Abstract:

The first wave of the COVID-19 affected all Spanish universities during the 2020 Spring semester, as a consequence of the severe lockdown experienced in the whole country. The University of Málaga, as well as many others, opted for an instantaneous transition from a face-to-face to a remote learning mode. While the application of the remote learning mode was initially considered a temporary solution for the first two weeks, immediately after it was established as the official learning mode for all the study programs at the University of Málaga for the rest of the academic year. Accordingly, all the courses of the postgraduate program in Actuarial Science switched to an e-learning teaching and assessment scheme.

Due to the unprecedented character of this process, we consider of great interest to know the opinions and attitudes our students in the MSc in Actuarial Science towards the experienced changes, once the semester had finished. By means of a survey, we attempt to assess the perceptions of our students about some relevant features of the remote system adopted, like their preferences between face-to-face and remote learning, satisfaction with on-line classes, tutoring and assessment, or workload.

The main results indicate that our students show a preference for traditional teaching and learning systems. However, the satisfaction levels with the on-line classes received have been very positive, as well as those corresponding to on-line tutoring and assessment. On the negative side, it has been detected that the remote learning mode adopted was not generally perceived as more straightforward than the traditional system and also that the perception of the workload was higher than the expected in a face-to-face environment.

Keywords:

COVID-19, students’ perceptions, Actuarial.