Changes in students’ perceptions on course delivery during the pandemic
Recent research uncovers how students feel about online learning environments.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, universities and colleges had to quickly switch to online classes to keep everyone safe. This brought on a variety of challenges that both educators and learners needed to adapt to and resulted in a lot of changes to course delivery. For example, from an operational point of view, physical cadaveric specimens were used in the past for anatomy education. Learning with these cadavers was no longer possible with the COVID-19 social distancing restrictions, thus, a change to the course delivery was necessary.
A recent study done by multiple researchers, one including School of Nursing Associate Professor, Noori Akhtar-Danesh, wanted to uncover what students’ preferences were to these inevitable changes to their courses. To do this, Akhtar-Danesh and the other researchers used a method called Q-methodology, which helps understand people’s values, opinions, and preferences. With this methodology, they surveyed students who took an anatomy and physiology course in both the fall semester of 2020 and the winter semester of 2021.
There was a total of 31 students who completed both surveys. The researchers compared the results from the fall 2020 semester survey to the winter 2021 semester survey to see if there were any changes in the students’ perceptions of online learning. From the fall 2020 survey, three main groups of students were identified: those who felt overwhelmed (referred to as Overtaxed students in the study), those who preferred working alone (referred to as Solo Achievers), and those who preferred in-person classes (referred to as In-person Learners).
Initially, the researchers found the students were mostly only concerned about how the course was being delivered. However, the winter 2021 survey showed that students were starting to positively adjust to online learning. While majority of the students still view online learning as a lesser than option to in-person learning, these detailed findings show that students have developed different views and preferences of online courses gradually.
This study can help universities and colleges redesign and improve different aspects of online courses in secondary education. By understanding students’ preferences and concerns, universities and colleges can make changes that better meet the needs of students in online learning environments.
To read the full study, visit here: Scientific Reports
Faculty, Research