Abstract:

Before the wide spread of the coronavirus, teaching at the University of Tartu was based on face-to-face lessons. Due to the restrictions established in the spring of 2020, all studies transitioned online, resulting in a need for new tools and methods. At first, everybody had to adapt to the sudden change in the situation. A year later, in the spring semester of 2021, distance teaching was applied again, but this time the lecturers could use their experience gained during the emergency situation and make some changes.

The aim of the research is to find out how teaching, tools used, and academic performance changed because of distance learning during the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 academic years in comparison to 2018-2019. To achieve that goal, four mandatory courses in the curriculum of Computer Science, “Object-oriented programming”, “Databases”, “Data security”, and ”Discrete mathematics I”, were analysed. Every selected course has around 200 participants every year. Data included anonymous exam results of three years and information about the course organisation from the interviews with the lecturers in charge.

Naturally, everything changed as the most common teaching method used in distance learning was the viewing of lecture recordings, which was implemented in every course covered in the study. This added flexibility to the learning process for both teachers and students, who could learn regardless of location and time. The Panopto software, which allows recording lectures and uploading them to the same environment, was most commonly used to upload lecture recordings. The Zoom environment was often used to conduct synchronous practical sessions or online lectures.

The results of the research showed that only in the “Databases” course there were no statistically significant differences in the learning results between different years. The students’ results in two courses, “Object-oriented programming” and “Data security”, increased while performance decreased in the "Discrete mathematics" course during the years of distance learning in comparison to the year of face-to-face lessons. Better learning results appeared in the courses that partially or completely suspended practical sessions and increased the proportion of independent work and responsibility during distance learning. This interesting result shows that conducting practical sessions does not guarantee active participation and does not necessarily lead to better learning results.

Based on the research results, lecturers can project the success of distance learning and collect recommendations for more successful distance learning in the future.

Keywords:

Distance learning, changes in teaching, academic performance, teaching tools, computer science education.