**2. What can the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic teach about teaching?**

The year 2020 brought new challenges to all of humanity, the global economy, but also the entire education, which no one could even imagine just a few months ago. Higher education institutions faced a significant challenge as the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, spread throughout the world: how to continue teaching if in-person lectures are forbidden per the directives of the government and the civil protection headquarters? Many colleges found themselves facing a test of their ability to function since they were unprepared for this task, particularly in the beginning, following the ominous prediction of Drucker in 1997 [1]: "Thirty years from now, the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won't survive." Drucker also claimed that video distribution may lower expenses and eliminate the need for school structures while expressing concern about the rising cost of education. "Already we are beginning to deliver more lectures and classes off campus via satellite or two-way video at a fraction of the cost. The college won't survive as a residential institution. Today's buildings are hopelessly unsuited and totally unneeded."

Of course, other higher education institutions were somewhat more prepared and started, immediately or shortly after closing, with online classes as a short-term solution. Teachers, as leaders of online classes, should have made additional efforts to familiarize themselves (in more detail) with technology and use the new digital tools through which a particular higher education institution conducted classes (screen sharing, presentations, chat, polls, even holding online exams, etc.), mostly with the help of technical support.

Numerous research are still ongoing, concerning satisfaction with online teaching, and judging by the current experience, teachers, and students who participated in this type of "forced" and "unprepared" or more precisely unexpected online teaching, believing that this online teaching was the best a possible solution at a given time and in given circumstances, but many agree that it cannot replace the face-to-face teaching experience. Very often, the results of studies on distance learning versus face-toface learning, which have been carried out since the 2000s, have shown that (i) students prefer face-to-face classes, but also that students want to actively engage in their learning [2].

Extraordinary preventive measures due to the threat of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, in addition to fear and uncertainty, significantly changed the lives of individuals and the community, which then additionally caused stress and a threat to the mental health of the individual and the entire community [3, 4], and are numerous experts tried to communicate recommendations on how to preserve mental health and how to "manage" our experience of risk and fear. One of the most

#### *Social Media in Higher Education Research and Practical Insights DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108736*

important recommendations was "it is important to connect with each other and provide support and help while respecting all the recommendations of health and other competent institutions, especially social distancing. Modern technology can help us in this, that is, social media, e-mail, mobile phone, etc., which enable us to communicate with our loved ones, respecting the recommendations of experts about reduced direct contacts and social distance" [3, 4]. As a result, adaptation to the recently developed scenario was defined by the employment of (digital) interactive technologies, most frequently social media, through which a seemingly hopeless situation was changed into a surmountable one. These digital tools enabled at least the partial functioning of life as we knew it before and the continuation of studies instead of the complete cessation of "life," reducing not only the fear of the threat and the resulting uncertainty but also the social separation and distancing of people, which also negatively affect the psychological health of people. However, for example, the research "How we are - life in Croatia in the age of corona" showed that online teaching was a source of great stress [5], there were many challenges, and apart from working from home, where clear boundaries between business and private life most of them are related to everything mentioned so far in this doctoral thesis. Accordingly, the fundamental question is whether the stress caused by online teaching and the use of new digital tools would have been much milder if adaptation to the digital environment had started earlier, that is, if we had become more familiar with these digital tools before the extraordinary circumstances and before it became a kind of necessity and compulsion? [3].
