Through a national, in-depth survey of students enrolled in higher education institutions in Cyprus, the current study explored students’ prior technology background and level of preparedness for online learning and their perceptions, motivations and experiences related to emergency remote learning (ERL) during the period that followed the first lockdown in March 2020. In the Discussion section, we summarize and interpret our key findings and link them to the relevant international literature.
The Discussion is presented in three subsections.
4.1. Challenges in the Transition to ERL
Despite the swift switch of Cypriot higher education institutions to the virtual space and the immense efforts of instructors to cope and adapt to the new situation, the forced transition entailed several challenges for many of the students. While most of the students in our study indicated that they faced few or no difficulties at all in their transition to ERL, around one-fourth stated either that they encountered several difficulties or that they found it very difficult to adapt to remote learning.
The key challenges reported by the students in their transition to ERL replicate issues identified in many other studies conducted internationally during the early stages of the pandemic and can be summarized in the following points:
Technology access and accessibility issues: In accord with many other studies, our research revealed the exacerbation of differences between privileged and underprivileged students caused by the pandemic. Thirty-one (
n = 31; 3%) of the participants stated that they faced accessibility issues in their courses due to disabilities and/or other educational needs. Other studies [
44,
45,
73] also found that students with special needs or disabilities were not adequately supported for effective e-learning. Even in educational contexts where inclusion is imperative and digital inclusion is embraced, the needs of students with additional support needs were difficult to meet remotely [
73,
74,
75]. Like many other researchers [
44,
46,
47,
48,
73], we also documented unequal access to digital resources. Despite the big majority of Cypriot higher education students being equipped with digital devices at home, there were still many participants with limited availability of hardware devices within their household. Around one-tenth of the respondents indicated a lack of reliable access to a PC (e.g., had to share a PC with other members of their family) and/or a computer without a camera and/or microphone, while a small number reported a lack of reliable access to any technology during the first lockdown. Although no information concerning students’ socio-economic background was collected in the current study, limited access to hardware devices has been identified in the international literature as a barrier to effective remote studying in low- and middle-income households during the pandemic [
44], and so has been the lack of a dedicated study space [
18,
44,
45,
47,
49,
50], which was also an issue for several of the students in our study. Specifically, around eight percent of the respondents (
n = 86) stated that they did not have a dedicated study area at all and that they had to move from place to place around the house to be able to study.
Speed/quality of the broadband internet connection: In a very large number of studies conducted worldwide [
18,
19,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25,
26,
27,
28,
29,
30], a lack of satisfactory internet connectivity emerged as one of the biggest challenges for students. Cyprus is no exception. While almost all of our study participants had internet access at home, two-thirds reported having encountered at least some technical issues related to internet speed and stability during the ERL period, while one-third considered their limited access to a reliable internet connection as a major challenge they faced during ERL. Students reported sometimes facing difficulties joining their online classes due to weak network connection and/or interruptions and taking a long time to download or view the learning material. Like many other studies conducted in different countries/continents during the pandemic [
9,
31,
44,
74,
76,
77,
78,
79], we also found that network connectivity and speed/quality of the connection were more problematic when other members of their family were also using the internet at the same time.
Increased workload/work-life balance: As the international literature indicates, the shift to remote learning was demanding for higher education students in terms of time management, leading the majority of learners in many studies to report heavier workloads than before on-site classes were canceled [
21,
51,
63], something which often created fatigue and a sense of overwhelmedness [
10]. In our study too, many students were challenged by the increased workload, with one-third reporting excessive workload as an issue during ERL. A sizeable proportion also reported always or often facing difficulties due to having to simultaneously manage their studies’ workload with their family needs and/or their work duties. Given that there was a high representation of female higher education students in the study sample, this may explain why during the lockdown it became very difficult, especially for students working and/or with family responsibilities to balance activities between personal life, work and school [
11,
78]. While distance education allows great flexibility in time and location, this flexibility is a double-edged sword that could blur the boundaries between academic and personal life [
50].
Lack of digital skills/unpreparedness for at-distance learning: Slightly less than half of the students responding to our survey reported not being adequately prepared at the start of the pandemic for the transition to virtual instruction. Around one-fourth indicated their discomfort or lack of familiarity with the required technologies or tools as a major challenge during the transition to ERL. While the vast majority found the platform employed in their online courses to be very easy or easy to use, a considerable number of students (
n = 123; 11.7%) reported having encountered some issues that took them time to resolve. Several other studies taking place during or right after the first lockdown also showed that while higher education students tended to have high levels of digital literacy and confidence in the use of online tools [
79], there were still considerable proportions of students who experienced difficulties in online learning activities due to inadequate digital skills and/or low preparedness level for distance education [
28,
45,
51,
52,
53].
