Student Perceptions of Online Education and Digital Technologies during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

Abstract

We designed a bibliometric review combined with a systematic review of relevant research on student perceptions of online education, which was conducted from March 2020 until September 2022 (focused on emergency remote teaching). By exploring the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases, we selected 154 articles addressing mostly positive/negative as well as neutral student perceptions. The methodology followed the Khan five-step approach and included a PRISMA flowchart integrating keywords for selecting the relevant quantitative data for the analysis. Evidence was brought forward identifying the advantages of online education based on efficiency-related factors, contributing to the supportive attitudes of the learners (digital technology application, self-directed learning and flexibility). Our analysis revealed that the pursued research field is still insufficiently explored. Universities must prepare more consciously for embedding current technological challenges to cope with unforeseen situations, such as an immediate switch from the classic face-to-face teaching to online based on digital technology education. The greatest challenge for the universities in the digital society is given by the just-in-time, flexible adaptation to the unplanned situations. Therefore, universities must always be prepared to make the switch from offline to online and vice versa—at the same time, guaranteeing the quality of teaching processes and student satisfaction. Future trends in education reveal the role of digitalization of the educational sector in integrating innovative technologies in the educational curriculum and calls for a new pedagogical approach that is centred on learners’ self-directed learning, collaborative learning and the cognitive and social presence of students and teachers. The most important contributions of the paper reside in an in-depth analysis of student perceptions of online education processes and their perceived advantages and disadvantages related to online learning experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. These advantages were analysed against efficiency-related factors, and, among them, the “application of technologies” is considered relevant for a niche investigation of the technology acceptance model (TAM).

High School Students' Perspectives about Using Digital Technologies in Education: DigiSchools Project

“…It has been determined that student participation in the survey items is high. Because of the positive content of the survey items, their opinions about the use of digital technologies in education are positive, as other researches (Coman et al, 2020;Cramarenco et al, 2023) in the literature. Also, students' perspectives on the use of digital technologies in the classroom are analyzed by country, there are differences, especially between Romania and Portugal.…”

The rise in popularity of central bank digital currencies. A systematic review

“…SLRs are useful in assisting researchers to obtain a recent overview of scientific literature, in discovering new possible study subjects, in assessing pre-existing theories, and in generating development and knowledge advancement strategies. SLR are seen to be pertinent in social science research as crucial instruments for enhancing study and assisting with decision-making [ [39] , [40] , [41] ]. It was deemed relevant to take a further step and perform a SLR on the 747 articles extracted from Scopus and the WoS.…”

“…Following COVID-19, the payment landscape changed and a shift towards cashless transactions happened, with citizens increasingly using means of electronic payment [ 42 ]. CBDCs would take the trend one step further [ 41 , [43] , [44] , [45] ].…”

Digital learning about patients: An online survey of German medical students investigating learning strategies for family medical video consultations

“…The sudden need for social distancing led to emergency remote teaching, although its quality was often suboptimal. 14 – 16 However, many aspects of digital education persisted and proved effective even after the pandemic-related restrictions were eased, 17 – 19 presenting an opportunity for a more scientifically grounded educational system. 20 , 21 This extends to the integration of telemedicine learning objectives into medical school curricula.…”