The year 2020 also presented global challenges and unexpected events for the world and also the second semester of the 2019/2020 school year. The epidemic has also completely disrupted everyday life, the economy, routine GDP production in jobs and education too.
However, as the segments necessary for the functioning of society began to adapt to the existing circumstances, higher education institutions also emerged with a - in part - a completely new form of education, which does not require the collective presence of students and professors in a real space. Through distant education, it has become possible to ensure that neither Hungarian nor foreign students participating in courses stop training due to the virus. However, experience has shown that practical training, especially in the sciences and disciplines such as medicine and pharmacy, can be replaced to some extent or with the help of very specialized simulation programs and software in the digital environment.
However, the exams have been implemented even more easily by higher education institutions, such as the Faculty of Pharmacy, where successful electronic dissertation defenses were conducted in the first week of official distant education, in the form of an online video conference. The digital exam period has posed new challenges to the Institutes of the Faculty of Pharmacy, whose management reports we would like to share with the faculty colleagues and staff of the Faculty as well as the students. On the one hand, the professional briefings reflect on the digital exam period and its results and experience required by the current situation, on the other hand, they provide an insight into how each department of our Faculty has managed this phase of distant education and what solutions and alternatives have been operated on during the exam period.
The Department of Pharmacology evaluated the first online exam period as:
„We think the online exams have gone well so far. This is a new situation for everyone, the professors were just as excited during the first exams as the students.”
Like most professors and institutes, the Department of Pharmacology feared the possibility that students would cheat on exams, but they believed their fears were, in retrospect, perhaps a little exaggerated. Experiences show that the new situation, stress, technique and time constraints have made the possibility of cheating almost completely impossible. Prof. Dr. Gábor Pethő, Head of the Department, emphasized that despite the limitations of the system, both students and professors took this hitch well. Furthermore, he believes that the Teams framework of the written electronic exam can give students a sense of security that they are not alone and that they have someone to turn to in case of a problem.