Limited teacher–student and student–student interaction: Students’ difficulties in communicating with their instructors and peers and in building relationships online due to a lack of face-to-face contact was one of the main challenges of ERL reported in the international literature [
11,
18,
24,
50,
80,
81,
82]. In Cyprus also, almost half of the study participants highlighted that they found online learning challenging because they could not ask their instructor as many questions or have a discussion with them as they would in face-to-face classes. Their limited communication/interaction with their fellow students was also a serious challenge like it was for students in other countries.
Limited engagement, participation and motivation: While more than 90 percent of our study’s respondents indicated that they always or often attended the lessons offered remotely due to COVID-19, half stated that they found ERL challenging due to missing the social aspects of face-to-face learning and specifically due to not being able to see their classmates and/or participate in extracurricular activities. During online sessions, they were less motivated to participate in the lesson than in the face-to-face classroom due to the lack of personal contact and the limited interaction with fellow students and instructors. Higher education students’ limited engagement, participation and motivation due to inadequate social connectedness and interactivity in their online learning are indeed a prevalent theme emerging in the international literature on ERL during the pandemic [
11,
19,
50,
59,
60,
61]. Students across continents reported insufficient levels of engagement in the virtual classroom due to the limited real-time interaction with their peers and instructors and the sense of social isolation that this caused [
11,
12,
13,
14,
15]. In line with other studies [
9,
10,
16,
17], several of our study participants stated that their feeling of social isolation was further heightened by the fact that students did not turn on their video cameras during online classes since they were not required to do so. As pointed out in the literature, the fact that students could not see each other even virtually, further limited student–student and student–teacher interactions in the virtual classroom [
19], thus contributing to a loss of teacher and student social presence in online learning [
34]. As noted by [
46], “the literal invisibility of students within the virtual classroom when they turn off their cameras” (p. 148) diminishes student participation and engagement. Class interactions during ERL tended to be unilateral [
33], with student–student interactions being rather limited [
48]. Also, similarly to students in other countries, our study respondents reported difficulties in maintaining their self-discipline, concentration issues and difficulties in paying attention to online lessons due to boredom and/or distractions in their home environments [
11,
31,
32,
33,
34]. The fatigue induced by prolonged staring at the computer screen also made it difficult for them to stay focused in the online environment [
9,
18,
31,
50,
83]. In accord with most of the students across the world [
11,
84,
85], students attending higher education in Cyprus also expressed a preference for face-to-face instruction. Two-thirds of the participants agreed that their preference for attending courses with physical presence made it difficult to switch to emergency remote learning.
Lack of hands-on and practical training: Our study respondents reported encountering more difficulties concerning the organization and attendance of online laboratory sessions, practicums and group work. Recounting the lack of hands-on and practical training as an influential barrier is a common finding of several studies conducted during ERL. As these studies stress, unlike theoretical content which is easier to teach online, teaching practical knowledge and skills in online environments is more challenging [
24,
86,
87]. Students tend to feel less enthusiastic about learning activities such as practical work and projects delivered online, since these require more interaction among students as well as with the instructor [
54]. In their systematic review of international literature that examined the ways in which the transition from face-to-face education to online distance education impacted academia and students, [
50] identified several research papers that concluded that knowledge gained from simulations or demonstration videos alone cannot act as a complete substitute of practical training, particularly in fields that require hands-on training in laboratories or operation rooms.
Instructors’ lack of familiarity with online learning: Instructors’ discomfort or lack of familiarity with online technological tools and e-learning pedagogy was considered to be a serious challenge for a sizeable proportion of learners in our study, as it did in many other studies investigating students’ experiences with ERL [
9,
10,
11,
50,
54,
55,
56,
57,
58]. As stressed in the literature, the sudden and forced nature of the transition to ERL resulted in many educators being ill-equipped for the pedagogical and technical challenges ahead of them. The need to adapt courses originally designed for face-to-face instruction to online delivery within a very narrow window of time and the limited prior experience with at-distance education forced many instructors to transform their in-class lessons into online synchronous and/or asynchronous lessons without adaptation of content, materials and instructional methods and formats in ways that fit the virtual space [
44]. Our study participants mentioned various instructor-related pedagogical/practical issues (e.g., educational material not being properly organized, online activities being challenging, difficulties in understanding what the instructor was asking them to do during online sessions or for homework). Time constraints and limited prior exposure to e-learning tools and pedagogy prevented most instructors from delivering well-designed online courses promoting social presence, active student engagement, student motivation and collaboration [
19,
27,
54,
88].
