Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced various changes in people’s daily lives, some of them being easily observable, others less obvious. The educational system has not been protected from the effects of the pandemic, either, and the face-to-face educational activities were suspended and switched from the classroom to the online environment. In Romania, almost 518000 students, enrolled in 90 higher education institutions, stopped all face-to-face learning activities.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the challenges students have faced during this COVID-19 pandemic, how they managed to adapt to the new context and how their learning experience has been affected.

In our attempt to answer all these research questions, we collected data from 168 students from various universities by means of a questionnaire which focuses on students' experiences. We established four research directions, as follows: online versus face-to-face experience, technical aspects, educational contents and socio-economic status. The collected data are analyzed using data mining techniques. In this regard, we first prepare the dataset by cleansing, transforming and modelling, then we analyze the obtained dataset using a variety of methods.

The results of this paper highlight how Romanian students perceived the new challenges and how they responded to a new situation. In addition, the study brings up new perspectives for collaboration, the new forms of learning, and it helps teachers, students, decision-makers, and policy-makers better understand the pandemic learning context and make proactive informed decisions.

Keywords:

COVID-19, higher education, data mining, challenges, Romania, analysis.