Online Learning in Higher Education During A Global Pandemic: An Explorative Study On Norwegian Students

Abstract

Through an exploratory study we aimed to address challenging factors related to learning during the Coronavirus pandemic. We have investigated and identified procrastination, self-regulation, and exam anxiety as important factors associated with learning success. Since the educational sector has shifted radically towards online learning, we have additionally examined previous literature related to learning analytics, learning during disasters, and online learning. To address our research objective, we initially applied a survey to map out procrastinators and non- procrastinators to include for our semi-structured interviews with students. We additionally conducted a small sample of interviews with teachers, and one teaching technology manager, to acquire their perspective on the current situation. While prior studies under Covid-19 found that online learning has been perceived positive by students, our findings revealed challenges related to engagement in online lectures, and thus, suggesting that engagement is not properly facilitated through the current learning management systems. This paucity of engagement is further argued to reduce the students’ overall learning outcome in terms of both practical knowledge and informal understanding of subjects. However, it does not reflect on the grades as the evaluation system has become more lenient. Our findings further revealed significant differences amid procrastinators and non-procrastinators when investigating the students’ study behavior and habits, and we see that procrastinators in higher degree encounter challenges related to motivation, allocating time to study, and structure, as opposed to non-procrastinators. Nevertheless, our findings reveal that the teachers are not able to sufficiently follow-up students-at-risk themselves because of time constraints and limited resources, and a lack of an appropriate framework is hindering the university to adequately adopt learning analytics.

Keywords: Online Learning, Covid-19, Learning Analytics, Procrastination, Self-regulation, Test Anxiety