Abstract
COVID-19 pandemic has not only impacted human life but also impacted quality of online education, right after the shift from traditional face-to-face to e-learning. This study was conducted to investigate the perception of this type of learning amongst UPB students, being focused around the following areas: number of students taking online courses and the geographic areas served, quality standards for online learning and supportive services, planning and leadership in online learning.This study utilized quantitative methods and was conducted by distributing an online questionnaire to UPB's students. A total of 231 valid unduplicated responses were used to investigate the perceptions of online course-management, underlying factors that contribute to those perceptions (positive or negative), reconsidering the overall online learning activities initiated by university teachers.
The following independent variables were investigated in this survey, based on students own online learning experiences, in contrast to traditional learning: interactivity, teacher facilitation, structure, learning style and self-motivation.
The findings of this research revealed that electronic learning, the core method of teaching the curriculum due to the wide worldwide spread the COVID-19 pandemic, requires an improvement of online instructional practices, in terms of a more interactive active approach, a well-thought-out strategy, a conceptual framework of online education combining knowledge from different domain: Pedagogy, Didactic, Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI), IT and Psychology - as potential determinants of a successful online learning. The observations captured in this report reflect the measure of satisfaction of UPB's students regarding the educational services offer of the learning program, adapted to the online environment, taking into account the specificities of this organization and communication environment. |
Keywords
e-learning, course-management, interactivity, learning styles, online instructional practices |