Perception of advantages/difficulties of remote teaching during COVID-19 pandemic: results from a survey with 3000 italian engineering students

On 11th March 2020, the Director-General of The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. From this date, in Italy as in most parts of the world, life dramatically changed in many aspects: smart working and remote teaching became familiar words, while students and teachers at all educational levels, from primary school to university, had to face sudden changes and new challenges. Emergency remote teaching became widespread, and new methodologies to deliver classes and courses were adopted by educational institutions. In this paper, we focus on the impact of the remote learning experience on university students, in particular, engineering students enrolled at Politecnico di Milano. Subjects recruited from all engineering courses, from the first to the fifth year, were asked to fill in a multidimensional survey. Respondents participated in the study voluntarily and more than 3,000 students completed the entire survey. Overall, 60 items about the participants’ perceptions about the challenges of emergency remote teaching, compared with the pre-Covid-19 usual in-presence teaching were included. The survey addressed 6 dimensions: Organization of the emergency remote Teaching, Subjective Well Being, Metacognition, Self-Efficacy, Identity, and Socio-Demographic information. Preliminary results show significant differences in the students’ perceptions concerning the following three factors: the effectiveness and the organization of the courses, the change in the university students’ evaluation of their instructors, and the change in the university students’ perception of difficulties in the switch from in-presence instruction to online learning. Data analysis also suggests a relevant impact of an emergency remote teaching on students’ perceived Metacognition and Self Efficacy.