Looking for patterns of change amid pandemic period in students' evaluation of academic teaching

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken not only the global economy but every development field, including all levels of the education sector and in every place in the world. The wide spread of this pandemic disaster has undoubtedly changed the education landscape worldwide. Online teaching and learning become the primary instruction method and the global world of schools, colleges and universities were forced to adapt this model. The first concern about online learning is whether this method is effective compared to traditional face-to-face lessons. In this paper, we carried out a quantitative analysis to explore variations in university students' feedback on learning experience in the context of this new challenging situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. By adopting an IRT modeling, we compared the appreciation of some aspects of 41 courses taught at the University of Chieti-Pescara (Italy) during the educational emergency with that of the previous year. Overall, from the results of this study, it is arisen that students have given positive feedbacks on their learning experiences and their effectiveness.

Keywords: Higher education; IRT; Learning satisfaction data; Linear logistic models with relaxed assumptions; Online learning.

Fig. 1

Item-person map at time $T_0$ (top panel) and $T_1$ (bottom panel)

Fig. 2

Item characteristic curves at time $T_0$ (top panel) and $T_1$ (bottom panel)