Our study identified marked differences in how different students experienced the transition to ERL and some factors that impacted their experiences and their degree of satisfaction with ERL:
Field of study: Academic discipline emerged as a factor impacting students’ level of satisfaction with their ERL experience. We found that students majoring in more “theoretical” subjects such as humanities, education and law felt much more satisfied with their ERL experience than students majoring in practical fields such as engineering and engineering trades, physical sciences and arts. This is not surprising since, as already pointed out, while theoretical material could potentially be delivered effectively using virtual sessions, offering laboratory sessions or workshops remotely is quite challenging, since practical sessions are hands-on by definition [
45,
89]. Several other researchers [
10,
51,
90,
91,
92] also found that the replacement of conventional classes with ERL was often problematic for courses where laboratory presence is required (e.g., engineering, medicine, instrumental music, drawing, electronics).
Students’ technologybackground and self-rated preparedness for ERL: As it has also been described in other studies conducted during the pandemic [
27,
45,
54,
93,
94], how easily students adapted to emergency remote learning varied based on their technology background (digital literacy, prior experience with online learning, self-rated preparedness for distance education). Students who reported having attended distance learning programs in the past, and those that rated their technology expertise at the advanced or expert level, felt more prepared for emergency remote learning than the rest of the students. These students were better equipped to adapt to the virtual learning environment. They found it easier to use the online learning platform and to participate during the synchronous sessions. Consequently, participants’ reported level of satisfaction with their academic performance and with their ERL practices was higher for students that had rated their technology expertise at the advanced or expert level and for students with prior attendance of distance education courses. The positive association between prior learning experiences and students’ evaluation of and satisfaction with online education is in line with the findings of other studies conducted during the pandemic [
95,
96,
97]. Studies have also shown the positive association between students’ self-rated readiness for online learning and their satisfaction with ERL [
95,
98,
99].
Level of study: Our study corroborated with the findings of several other studies which showed that the experiences and satisfaction scores of higher education students toward ERL differed significantly according to their education level and that graduate students’ satisfaction was the highest [
10,
14,
24,
81]. In accord with the literature, we also found differences in how easily students adapted to ERL based on their education level, with a higher proportion of undergraduates reporting having faced challenges (e.g., not being able to ask their instructor as many questions as they wanted, concentration issues, etc.) and/or having found it very difficult to adapt to ERL. By contrast, students enrolled in postgraduate degrees experienced fewer difficulties and were found to have the highest level of satisfaction with their academic performance and with their ERL experience. One possible explanation is that postgraduate students tend to be more adept to self-directed study and to require less supervision from their instructors [
60,
100,
101]. Another possible explanation could be the higher level of self-efficacy and online learning readiness of postgraduate students identified in the literature [
24,
102,
103]. In line with this literature, prior experiences with distance learning varied considerably based on study level in our research as well. Much higher percentages of graduate and professional students had exposure to at-distance learning and consequently reported a higher level of preparedness for remote delivery of courses compared to undergraduates. The social aspects of college life were also more important for undergraduate than for graduate students. A higher proportion of undergraduates found it more difficult to actively participate during synchronous online sessions than in the face-to-face classroom. A much higher percentage of undergraduate students also indicated that each of the following educational issues made it difficult for them to switch to ERL: preference for face-to-face classes, not being able to see their classmates, not participating in extracurricular activities (e.g., educational trips, visits to museums, etc.).
Access and accessibilityof technology: Accessibility to technology had a significant impact on participants’ reported level of satisfaction with their academic performance and with their ERL practices. Among the
n = 31 students who stated that they faced accessibility issues in their online courses due to disabilities and/or other educational needs, almost everyone (
n = 28, 90.3%) indicated only moderate or no satisfaction at all with their ERL practices and academic performance. Other studies have also reported a lower level of satisfaction with the ERL experience among students with special needs or disabilities [
44,
45,
73]. Access to technology was also an important factor impacting upon students’ ERL experiences and satisfaction during the pandemic, as shown in several studies [
104,
105]. In our study too, two-thirds of the students reporting no reliable access to the internet, four-fifths of the students reporting no reliable access to a PC and almost all of the students reporting no reliable access to any technology felt only moderately satisfied or not satisfied at all with their academic performance and with their ERL practices. Availability of dedicated study space also impacted students’ ERL experiences and satisfaction [
44,
105]. In our study, the percentage of students who felt only moderately satisfied or not satisfied with their ERL practices and performance was much higher for students with no dedicated study space compared to the rest of the students (59.3% vs. 43.1%).