ABSTRACT
We present a long-term study of how university students experienced teaching/learning activities throughout the Covid-19 pandemic in Denmark1. We collected data through questionnaires from N=365 students enrolled in the "Introduction to Database Systems"course during four consecutive semesters (Spring 2020 to Fall 2021). The two years span the entire period of the pandemic's interruption of normal on-site teaching, until restrictions were completely lifted in Denmark. The study investigates student preferences for online versus onsite teaching, and identifies the advantages of both, as well as changes in preferences throughout the pandemic. Quantitatively, the results demonstrate a preference for on-site over online teaching which was more pronounced for exercise classes than for lectures. Qualitatively, the study identifies several advantages of both online and on-site teaching;including a more engaging learning environment and better teacher-student interaction for on-site lectures, and flexibility and self-paced learning for online teaching. The primary changes identified were an increased sense of being able to focus online and a decrease in ease of asking questions online towards the later stages of the pandemic. Finally, we highlight the opportunity for universities to provide hybrid models of teaching, in order to care for diverse student preferences and needs. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
We are used to considering human agency as the most important aspect of the educational process. Technologies are seen as inert matter, subordinated to human intention and design, as if they did not have a role in the eclectic combination of teaching, learning, and knowing about the world. Their agency is invisible until a breakdown occurs, a material moment which shows their doing. In this paper, we make digital action visible by focusing on emergency remote teaching in higher education during the Covid-19 pandemic breakdown. Data were collected/co-created in a graduate course in Education in the first three months of lockdown in Brazil. Through a queer assemblage of teaching-researching-writing, we present a sociomaterial analysis that shows multiple entanglements of bodies, material things, and pedagogic time-spaces. In this exercise, social inequality issues, power structures and ethical problems come to the surface, while students struggle for quality participation in the digitised classes.