Abstract:

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, educational institutions all over the world have been forced to close their premises in a bid to limit the spread of the new coronavirus. Faced with the urgent need to ensure the sustainability of education, most of these academic institutions decided to replace classroom-based teaching/learning with distance education. However, this abrupt shift away from face-to-face instruction has sparked a lot of debate among educators, students and parents as to the effectiveness of distance learning in achieving quality education in these circumstances. Therefore, in an attempt to explore the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on the learning experience of students, our objective in this paper is to investigate how these students perceive the full adoption of distance learning during the pandemic. In this respect, based on the findings of the survey we conducted among Moroccan higher education students, it was revealed that despite the considerable efforts that have been made by educational authorities to create sustainable online learning environments, the students’ overall satisfaction of the imposed online learning mode is low. In fact, apart from 30.9% of the respondents who reported to be satisfied, 65% of the participants are dissatisfied with the e-learning solutions adopted during the pandemic for a variety of reasons. Thus, innovative and sustainable approaches that support learning and promote equity and access for all students are needed.

Keywords:

Education, Coronavirus, online learning, students’ learning experience.