University of Cologne: Between hope and reservations: Study on what students expect of remote learning.
ENPNewswire-September 7, 2021--University of Cologne: Between hope and reservations: Study on what students expect of remote learning
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Release date- 06092021 - At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching and learning at German brick-and-mortar universities shifted to virtual formats practically overnight. A survey among students provides valuable insights that can help improve online studies / publication in 'Frontiers in Psychology'
Among the hopes and fears students associated with switching to remote teaching and learning at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, negative expectations slightly outweigh positive ones. That is the result of a study conducted by Thomas Hoss, Amancay Ancina, and Professor Kai Kaspar from the University of Cologne's Psychology Department during the first nationwide lockdown in Germany. The researchers focused on students' expectations regarding the risks and opportunities associated with this challenging situation. The paper 'Forced Remote Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Germany: A Mixed-Methods Study on Students' Positive and Negative Expectations' has appeared in Frontiers in Psychology.
Beginning in the spring of 2020, universities around the world had to convert their lectures and seminars from classroom teaching to virtual formats within a very short period of time - often without sufficient preparation or educational concepts. Faculty and students were forced to adapt their familiar teaching and learning routines. The survey reveals that students had both positive as well as negative expectations of this shift to an e-learning semester during the first lockdown in April and May 2020. 'Their assessment is so valuable because, looking back after three online semesters so far, it allows us to better understand which of the expected effects actually took hold and are still relevant', said Kaspar. Revisiting the beginning of the pandemic is therefore not only interesting to determine the status quo, it also provides a knowledge base on which measures for the future can build. For the next teaching term, it is still uncertain whether, and if so to what degree, teaching can take place in the classroom again.
For the study, a group of 584 students in different degree programmes, from different universities, and in different phases of their courses provided more than 3,800 statements on their positive and negative expectations for the upcoming...
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