University students’ perceptions of computer-mediated learning during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction. The ongoing pandemic has made computer-mediated learning in higher education ubiquitous, often posing organizational, methodological, psychological and didactic challenges to teachers and students. The current research investigates perceptions of computer-mediated and on-campus learning during the pandemic among students in various years of study. Materials and Methods. The research was conducted at Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia in February 2021. The participants were 81 students in all years of study enrolled on psychology degree programs which were originally "on-campus" programs. The research was conducted by means of a two-part questionnaire which was administered using Google Docs. In the first part, participants were asked to rate, based on their personal experience, computer-mediated and on-campus learning in terms of effectiveness, resource intensity and consideration of the student's individual differences using a 5-point Likert scale. They were also asked to indicate their preferred mode of education. In the second part, participants were asked to rate their personal experience with computer-mediated learning based on a number of criteria. These criteria were content-related (quality of theoretical and practical training), social (feeling as part of the department, the university, the psychological community; degree of social inclusion/isolation; access to aid from the teachers) and organizational (comfort with the organization of the learning process, ability to self-organize). Results. The results showed that students in different years of study are guided by different criteria of computermediated learning effectiveness. Specifically, students in the 3 rd and 4 th years of study significantly more often rate computer-mediated learning (compared to on-campus learning) as more effective (p < 0.01) and providing a better quality of theoretical training. In contrast, students in the 1 st and 2 nd years of study significantly more often think that it is only on-campus learning that can ensure a more high-quality theoretical training (p < 0.01). Senior students' assessment of their learning effectiveness correlates with the availability of up-to-date information about events at the university, the access to aid from the teachers, and the consistency of the knowledge gained (p < 0.05). Conclusion. These results can be used to organize psychological and pedagogical support of the educational process in order to prevent the socio-psychological maladaptation of students in various years of study in the course of computer-mediated learning.