engleski

How wide is the digital divide? Covid-19 pandemic and the higher education digitalization in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has unfortunately af- fected and is still affecting all aspects of our society, and so the education system is not an exception. Global lockdowns caused by the outbreak of COVID-19 starting from March 2020 have stopped the traditional in-class teaching at all education levels across the globe. The pandemic started as a health crisis and soon became a global socio- economic crisis which has accelerated the process of digitalization. We have witnessed different tools and methods of instruction being used in the education system at all levels. However, one main concern remains, and that is the inequality in access to technology across countries and the serious threat of widening the gap. Thus, the main intention of this paper is to assess the digitaliza- tion level of higher education institutions in Croatia and Bosnia and Her- zegovina (BiH) in the international context. The results presented in this article are derived from the comprehensive Global Student Survey “Im- pacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Life of Higher Education Students” which was carried out among 30 000 higher education students coming from 129 countries during the period May – June 2020 via open- source web. The sample for Croatia includes 673 responses, while in case of BiH, it includes 409 responses. The paper will employ relevant statistical tools for multiple group comparison in the empirical analysis. The results of the research show that functioning of e-learning methods in two countries dif- fer and also indicate that not all teachers at all universities were equally prepared for all challenges of virtual teaching. The paper also provides recommendations for policy makers for the continuation of higher education digitalization with the main goal of improving the knowledge and skills of students in both countries.

COVID-19 ; higher education ; digitalization

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