Prof. Dr Maia Noniashvili and Prof. Ana Tetradze from the Business and Technology University of Georgia have analyzed formal and non-formal education from a digital point of view. The paper deals with the increased involvement of digital media in the educational process due to the Covid -19 Pandemic. Prof. Dr Maia Noniashvili believes this can be understood in different ways – a process of finding information or displaying visible information using various information diagrams through technological and digital levers.
The article considers the factors of information retrieval and targeted use of digital media: ways and satisfaction of students receiving non-formal education; digital and social media platforms they choose to search for/share the information they need; how effectively and consciously they use them; effectiveness of online learning and student satisfaction with online education, and how Covid-19 pandemic contributed to the involvement of digital media in education. The research was conducted in the Republic of Georgia. Students and representatives of universities were interviewed. The findings of the research concluded that the use of digital media in the educational process is important to a large part of respondents because they believe the knowledge and experience offered by the universities are not enough to gain practical experience and that’s why they often use digital media platforms.
The importance of the research topic stems from the recent changes when during the Covid-19 pandemic it became necessary to switch to distance learning, which completely changed the methods of using digital media in teaching. On the one hand, the rapid transformation of the educational environment using digital technologies has shown the practical importance of distance learning, but on the other hand, the introduction of distance learning is accompanied by challenges, including the scarcity of specific digital skills by implementers and problems with the computer and online resources. By reading the results, you will have some idea about formal and non-formal education in Georgia, and the attitude of respondents (students and HEI representatives) about the positive and negative sides of each. The results also show the impact that the pandemic made on the educational process, how the universities coped with the adopted changes.
The paper can be found in the EUMMAS Library.
