ABSTRACT
In March 2020, all Swedish university education went online practically overnight due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This study focuses on how university students experienced emergency remote teaching in the autumn of 2020. This article provides a thematic meta-analysis of 53 student group reports based on a total of 247 interviews with third-year university students. The findings suggest three themes of particular interest regarding what areas the students themselves find important or challenging: awareness of what it means to be a student, technology reframing communication, and the need for explicit guidance. The findings are discussed in relation to norms, appropriation, and social affordances, as important factors to consider in emergency remote teaching. [or as] blended or hybrid courses and that will return to that format once the crisis or emergency has abated” (Hodges et al., 2020, p. 7). The primary objective "is not to re-create a robust educational ecosystem, but rather to provide temporary access to instruction and instructional support in a manner that is quick to set up and is reliably available during an emergency or crisis” (Hodges et al., 2020, p. 7). One important characteristic of ERT is that it is a short-term solution, with the ambition of going back to the format used before ERT. Therefore, ERT's "intent is to create temporary access to instruction and instructional support that is easily implemented and available during [a] crisis” (Rivera et al, 2021, p. 213). Although ERT is a short-term solution without any explicit pedagogical or didactical ambitions, ERT may include qualities that the unique students appre-ciate. In this article, we use ERT as a descriptive framing of the educational situation in the autumn of 2020. Scope and research question Although there is a growing body of primarily quantitative studies on ERT, there is still a limited number of qualitative studies on students' experiences of ERT during the COVID-19 pandemic. An in-depth understanding of students' experiences is essential in order to provide a nuanced picture of the qualities and challenges associated with ERT. The research question for this study is thus: How do university students experience emergency remote teaching (ERT)? The scope of this study is a qualitative analysis of Swedish university students' responses to interview questions regarding their experiences of ERT. The empirical data give a unique insight into how 247 third-year university students experienced ERT during the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022 Patrik Hernwall, Annika Käck & Johan Stymne.