Master Students’ Perceptions of Online Teaching and Learning during the Pandemic

Abstract

During the pandemic, the traditional education system shifted to online teaching and learning. In the time that has passed since the beginning of the pandemic, important changes were recorded in the way that education is thought and delivered, at any level of education. Starting with March 2020, when schools were physically closed, online learning became the only way to continue the educational process, although teachers, parents, students, institutions, and officials from the educational system, as well as decision-makers, were not prepared for such a big change. With advantages and limitations, this substitute for traditional education represented a major challenge and opened up multiple opportunities for transforming education, rethinking pedagogical paradigms in line with changes in education-related fields, and transforming the school ethos into a space for inclusion, promoting values, for access to quality education. This research aims to analyze the perceptions of master students as regard online teaching in two East-European countries: Lithuania and Romania. The focus is on the suitability of online teaching, feedback, and support. The provided feedback illustrates that the online teaching/learning process is strongly influenced by a series of variables related to the teachers’ competencies, their ability to introduce proper didactic methods and adapt the content, their capacity to motivate students, to raise the students’ attention, and to stimulate the students’ involvement. More, providing real support, offering fast feedback, and strongly mediating teacher-student communication represent important issues for creating a successful format for online education.

Students’ Perceptions on Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

“…It calls for necessary continuous professional development that should include the development of both digital and psycho-pedagogical competence, with a focus on effective course design, instruction, implementation and evaluation (Nawar Al-Saadi, 2017). Pedagogically, there is also a need to adapt and adjust the teaching methods to the specificity of the online process (Kim & Bonk, 2006), which is why studies providing echoes of the experiences of trained teachers/experts on the topic are useful (Thomas & Dello Stritto, 2021);  Students' perspective on the process Duţă, 2023;Nikolenko et al, 2023;Islam & Mondal, 2022;Laili & Nashir, 2022;Lamanauskas et al, 2022;Radmehr & Goodchild, 2022;Soliman et al, 2022;Abu et al, 2021;Alexa, 2021;Almahasees et al, 2021;Aziz Ansari et al, 2021;Fyllos et al, 2021;Hofer et al, 2021;Saurabh et al, 2021;Seifert, 2021;Ayu, 2020;Coman et al, 2020;Mishra et al, 2020;Sadiku et al, 2018;Brittany, 2015). The data highlighted by such studies underline the need for a joint teacherstudent effort and a stronger commitment from both partners to create an online learning community that ensures a higher level of interaction and collaboration (Thomas & Dello Stritto, 2021;Kim & Bonk, 2006) between them as well as between students (Nawar Al-Saadi, 2017);  Views on the benefits and challenges of online teaching and online learning in the academic environment Nikolenko et al, 2023;Blonder et al, 2022;Radmehr & Goodchild, 2022;Soliman et al, 2022;Alexa, 2021;Aziz Ansari et al, 2021;Bekker & Nazir, 2021;…”