About online learning in the autumn semester of 2020/2021
The academic year starts on 31 August; partially online, if necessary. Fully online study is not, and will not be, the aim of the university, but as it is hard to predict the further spread of the virus and the national and international restrictions, we must be prepared to offer more web-based teaching in the autumn, and realise that more IT tools may need to be used to participate in the learning process.
We allow international students and international visiting students who experience difficulties with entry to Estonia to participate in studies via online tools and, if necessary, on an individual basis, until the end of October or until most of them have arrived in Estonia. In the English-taught programme of medicine it is not possible to start studies in the virtual learning environment. Also international visiting students need to understand that not all English-taught courses can be taught online. In summer and autumn, besides providing support to creating video lectures, we will pay particular attention to planning e-support to courses with a large number of participants in order to replace classroom lectures with high-quality web-based teaching in these courses. We aim to design the video lectures that are generally pre-recorded and can be viewed at any time. In the lectures, the lecturer’s speech alternates with questions, tasks or other methods that contribute to active engagement of students. Also, the minimum requirements for partly and fully web-based courses have been formulated. In the summer, the university will train members of the teaching staff and support persons who will help the them to organise online teaching.