Abstract:

Introduction / Background:
When Covid-19 struck, teachers and students the world over were thrown overnight into virtual teaching and learning spaces. Some colleges and universities had a good online digital presence to build on, while others had to adapt quickly. A period of intense experimentation followed. During this time, educational institutes that utilized digital learning platforms, and that encouraged the use of innovative active learning pedagogies (such as flipped learning and active blended learning) arguably had an advantage. Their students and professors were used to moving lectures, readings and other learning materials to the online environment. However, they also had a problem on their hands. In both Flipped Learning (FL) and Active Blended Learning (ABL) the classroom experience is crucial, as highly interactive face to face contact is traditionally considered the basis of the whole experience (Palmer et al., 2017).

Pressing questions about which strategies and activities could best survive this abrupt transfer to the virtual world, and to what extent the pedagogies could successfully be applied to a context they were not designed for remained perforce unanswered. How can teachers organise and manage active learning strategies that work well in both online and in class contexts, and that will keep at home and in class students motivated and engaged is challenging enough even without the looming dread of a pandemic. The negative impact on affective state of the pandemic has been well documented (Zacher and Rudolph, 2020), however the role of this negative emotional impact on the efficacy of active pedagogies has not yet been empirically examined.

Study:
The research that will be presented is part of a larger project which explores the effectiveness of using various active learning pedagogies with undergraduate (UG) students in hybrid classrooms at an International Business School during and after the pandemic.

The paper will focus on the role played by the extended lockdown preventing ABL and FL pedagogies from being deployed in person, at the start of the pandemic as well as in the final throes of lockdown.
The paper will explore the emotional impact of repeated lockdowns and removal of face-to-face contact with educators on students attainment, satisfaction, and subjective wellbeing. The role of emerging technologies in mediating or exacerbating the effects of lockdown will also be explored. This paper will do this by looking at the experiences of and outcomes achieved by approximately 200 UG business students in courses delivered entirely online, using ABL and FL pedagogies, approximately one year apart. Qualitative and quantitative data will be presented from student course evaluations, survey data, interviews, and grade attainment.

Results:
The results and discussion will compare several areas of the student experience between early 2020 and 2021. We will consider student satisfaction with active learning pedagogies and technologies, as measured by course evaluations and interview data. We will also examine student attainment across these separate time periods through the analysis of grading data.

Conclusion:
The findings from this research will yield recommendations and findings that should be useful to educational institutions looking to use active learning techniques in face to face, online and hybrid classrooms in the post pandemic world.

Keywords:

Active learning, pandemic, affect, emotion, student satisfaction, technology.