PECULIARITIES OF THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS ORGANIZATION IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AT THE PHARMACOLOGY AND CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY DEPARTMENT OF I. HORBACHEVSKY TERNOPIL NATIONAL MEDICAL UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The pandemic COVID-19 has become the biggest challenge the participants at the various levels of the educational process around the world were faced with. The introduction of quarantine on the territory of Ukraine with the restrictions for applicants on attending educational institutions caused the need to organize the educational process online within an extremely short time, taking into account the unique needs of each subject. This radically changed the approaches to the teaching of the discipline, for which such a format was not typical, and became a difficult challenge for both teachers and students, as it required a very high level of organization of all of them. The participants of the educational process of I. Horbachevsky Ternopil National Medical University also were faced with these difficulties, but the distance form of learning was overcome fairly quickly, which allowed to ensure a good level of the students’ studying. This article represents the experience of pharmacology teaching at the Department of Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology in the conditions of quarantine restrictions caused by the pandemic COVID-19, describes the means of communication, innovative technologies and methods of the discipline teaching used to organize the educational process online. The distance learning model has contributed to the development of interactive methods of discussing materials and assessing knowledge. However, a major disadvantage of this format is the lower objectivity of the students’ knowledge assessment as they have the possibility of using additional materials during the seminar part of the classes and test control. Although both students and teachers of the Pharmacology with Clinical Pharmacology Department were forced to face a variety of problems that required rapid adaptation to changes, eventually, it allowed to support the high quality of the educational process.