Five Lessons Learned from the Current COVID-19 Crisis at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic
| Published date | 01 July 2020 |
| Date | 01 July 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2322005820934348 |
| Subject Matter | Commentaries |
Commentary
Five Lessons Learned from the
Current COVID-19 Crisis at
Charles University in Prague,
Czech Republic
Michal Urban1
First and Second Waves of Reaction to
Closure of the Law School
More than two months ago, the government of the Czech Republic abruptly closed all schools in the
country. That left both students and teachers of my law school, a large continental law school with
medieval roots,2 in an unprecedented situation. In this text, I will describe the reaction of the Prague
faculty and ways of adaption to new conditions as well as formulate five lessons that I believe we might
learn from the current crisis and incorporate into our traditional teaching—even though it now emotionally
seems years away. Although the views and opinions expressed in the text are my own, I have debated
many of the issues with my colleagues and incorporated their experience into my lines.3
Although the schools and universities closed without specifying the day they would open again, many
of us believed that the closure would end up to be merely a week or two long break from the semester
that had just started. The reality, however, proved us wrong: Universities remained closed the whole
semester. The first wave of reactions to the new situation consisted of both waiting for the reality to come
back to normal and hectic searching for online means of teaching, which had been frankly not often used
before. Not surprisingly, younger colleagues were more eager into online teaching, while the older took
a more hesitant approach. After a week or two, however, it became clear that we all have to adapt to the
new situation and begin in some way teaching remotely. Some colleagues started having regular
videoconferences with their students in time of regular classes, which almost entirely substituted face-
to-face teaching. Some staff members started sending students materials with instructions as to what to
read and which questions to answer. Many offered a follow-up online seminar, some asked students to
submit assignments for individual feedback. The faculty management, together with the IT department
1 Faculty of Law, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
2 Our university was founded in 1348 and its law school accepts every year more than 600 students into its five-year-long master
programme.
3 It is naturally well imaginable that even a colleague from the same law school might emphasize other points or indeed argue for
the position that there is not much to take from the current distant teaching into regular teaching times. The concept of academic
liberty, thankfully, grants both of us the right for our own view.
Asian Journal of Legal Education
7(2) 224–227, 2020
© 2020 The West Bengal National
University of Juridical Sciences
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DOI: 10.1177/2322005820934348
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Corresponding author:
Michal Urban, Faculty of Law, Charles University, nám. Curieových 901/7, 116 40 Prague 1, Czech Republic.
E-mail: urban@prf.cuni.cz
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