Trends in education during the pandemic: modern online technologies as a tool for the sustainability of university education in the field of media and communication studies

The involuntary shutdown at universities during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impossibility of full-time teaching forced university teachers to look for other ways of communication strategies through Internet platforms with students and in everyday academic activities. The aim of this study is to reveal the attitudes and perception of university teachers in the field of Media and Communication Studies in Slovakia during two years of online home learning (2020 and 2021) when the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic took place. The aim was to show changes in the perception of the situation in terms of existing positives and negatives during this period as well as to point out a possible trend in the communication strategies used to ensure the sustainability of the education system. Due to the lockdown, the survey was only conducted in electronic format using online questionnaires. The participants were university teachers from the field of Media and Communication Studies. As this is a progressive field the study of which is carried out at the intersection of the interests of several scientific disciplines, it can be assumed that the conclusions can easily be transferred to social, economic, humanities and arts disciplines. When communicating and teaching students in 2020 and also in 2021, online teaching through systems such as Zoom or Google Meet and individual consultations by e-mail, chat and social networks dominated. As the results of the study indicate, modern online technologies contribute to the sustainability of the educational process during an emergency and will become an integral part of university education even after the end of the pandemic situation. Media and communication Studies; Communication strategies; University; Online education; Distance learning; Modern technologies; COVID-19.