Emergency forced pandemic e-learning – feedback from students for HEI management. (2nd September 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kulikowski, Konrad; Przytula, Sylwia; Sulkowski, Lukasz
• Is Part Of: Open learning. Volume 36:Number 3(2021)
• Page Start: 245
• Page End: 262
• Publication Date: 2021-09-02
• Subjects: Forced e-learning -- blended-learning -- Covid-19 -- emergency e-learning -- HEI management; Distance education -- Great Britain -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 371.35
• DOI: 10.1080/02680513.2021.1942810
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0268-0513

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 pandemic created many challenges for higher education institutions (HEI), one of the most important being forced e-learning – the involuntary need to move all educational activities to an online environment. In this exploratory study, we aim to learn from students' feedback on demands created by COVID-19 forced e-learning to provide HEI management with insights helpful in building educational policies that might promote students' positive perception of distance learning in turbulent times. Based on a convenience sample of more than 600 university students we implemented multiple regression analysis to explore the relationships between e-learning demands experienced by students and the three dimensions of e-learning perception: emotional experience with e-learning, cognitive evaluation of e-learning, and study engagement in e-learning. Our findings have shown that the e-learning demand most strongly related to a negative perception of e-learning was students' belief that during e-learning the university was plunged into chaos. This suggests that for students who participate in e-learning, the most important aspect of e-learning policy might be not, as we often intuitively think, the cutting edge e-learning platform & technology but rather effective reciprocal communication between HEI and students about the e-learning situation, allowing a perception of order to be created.