Online study and work on FTPO with MS Office 365

In recent days, the lives of all of us have turned upside down. We are aware of our vulnerability and, at the same time, our dependence on communication, which is fortunately enabled by modern technologies to some extent. Working from home can be quite hard, especially when we work on group projects and communication is not very clear, and we play ping-pong with e-mail documents.

This year, FTPO switched to Microsoft Office 365. This is a long-term solution mainly because of the many benefits that this program offers, such as: ease of use, security, accessibility of documents everywhere, remote work and communication with Microsoft Teams, cooperation and simultaneous work on documents and, most importantly; The Office Teams program provides unlimited possibilities for enriching and upgrading transfer of information for the purpose of the study process, upgrading communication between students and higher education teachers and colleagues, as well as a link to many additional applications all in one place. Office 365 enables our collaboration to be productive and effective, even when we are not sitting in the same classroom or office. Joining the online lectures or meetings is also extremely easy.

With the help of Office 365, we have successfully set up 48 online classrooms. In the past month, we have granted free online licenses for all the latest versions of Office programs to all students and high school teachers and associates, edited online classrooms for all undergraduate and master's degree courses, and trained lecturers to work with the program. In addition to the sharing of materials, online classrooms now also feature the ability to submit seminar assignments, perform tests, surveys, and, of course, communicate effectively and deliver lectures remotely.

All these things come in handy these days, when at FTPO we try our best to keep the study and work process moving further, remotely.

Last week (March 16 - March 20, 2020), we successfully performed all the lectures that were planned online. This week, part of the lab and seminar work is also being carried out using IT technologies, including exercises for the Advanced 3D Modelling course. We have also given students access to the specific programs they need to model. Unfortunately, the lab work for courses Polymer Chemistry and Processing Technology of Polymer Materials will have to wait.

We are extremely pleased that the implementation of distance learning has been very successful so far, as evidenced by the responses of students, higher education teachers and partners. “I was positively surprised by the distance learning. The lecturers do their best to explain the matter as well as they do in the live lectures. The Teams application also positively surprised me, as we have almost everything we need on one application ”, said one of our students.

We would like to thank our partner GOV-IS d.o.o. for the high-quality technical support and all assistance in using MS Office 365.

We wish you all to be brave and take care of yourself and your loved ones.

The FTPO team