Peculiarities of Bulgarian universities' digitalization during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the education system to transform quickly from a straightforward traditional process to an online one. Both schools and universities, including their management and administration) were challenged to maintain the quality of the educational service they provided, but this time under completely different conditions and in a new and unfamiliar online environment. In Bulgaria, due to the rules of the systems and the academic autonomy, each university had the opportunity to decide how to deal with these force major circumstances. Along with the technical challenges, professors have to overcome the difficulties related to the motivation and engagement of the students in such a mediated environment. The main objective of the current article is to evaluate the results of the online learning process during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria. The results from empirical research (N = 140) clearly show that most Bulgarian lecturers prefer face-to-face learning. At the same time, they admit the necessity of specific training for technical skills improvement and different approaches for students' attention and engagement in online learning. According to the professors, the overall assessment for the level of satisfaction from online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic is in the golden mean - 3 on a scale of 1 - "not at all effective" to 5 - "it is effective".