In almost two years, the COVID-19 pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus has radically transformed the lives of masses of people and operation of institutions around the globe, including HEIs. Apart from the devastating health consequences for those directly affected by the virus, the COVID-19 pandemic holds major implications for the way higher education students and university staff live and work, affecting their physical and mental well-being in profound ways. While the disruptive move from "normal” face-to-face teaching and learning to remote, online platforms was unprecedented, the effects and impacts of this forced shift were under-estimated, occurred without sufficient planning or preparation, and tested individuals and institutions to new limits. After brief presentation of the main results of the international survey, conducted by research group (CovidSocLAb) at the Faculty of Public Administration (Aristovnik et al., 2020), to capture the immediate academic, economic and social effects of the pandemic in the world (and in some comparative aspects with public administration students in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region), the roundtable will address the following main questions for discussion:
- What have been the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic on students and staff (from academic, personal, social, financial etc. perspective)?
- How prepared (in terms of technological equipment, experience, and skills) have been HEIs, students and staff for digital distance learning?
- Have students and teaching staff from public administration schools and institutions had relatively more difficulties in the Covid-19 pandemic period?
- What are lessons learned from Covid-19 pandemic period? How will teaching, learning, assessment and research look like in post-Covid period?
- What are the major challenges posed to public administration schools and institutions to keep their students competitive in the labor market in post-Covid period?
Speakers:
- Gyorgy Hajnal, NISPAcee President, EAPAA Accreditation Committee member, Corvinus University, Budapest, Hungary
- Calin Hintea, EAPAA Accreditation Committee Chair, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
- Wolfgang Drechsler, EAPAA Board Chair, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia
- Allan Rosenbaum, ICAPA Chair, ASPA President, Florida International University, Miami, USA
- Nina Tomaževič, CovidSocLab, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
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