Proceedings of the 7th International Academic Conference on Teaching, Learning and Education, 2024
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Students’ Challenges and Experiences with Digital Teaching and Learning During COVID-19 Pandemic
Ana Uka
ABSTRACT:
COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly forced universities to implement digital teaching and learning toward students during Spring 2020. Many of the higher education institutions were unprepared to foster such forms of teaching and learning thus exposing both teachers and students toward many challenges with digital education. The aim of this study was to investigate students’ experiences and challenges with online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, this work also aimed at exploring gender differences on these challenges with digital teaching and learning among university students. The results showed that students (N = 451) have experienced challenges at a moderate level where they did not encounter too many technical issues or distractors during their online learning. However, the majority of the respondents around 60% reported that they did not have a very good experience with digital teaching and learning where they encountered difficulties above the average level especially with course instructors not staying in regular contact with the students (N = 226, 50.1%) and not being supported by the course instructors (N = 202, 44.8%). The results also revealed significant gender differences only on student’s experiences with digital teaching and learning (p = .037) where female students experienced more challenges than male counterparts.
keywords: higher education; difficulties, online learning; lockdown