We investigated university students’ study of mathematics in the digital setting context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We gathered data from a survey of 89 students enrolled in a ‘Linear Algebra 1’ course including affective variables, learning strategies, social relatedness and resources considered useful. The results indicate students’ high effort and self-regulation and a high variation in affective characteristics and social relatedness. All the traditional aspects of mathematics teaching (lecture, tutorials and lecture notes) were rated as particularly useful. In addition, the videos from external resources were rated as equally useful as the teaching team’s videos. In contrast, traditional literature such as textbooks was rarely considered useful. The most useful resource rated was communication with peers, underlining the important role of social learning despite fully digital learning environments. Finally, a cluster analysis based on students’ rated usefulness of the resources led to three different user-types. Whereas the ‘digitals’ find the external digital resources very useful (videos, webpages, etc.), the ‘traditionalists’ rate the digitalized traditional resources best (lecture, tutorials, etc.). All resources receive uniformly good ratings from a third group (‘all resource users’). We reflect on our findings in light of the pandemic and describe directions for future research.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, many universities switched to fully online teaching. This unexpected switching to online teaching was challenging for both teachers and students, and restrictions that were put in place because of pandemic made this challenge even greater. However, new ways of teaching might also open new opportunities for students’ learning. The research question driving our study was as follows: how do students regulate their learning and specifically their choice of resources and peer learning in university mathematics classes that are fully taught online as offered during the COVID-19 pandemic? We report on a longitudinal, qualitative study in which students recorded a brief audio diary twice a week over one whole semester (14 weeks). We focused on three students who completed 70 interviews in total and finished the semester with varying degrees of success. The results show how the students structured their studying (e.g., the roles that deadlines or synchronous teaching events played). They illustrate the strengths and limitations of digital materials provided by the lecturer and the use of complementary media. Further, the pandemic uncovered the double-edged role of simple, often anonymous exchanges (e.g., via Discord servers), with few binding forces for either side, and the significance of stable learning partnerships for students’ success. Our research highlights aspects that should be focal points when comparing traditional instruction and online instruction during the pandemic from a self-regulatory perspective. Practical implications refer to how these aspects can be combined sensibly in fully online courses, but also in blended learning contexts.

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This paper is meant to give some kind of manual instruction for the use of audience response systems for performing peer instruction in class. The different aspects one has to take into account when trying to implement this method are presented. In all of the sections, additional links and references are provided. The author reports on and reflects on his individual decisions when conducting peer teaching in an analysis course at the university. Finally, the results of the corresponding evaluation are presented and discussed.