Evaluation of the Maritime Higher Education didactic support during the coronavirus pandemic. Case Study

The unforeseen appearance of the pandemic situation imposed the interruption of face-to-face courses in all educational institutions in Romania, and maintaining the educational quality standards in these conditions was a real challenge. Thus, the ensuring of education support is a determining factor in carrying out online teaching activities. The teaching support in e-learning involves the cumulative implementation of several factors, as follows: stable and high-speed internet connection, high-performance hardware and communication software tools, digital teaching and learning resources for each discipline in the curriculum, technical and pedagogical support. The case study presented aims to identify the impact produced on the maritime higher education by the sudden transition from the classical teaching and assessment system to the online and distance hybrid one. The analysis is done from the perspective of ensuring teaching support, considering the fact that, compared with the conventional methods of teaching and evaluation, online education requires a more elaborate didactic and diversified technology. The evaluative and transversal research was carried out on a sample of 300 students and 27 professors from the "Mircea cel Batran" Naval Academy by applying online questionnaires. For the analysis of the obtained data, statistical analysis techniques and tools were used. The difficulties encountered in carrying out the teaching activities are analysed and the identified and applied improvement solutions are presented.