Teaching and Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Topic Modeling Study

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused significant disruption to teaching and learning activities at all levels. Faculty, students, institutions, and parents have had to rapidly adapt and adopt measures to make the best use of available resources, tools and teaching strategies. While much of the online teaching pedagogies have been theoretically and practically explored to a limited extent, the scale at which these were deployed was unprecedented. This has led a large number of researchers to share challenges, solutions and knowledge gleaned during this period. The main aim of this work was to thematically model the literature related to teaching and learning during, and about, COVID-19. Abstracts and metadata of literature were extracted from Scopus, and topic modeling was used to identify the key research themes. The research encompassed diverse scientific disciplines, including social sciences, computer science, and life sciences, as well as learnings in support systems, including libraries, information technology, and mental health. The following six key themes were identified: (i) the impact of COVID-19 on higher education institutions, and challenges faced by these institutions; (ii) the use of various tools and teaching strategies employed by these institutions; (iii) the teaching and learning experience of schools and school teachers; (iv) the impact of COVID-19 on the training of healthcare workers; (v) the learnings about COVID-19, and treatment strategies from patients; and (vi) the mental health of students as a result of COVID-19 and e-learning. Regardless of the key themes, what stood out was the inequities in education as a result of the digital divide. This has had a huge impact not only in middle- and low-income nations, but also in several parts of the developed world. Several important lessons have been learned, which, no doubt, will be actively incorporated into teaching and learning practices and teacher training. Nonetheless, the full effect of these unprecedented educational adaptions on basic education, expert training, and mental health of all stakeholders is yet to be fully fathomed.

Emergency Remote Learning in Higher Education in Cyprus during COVID-19 Lockdown: A Zoom-Out View of Challenges and Opportunities for Quality Online Learning

“…We found that students majoring in more "theoretical" subjects such as humanities, education and law felt much more satisfied with their ERL experience than students majoring in practical fields such as engineering and engineering trades, physical sciences and arts. This is not surprising since, as already pointed out, while theoretical material could potentially be delivered effectively using virtual sessions, offering laboratory sessions or workshops remotely is quite challenging, since practical sessions are hands-on by definition [45,89]. Several other researchers [10,51,[90][91][92] also found that the replacement of conventional classes with ERL was often problematic for courses where laboratory presence is required (e.g., engineering, medicine, instrumental music, drawing, electronics).…”

Digital University Teaching and Learning in Management—The Gini from the COVID-19 Bottle and Its Empirical Representations in Germany

“…This will be the core challenge for university teaching in the next decade and this paper provided some empirical hints as well as in-depth thoughts regarding that issue from Germany. This has to be compared and complemented with experiences from other countries [54,55,[62][63][64][65][66] as well as other education areas [67]. In total, university lecturers are challenged globally to make the most out of the harsh and limiting circumstances experienced in the 2020/2021 timeframe due to COVID-19.…”

Perceptions of Pharmacy Students on the E-Learning Strategies Adopted during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

“…Among the possible improvements and optimizations of e-learning strategies are the adoption of proactive learning strategies, with more interactions with teachers and colleagues or better models for providing practical classes, an appropriate internet connectivity, clear instructions to carry out assessments, or a fair number of assessments [30]. Additionally, a diversified offer of e-learning options may be beneficial, such as lectures, tutorials, workshops, conferences, journal clubs, online sessions, or combinations of these [50,51].…”

“…Questionnaires seem to be an appropriate and suitable tool to evaluate pharmacy students' perceptions of e-learning. Questionnaires/surveys were developed to evaluate the attitudes of pharmacy students based on different types of questions/topics, such as: "what do think about your attitude toward e-learning", "I would prefer to have online learning to become the new normal", "I feel comfortable to actively communicate with my classmates and instructors online", "I feel that taking courses online will help me to remember/master them better", "I prefer in-class approach as it provides a lot of interaction with my instructors and students" or "Distance learning has increased my collaborative work with my colleagues, whether in the dormitory or remotely" [7,33,50,51]. The questionnaires/questions were heterogeneously developed.…”