site.btaSerbian Students Start to Catch Up on Classes Missed due to Blockades

More and more university faculties in Serbia have started catching up on classes missed due to student blockades, which began in late November last year after the incident at the Novi Sad train station, which caused the death of 16 people.

Some faculties have introduced distance learning, including hybrid learning classes, remote lectures and publishing materials online to make them available to students. The Serbian Education Ministry has published on its website a list of the higher education institutions that have received permission from the ministry to implement a learning model in which students can choose whether to participate in the educational process in real time or postpone it by attending lectures and sitting for exams at later dates.

"We have adapted training individually for all groups of students. Some are interested in classes in real time, and for the moment teaching is conducted online via the Zoom platform. The schedule is available, and classes are held regularly, as during the Covid pandemic. Students have direct access to lectures and exercises at the designated time. This is for students who can follow the training in real time," the dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Belgrade, Prof. Dr. Zaklina Stojanovic, said. 

"Students have online access to materials published by lecturers and associates. In addition to recorded lectures and exercises, there are instructions and homework. Later, the students, when they finish the tasks, can send back their answers, and the lecturers will record this as their activity during the semester," the dean added.

“We are trying to meet all the students, in an effort to bring the academic year to an end, under the specific circumstances. We hope that at some point, when the conditions are right, we will also have classes at the university,” the dean said, adding that hybrid learning makes it difficult for teachers, because for them it is “twice the work”.

“Under the circumstances, we would not want to cause harm to anyone. Everything is new, we are adjusting, monitoring how many students are in one form of teaching and how many in another. We respect each individual student, so we have created this mixed form of teaching so that everyone can find what suits him,” Professor Stojanovic said.

According to data from the National Entity for Accreditation and Quality Assurance in Higher Education of Serbia, so far 57 faculties and two universities have started refunding tuition fees in fulfilment of the decision of the Serbian government and instructions of the Education Ministry.

Recently, the Minister of Education, Dejan Vuk Stankovic, stated that new students will be enrolled in universities only after existing students have made up for the classes they have missed so far.