alone, already influenced severely the current academic year, forcing HEIs to postpone some teaching activities to enable the compliance with the academic program.  The recuperation of the lost teaching hours caused and additional delay of two weeks to the February 2020 exam season, which are, by now, fully compensated.

In spite of all challenges, the implementation of digital teaching in Albania following the Covid19 situation shows that academic staff have quickly adapted to this (new) method of teaching, but there is room for further improvements.  This new experience led the academic staff to identify the need for better digital skills and competencies by introducing new methodologies and technologies in teaching.  The expected outcome is for HEIs to encourage the increase on investments in ICTs – for teaching / learning – and to strengthen the professional development of staff through training related to digital technology and innovative teaching methods.

Source:  Eurydice Unit Albania