Abstract:

The emergence of COVID-19 pandemic, and the associated risks of transmission, made academia to reason about new possibilities and strategies to keep education quality. By respecting the required isolation to limit the spread of the disease, remote classes gained strength and became a well-accepted solution, characterizing an unprecedented change in global education. Remote classes can combine synchronous and asynchronous models, in a way to be attractive and effective. In synchronous model, professors conduct lectures or activities to students in live sessions. In asynchronous model, professors pre-record the class and students can access later.

Engineering education is particularly interesting, since it requires the adequate integration of theory and practice. Online learning has advantages, such as the possibility to invite experts from distinct places, eliminating mobility costs. Time flexibility is other positive aspect of remote learning, since students can see pre-recorded classes multiple times and in a convenient time to them. Students’ engagement is a critical issue in remote classes, so professors have to find ways to involve students, by keeping their interest and enthusiasm in learning. Lockdown and social distance can affect negatively online learning, for instance, by reducing feelings of belonging and by increasing psychological stress, which can in turn damage learning.

In this paper, we investigate how Engineering students perceive their remote classes during the pandemic. We design a questionnaire to understand if students are satisfied with remote classes, considering aspects as learning effectiveness, technical challenges, time flexibility, self-organization, and teamwork. We evaluate if students miss class routine, and if they interact with peers and professors in a desired way. Other assessed aspects include feelings regarding isolation, stress, motivation, engagement, and screen time. We submitted the questionnaire to engineering students of an Engineering institute.

We found that in general students are satisfied with the remote classes, since they recognized the maintenance of learning effectiveness and existence of technical challenges. Time flexibility was the better-evaluated aspect in online learning. The majority of students recognized that remote classes demand more self-organization, as they need to manage their time to watch videos of lectures and perform the activities. Almost half of students believes that teamwork is more challenging in an online environment. Students really faced problems with limited networking, and they desire to have opportunity to interact more with other students and professors, as well as to know their professors in fact.

A significant number of students reported to feel isolated and stressed with remote classes during pandemic. Students confirmed that online classes affected negatively their motivation and engagement. There were complains about the high number of hours spent in front of computer screens. Almost 90% of students desired to have face-to-face classes again, but they recognized the importance to keep the advantages already acquired with online classes. We argue that there is an interesting possibility to combine online and face-to-face classes, in order to maximize the positive aspects of both approaches. Educators have then the opportunity to create and validate hybrid courses, aiming to innovate classes and to improve learning outcomes.

Keywords:

Remote classes, Feedback, Engineering education, COVID-19 pandemic.