IMPACTS OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND DIGITALISATION ON HIGHER EDUCATION IN CROATIA

The existing world crisis of unprecedented proportions, caused by the coronavirus which started in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan in China, has occupied the lives of all of us for more than ten months. The crisis was caused by COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 19), which has rapidly transformed the lives of all people around the world in the first four months of 2020. Data from China where the pandemic first began at the end of December 2019 showed shocking results in the number of illnesses and deaths as a result of the new coronavirus spreading. After the first few months of 2020, it was clear that the virus will have unimaginable and previously unseen consequences on all levels of society and economy. This article gives some insights into the implications of the coronavirus pandemic on new trends of digitalisation in the higher education system. The results presented in this paper are a part of the comprehensive global student survey "Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on life of higher education students", which provides systematic meaningful insights into students' satisfaction and perception of different aspects of their life during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The survey was launched via open-source web toll on 5 May 2020 and remained opened until 15 June 2020 and has altogether included 30,877 students coming from 129 countries and 6 continents. The results presented here will be concentrated on the coronavirus pandemic implications on the digitalisation of the higher education system, more precisely, on the way it has affected the life and work of Croatian higher education students in the international context. In the Croatian case, 6 public universities (University of Zagreb, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, University of Osijek, University of Rijeka, University of Split, and University of Zadar) and one private (Zagreb University of Applied Sciences) university were covered by the survey. The number of responses was 689 which makes 2.2% proportion of all responses. The findings of this research offer useful recommendations for policy-makers which could enable them to prepare themselves better for an improved functioning e-learning system in the next possible lockdowns. The results show that Croatian students were dominantly satisfied with online organization of lectures but worried about different life circumstances which drastically changed during the start of pandemic. They also pointed out that not all teachers at all universities were equally well-prepared for the new situation of virtual teaching.