Abstract—There is no universal response for institutions in
higher education on how to handle the continuity of education
during the radical transformation all across the world during
COVID-19. Online learning is often used as a synonym for
emergency remote teaching, however, both methods have
fundamentally different characteristics that differ in
implementation and effectiveness. This study aims to investigate
student perceptions concerning online learning and emergency
remote teaching (ERT) during the global pandemic. An
importance-performance analysis (IPA) was used to determine
the perceived satisfaction of undergraduate students. This
mixed-method study expands earlier research addressing
concerns with ERT and adds to the body of knowledge by
investigating how ERT is perceived by university students in
Northeastern Thailand. Responses from a self-administered
survey were collected and analyzed (n=287). Based on
descriptive analysis, it was decided to conduct 14 unstructured
interviews to investigate particular findings more thoroughly.
The study identified that the students largely view ERT as
inferior compared to traditional classroom teaching. Moreover,
the students claimed both lack of social interactions with peers
and inability to seek academic support as the primary reasons.
This study informs educators about student perceptions and
preferences during these extraordinary circumstances of
uncertain duration.
Index Terms—Online learning, remote education, remote
teaching, technology-enhanced learning, higher education,
undergraduate students.
The author is with the Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism, Prince of
Songkla University, Phuket 83120 Thailand (e-mail:
kevin.f@phuket.psu.ac.th).
Cite: Kevin Fuchs, "Online Learning and Emergency Remote Teaching in Higher Education during COVID-19: Student Perspectives," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 12, no. 9, pp. 940-946, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).