The Views of Students with Special Needs Distance Education in Slovakia

During the pandemic, the government of the Slovak Republic was forced to take various measures related mainly to limiting contact. These facts also affected the Department of Education, so that all educational institutions were closed. The Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and Sports of the Slovak Republic was forced to interrupt face-to-face teaching in all schools from kindergarten to university and switch to an online form of education. Even universities were not prepared for this form of education, as few universities offered study programs in which it was possible to study either in a combined or in an online form. In the paper, the focus is on the topic of online education of the students with special needs in tertiary education. As part of the empirical investigation, the aim was to map the opinions of university students with special needs and analyze their experiences with this form of education. The findings resulting from the investigation of the involved 83 respondents indicate that online education had many advantages and disadvantages for students with special needs. The most frequently mentioned advantages were, e.g., recordings from lectures and seminars (appreciated most often by students with learning disabilities), handing in assignments was rated as more practical, teachers were more accommodating, better communication during consultations, feeling more comfortable in the home environment (appreciated most often by students with mental, chronic illness and students with physical disabilities of the lower limbs). There were also negative answers, such as social isolation, technical problems, lack of practice, exercises, problems to concentrate, deterioration of health (depression), uninteresting online teaching, reduced time for writing tests.