Abstract:

2020 was the year that faced the COVID-19, a pandemic was declared, and it has changed education forever. It has resulted in many unusual but necessary actions and measures taken by governments, among them, the shutting of all education institutions across the world. Globally, over 1.2 billion children have been out of the classroom. Consequently, distance learning, which had been progressing in developed countries and staggering in developing countries, got notorious becoming the most used means for practically everything - the world turned online. People started to talk to their relatives through computers or cell phones; businesses began selling their products using the new technology; teachers set up to teach distance classes. Even if it was used as a cliché, the world has not stopped, things went on but in a different way, everything became “online.” In its turn, education has changed dramatically, relying on digital platforms, and urging thus the rise of e-learning.

The Faculty of Economics (FSE), University of Oradea, like all higher education institutions in Romania and worldwide, had to adjust and provide distance-learning opportunities to enable students to finish the 2019–2020 academic year. Unfortunately, the situation was prolonged for the new academic year 2020-2021, and The University of Oradea we are still providing online education exclusively. Consequently, the present paper aims at collecting data on how the turn to distance learning impacted undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at The Faculty of Economics, Oradea. The goal was to identify student academic challenges, to underline the benefits of distance learning, and to use that information to improve practices that can be implemented to perfect the online university education. The study reveals that online learning has undergone a continuous process to increase the quality of the educational process, absorb the information, be student oriented and take less time. Even before the health crisis, within our faculty there was an increasing demand and desire to adopt the education technology, such as language apps, video conferencing tools, or online learning software, etc. Some voices say that the unexpected and sudden turn to online learning – with no training, insufficient experience, and little preparation – will bring about chaos, poor progress for students, exhaustion for teachers’ irrelevant growth, others believe that the new education model based on technology is unavoidable and will eventually bring significant benefits.