Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning in Greek Universities During the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Attitudes of University Students

Abstract

Undoubtedly the pandemic of COVID-19 had a great impact globally on our daily activities. Whereas to face this unprecedented situation all the educational institutions were compelled to keep the lessons conducted over the internet. Under the current circumstances this quantitative research detects, describes, and measures attitudes of 807 students of 5 Greek universities towards the distance learning process. The data that was collected by using a 5-point Likert scale reflects the strong agreement of the students that face-to-face teaching cannot be replaced by distance learning, especially when it comes to laboratory training. The consensus is also that remote learning has abased pedagogical relationships between professors and classmates and among the latter as well. Findings indicate that students come to a meeting of minds about the educational inequalities which are worsened by the lack of digital equipment and undeveloped technological infrastructure. Furthermore, this study reveals a correlation between the responses of the sample and their demographic and social characteristics, something that offers possibilities for additional research.

Communication barriers in emergency remote education

“…Our data analysis, in line with Zagkos et al (2022), indicates the lack of feedback and educational cooperation, and poor student engagement during online education, as well as the general restriction of social contact in the academic context, as major communication barriers.…”

“…Apart from the technical challenges that have developed, the negative aspects of online education are mostly related to a lack of communication and cooperation, as well as a general restriction of social contact in the academic context (Zagkos et al, 2022).…”

Distance Learning in Higher Education During Covid-19

“…As a result, educational institutions around the world developed a new technique for delivering instructional programs (Graham et al, 2020;Akhmadieva et al, 2021;Gaba et al, 2021;Insorio and Macandog, 2022;Tal et al, 2022). Distance education has been the sole choice in the majority of countries throughout this period, and these countries have sought to increase their use of distance education and make it mandatory in light of the risk of not being able to restart face-toface schooling (Falode et al, 2020;Gonçalves et al, 2020;Tugun et al, 2020;Altun et al, 2021;Valeeva and Kalimullin, 2021;Zagkos et al, 2022).…”

Promoting Voluntary Use Behavior of Learning Management Systems Among Tutors for Blended Learning in Distance Higher Education

“…The outbreak of COVID-19 disrupted the academic activities of most educational institutions (Ansong-Gyimah, 2020;Bervell et al, 2021;Bonsu et al, 2021;Zagkos et al, 2022). This was primarily due to the lockdown situation that hindered face to face interaction.…”

“…Nonetheless, during the lockdown period, mandatory use of LMS for online learning was enforced by most higher educational institutions (Alturki & Aldraiweesh, 2021;Zagkos et al, 2022). The challenge here is that, this mandatory use of technology approach, according to Rawstorne et al (2000), hinders a person's will from performing at optimum levels of usage as well as possess a favorable attitude towards the technology.…”