On 7th October, our Albanian partner university, Metropolitan Tirana University held a virtual event on the topic of “The New Reality with Covid-19”, in which two of our students had the opportunity to present.
During this event students shared their experiences with Covid-19, studying online and how they confronted this new virtual reality.
One of our students, Anna Gál wrote the following summary of the event:
"Last week, I had the opportunity to share my personal experiences and hear from fellow international students living and studying abroad. The event was organized by the Student Union of Metropolitan Tirana University located in Albania and its main focus was our experience of online education in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The atmosphere was positive throughout the whole event. Both the students and the organizers tried not to focus on the hardships, but to find things to learn from the experiences of the past year and a half.
There were a couple of things that the participants unanimously agreed on about online education during the pandemic. Just to highlight two, since we didn't have to travel as much daily, we had time to find new hobbies and fields of interest. Some even discovered that hybrid education can be beneficial at times, especially for not-so-privileged students.
One thing that negatively affected all participants was the lack of social interaction, which we take for granted when we are on campus most days of the week. However, this is also up to us, especially since we live in the age of social media.
During the pandemic, we were given the same opportunity for group work as in previous years by the lecturers at the Kodolanyi Janos University, we just had to be a little more creative. We completed most of the given team works online from start to finish using the websites developed for students and people working at home. This was not an isolated case, I heard similar stories from other participants.
Overall, in my opinion, it was worth taking part in the program, as it gave all of us new perspectives of other students from foreign countries. At the end of the virtual round table, it was agreed on by all attendees and organizers that similar events will be arranged at Metropolitan Tirana University and students from the participating universities will be invited again."