A Comprehensive Overview of Education during Three COVID-19 Pandemic Periods: Impact on Engineering Students in Sri Lanka

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Article examines the impact of COVID19 on undergraduate engineering students in Sri Lanka from 6 Universities using an online Google Form survey.

English grammar check needed throughout 

The article provides simple practical recommendations for improving education in Sri Lanka post COVID.

Check spelling, e.g. ‘sever’ should be severe P1 line33.

The ‘specific objectives of the study’ should be rewritten as three research questions, and then these three questions used as sub headings in the discussion and conclusions reporting how the results answered these three questions.

The methodology section should specify how the 6 universities were contacted for ethics permission and what specific ethics application was followed - which university ethics committee/s approved the research?. A copy of the survey questions should be included as an appendix to the article.

Table 1 may be better represented as a Map for non Sri-Lankan readers.

Table 6 may be clear represented as a graph and using the category percentages as the focus.

Table 8 is also confusing in its current form.

Overall a useful discussion of some the key issues effecting students during COVID19.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review this article. The article describes a number of aspects resulting from distance learning during the Covid pandemic.

There is already a statement of statistical significance in the abstract itself. As a consequence, the reader may prove that the quantitative descriptive analysis will also be based on statistical analysis, a well-defined need to use statistical tests and drawing conclusions based on statistically significant results.

The introduction describes the pandemic situation in the world, remote learning in the pandemic era, and both situations on Sir Lanka. Then the authors go to three subsections, 1.2 of which are missing.

Lines 61-65 are completely unnecessary because the introduction does not start with this paragraph and the content itself flows smoothly into the subsections.

It seems incorrect that one student answers the questions about the three periods of the pandemic, after these periods, and the authors consider these answers without dependence.

Line 172-174. On the basis of what other studies can it be concluded that this group of respondents is sufficient?

Survey comments. How many questions were there exactly? Was every question repeated for each period of the pandemic? Number of answers (complete / incomplete). Were the questions open or closed? Characteristics of respondents (except the province and family finances).

Lines 231-232 and 362, 406 were chosen arbitrarily chi-square test without any description of the test, explanation of why it was chosen, checking if the data in each test meets e.g. Cochran's condition etc.

Subchapter 3.2 then 3.1.1

I believe it was wrong to view a pandemic through the prism of time periods. It would be better and more accurate to look at the situation as a whole on Sir Lank. With such a large amount of information obtained, I would focus more on proving all the conclusions that have been taken into account and on better use of statistical analyzes for nominal data obtained from surveys.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This is a relevant and contemporary research study that will add to and compliment the array of global research related to the COVID-19 pandemic.  It will offer a comparative perspective with differing nations, both in the global 'South' and 'North', especially highlighting significant differences linked to the socio-economic disparity that exists.

However, there is an array of issues that affect the presenting of the interesting research findings. A thorough proof-read is needed to check the following:

• grammatical errors occur throughout.
• punctuation errors occur throughout.
• sometimes discussion points are repeated, limited or over mentioned. 
• some aspects of the data findings discussions need to be reviewed in how they are presented as some are short statements with no discussion.
• probably a consolidation of of the findings discussions would support a clarity of argument. Maybe draw upon the notion of 'less is more' in the approach to the writing?
• check the sub-section labelling (incorrect numbering)

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Revision1 Review

The authors have engaged with the review feedback and improved the article. The structure and Flow of the article is improved and the research questions and results have been more clearly identified and implications discussed.

The article provides a useful discussion of some the key issues effecting students during COVID19.

Reviewer 2 Report

Authors have succesfully revised the paper and it can now be published

Reviewer 3 Report

Amendments have been made.