Abstract:

For many years teaching took place in a classrooms that were more or less equipped with standard teaching aids. In 2020, due to the impact of the pandemic, teaching is directed towards other, new forms of teaching.

In this paper, we show how students perceive use of technology during “new normal” education. Although we have extensive experience in using “virtual labs” as a way to train our students remotely also in the past, from the year 2020 we have the opportunity to apply it to all students and see how they react to different methods of teaching in virtual (online) environment.

We have prepared the questionnaire for the bachelor and master students of Zagreb University of Applied Sciences, with the goal to find the answers to question: „What is the efficiency of the new methods used in the “new normal” higher education classroom?“. Questionnaire was delivered using online platform Moodle, and we received 137 filled questionnaires. Students were subjected to classical educational methods in previous years of education and now there were subject of „new way“ of teaching in virtual environment.

In the introduction of the questionnaire, we defined the following terms: “direct lecture” vs. ”online lecture”, “synchronous lecture” vs. “asynchronous lecture” and “classical lecturing” vs. “flipped classroom”, to ensure that the students understand the meaning of the terms used.

The questionnaire consists of five parts. In the first part, we asked the students to answer clarification questions to test their understanding of the terms mentioned above. Interestingly, some students stated they did not understand the term “classical lecturing” even when the definition is provided.
In second part, we investigated what previous experience the students have with different methods of teaching. We asked if they participated in online or direct lecture and what type of lecturing it was (classical or flipped classroom), and we asked them if during the online lecturing they had synchronous or asynchronous lecturing. Same number of students were subjected to both classical lecturing and flipped classroom during online type of lecturing, and majority of them were having synchronous lecturing in the same time.

Third part of the questionnaire aimed to investigate students’ preferences by using Likert scale. The results indicate that two thirds of the students prefer synchronous teaching, which suggests that students prefer real time interaction, be it online or direct.

In fourth part, we asked them to choose the combination of method, way and place they find the most appealing and the most successful in achieving the learning outcomes as well as the worst in the same goal. Surprisingly, the results indicate that one quarter of the students in the sample prefer synchronous classical lecturing, even though we consider them to be an Z generation.

The last part of the questionnaire was focused on the technology that students use during the “new normal” way of learning and their preferences for devices for online lectures. The majority of students use computer and smartphone as their preferred devices, and WIFI for their connection.

This work provides a detailed analysis of different classroom variations and compares the student satisfaction and preferences in the “new normal” situation. This paper provides important insight and suggestions for the design of online lectures and provides support for building evidence-based policy for the online education.

Keywords:

Higher education, flipped classroom, synchronous lecture, asynchronous lecture, student motivation, remote learning, teaching technology, pedagogy.