Online Learning During the Covid Crisis: Student Views

Abstract

In the spring of 2020, students at all levels of education were suddenly thrown into online learning situations. Higher education institutions reacted without regard or exposure to known best practices for online learning. As a result, student satisfaction levels dropped dramatically. Before Covid, those participating in online courses chose that option. Occasionally, an individual course would only be offered online, but for the majority, students who did not like online courses could avoid them. With the Covid crisis, all students were thrust into an online educational environment with no alternatives and little notice. To examine the learning during this crisis, we developed a 22-item scale on student perspectives of online learning and administered the survey to a large regional university in the southwest US during the Covid crisis (n=1160). We found online students prefer non-quantitative courses, are motivated by many scheduling issues, believe they learn less online and feel online students must be self-motivated and more disciplined, among other findings.