Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic caused most higher education institutions to drastically change their teaching approaches, hurriedly introducing online or hybrid methodologies and platforms, and needing to continuously adapt to a volatile situation of health emergency. Our research aims to compare students’ satisfaction with their various learning experiences, before and after the pandemic, at a private Spanish university specialized in business and marketing degrees. We based our research on theoretical frameworks assessing satisfaction in education, including items about institutional pride, loyalty and brand attitude, while personal non-academic factors were also considered adapting life satisfaction scales and adding questions about pandemic impacts.

We distributed an online satisfaction survey to undergraduate students at three of our campus, with all questions based on a 7-point Likert scale. The survey was divided in three sections, each one considering a different time period and learning environment experienced before and after the pandemic. The first period (P1) referred to face to face learning as occurring before March 2020; the second period (P2) to the remote online teaching experienced at the beginning of the pandemic (March to August 2020); and the last period (P3) to the hybrid learning system set from September 2020 (until May 2021, when the survey was launched). The hybrid system was based on split classes where each half-class attended face to face lectures in alternate weeks, while the other half could synchronously follow the lessons online from home. Each section of the survey presented two identical blocks of questions for students to assess their satisfaction with their academic lives (questions about learning processes, satisfaction with their institution and with their student life) and with their personal lives (questions about goal achievement). P2 and P3 included a third block of questions about the personal impacts of COVID-19 (questions about socioeconomical and emotional factors). Finally, each section ended with an overall satisfaction question with the aim to apply regression analyses and consider the weight of the different factors that could be influencing student satisfaction.

Preliminary descriptive statistics show that 175 students completed the survey (191 respondents), 50.8% male and 49.2% female. 62.3% were studying a degree in marketing and 37.7% a business or communications related degree. Regarding satisfaction with academic life, average preliminary descriptive analyses show the following results: 5.46±0.36, 4.14±0.64 and 4.26±0.51, for P1, P2 and P3 respectively. Similarly, preliminary results for satisfaction with personal life were as follows: 5.44±0.26, 3.67±0.11 and 4.73±0.16, for P1, P2 and P3 respectively. Results about the personal impacts of COVID-19 were: 4.13±0.64 and 4.31±0.50, for P2 and P3 respectively. Finally, overall satisfaction preliminary data shows results of 5.65 points for P1 (face to face learning), 3.91 for P2 (online) and 3.98 for P3 (hybrid). Further statistical analyses are needed to assess these data, but preliminary descriptive analyses seem to indicate a serious drop in student satisfaction that has not recovered after more than a year from the start of the pandemic. That drop could be linked to COVID-19 impacts, but also to students’ perception about their academic lives, while personal life satisfaction seems to be the fastest recovering factor.

Keywords:

Student satisfaction, learning environments, online, hybrid, COVID.