Abstract:

The transition from high school to university brings many changes in the lives of 1st year students. They meet new colleagues, some of them move to other cities relatively far from their families and must adapt also to different type of schedules, teaching methods, teacher personalities and discipline specificities. Besides all these changes, the COVID-19 pandemic together with all restrictions imposed by it has been another challenge for students and higher education professionals alike. Many universities chose hybrid educational systems to facilitate the integration of new students with university life. In Romania such an educational system has been applied with caution, only a few higher education organisations adopted it with the aim to create an environment close to the situation before the pandemic from accommodation facilities, canteen services and teaching process. Due to the fact that the hybrid system could become a possible educational strategy even after the pandemic for the digitalisation of several university services and educational platforms, the purpose of the present study is to uncover the motivation incentives for engagement both face to face and online together with first year students expectations. A Grounded theory approach has been used to analyse more than 100 in-depth interviews with Romanian students enrolled in the first year in a technical university. The data has been translated into memos and after an open coding phase, initial codes have been raised at a conceptual preliminary category level. After a selective coding, the relationships between the final categories have been explored and the theoretical model of students’ motivation in a hybrid educational system has been developed.

Keywords:

COVID-19, Grounded Theory, hybrid education system, students’ expectations, student motivation incentives, online education.