Digital education during the pandemic: Student experience

Abstract

The paper presents a summary of findings from the student digital experience insights survey carried out among students of bachelor, master and doctoral studies at the University of Warsaw during the Covid-19 outbreak in the winter semester 2020/21. It provides an overview of how students perceive the university digital provision as well as the digital teaching and learning at their courses during the pandemic, when the university was forced to introduce immediate online education with a very limited face-to-face component carried out at laboratory or field classes only. Students share their opinions on what digital tools were most commonly used at their courses and assess their reliability and usefulness in the education process. They also indicate the advantages and disadvantages of digital education, revealing its potentials and barriers. In fact, the pandemic emergency teaching circumstances have accelerated the process of the University digitalisation in didactic. The findings of the survey and the experience gained are valuable for identifying which elements of the digital education should be developed further and adapted to the post-pandemic reality within a “new normal”.