Revista Brasileira de Educação do Campo
Brazilian Journal of Rural Education
ARTIGO/ARTICLE/ARTÍCULO
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e11853
Tocantinópolis/Brasil
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e11853
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2021
ISSN: 2525-4863
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How do students view online learning: an empirical study
of online learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Tian-Zi Xu
1
1
Wenzhou University. Faculty of Education. South Campus of Wenzhou University, Chashan Higher Education Park, Ouhai
District, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China.
Author for correspondence: 20200200@wzu.edu.cn
ABSTRACT. During the Covid-19 prevention and control
period, the online learning became the main learning pathway
for students. Meanwhile, it brings some new questions worthy to
considering, such as, how was the online learning for students?
How were the effects? And how did students perceive it? In
order to answer those questions and gain deep understanding for
online learning, the research conducted an investigation among a
number of high schools in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, China,
with an anonymous questionnaire being distributed to the
students. As the main group involved in online learning, it is
critical in exploring the answers and promoting developments of
online learning to investigate students’ views and attitudes
towards the effectiveness, instruction, communication,
advantages and disadvantages of online learning. The results
indicate that even students could rapidly adapt to the new
learning style, there are still several notable limitations, such as
the lack of supervision, collective atmosphere of study, and
humanity communication.
Keywords: COVID-19, online learning, secondary school
students, students’ perceptions.
Xu, T. Z. (2021). How do students view online learning: an empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic…
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Como os estudantes veem o aprendizado on-line: um
estudo empírico do aprendizado on-line durante a
Pandemia da Covid-19
RESUMO. Durante o período de prevenção e controle da
Covid-19, o aprendizado on-line tornou-se o principal caminho
de aprendizado para os estudantes. Entretanto, traz algumas
novas questões dignas de consideração, como, por exemplo,
como foi o aprendizado on-line para os estudantes? Como foram
os efeitos? E como os estudantes o perceberam? A fim de
responder a essas perguntas e obter uma compreensão profunda
para o aprendizado on-line, a pesquisa conduziu uma
investigação entre várias escolas secundárias em Xuzhou,
província de Jiangsu, China, com a distribuição de um
questionário anônimo para os estudantes. Como principal grupo
envolvido no aprendizado on-line, é fundamental explorar as
respostas e promover o desenvolvimento do aprendizado on-line
para investigar as opiniões e atitudes dos estudantes em relação
à eficácia, instrução, comunicação, vantagens e desvantagens do
aprendizado on-line. Os resultados indicam que mesmo os
estudantes poderiam se adaptar rapidamente ao novo estilo de
aprendizagem, ainda existem várias limitações notáveis, como a
falta de supervisão, atmosfera coletiva de estudo e comunicação
humana.
Palavras-chave: COVID-19, aprendizagem on-line, alunos do
ensino médio, percepções dos alunos.
Xu, T. Z. (2021). How do students view online learning: an empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic…
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Cómo ven los estudiantes el aprendizaje en línea: un
estudio empírico del aprendizaje en línea durante la
pandemia de Covid-19
RESUMEN. Durante el periodo de prevención y control de
Covid-19, el aprendizaje en línea se convirtió en la principal vía
de aprendizaje para los estudiantes. Sin embargo, plantea
algunas preguntas nuevas que merecen ser consideradas, como
por ejemplo, ¿cómo fue el aprendizaje en línea para los
estudiantes? ¿Cómo fueron los efectos? ¿Y cómo lo percibieron
los estudiantes? Para responder a estas preguntas y obtener un
conocimiento profundo del aprendizaje en línea, la investigación
llevó a cabo una investigación entre varias escuelas secundarias
de Xuzhou, provincia de Jiangsu, China, con la distribución de
un cuestionario anónimo a los estudiantes. Como grupo
principal involucrado en el aprendizaje en línea, es crucial
explorar las respuestas y promover el desarrollo del aprendizaje
en línea para investigar las opiniones y actitudes de los
estudiantes hacia la eficacia, la instrucción, la comunicación, las
ventajas y desventajas del aprendizaje en línea. Los resultados
indican que, aunque los estudiantes pudieron adaptarse
rápidamente al nuevo estilo de aprendizaje, siguen existiendo
varias limitaciones notables, como la falta de supervisión, el
ambiente de estudio colectivo y la comunicación humana.
Palabras clave: COVID-19, aprendizaje en línea, estudiantes de
secundaria, percepciones de los estudiantes.
Xu, T. Z. (2021). How do students view online learning: an empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic…
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Introduction
Since the education informatization
developed in China, online learning has
become a new and indispensable way of
education. It gradually becomes an
important supplement to traditional school
education in primary and secondary
schools. However, the sudden outbreak of
Covid-19 in China, near the 2020 lunar
new year, had lead to people keeping
social distance to prevent the spread of the
pandemic ， which disrupt the normal
teaching and learning order for schools.
Consequently, the Chinese government
immediately asked universities, secondary
schools, primary schools, and
kindergartens to delay the start of the
spring school semester and make full use
of the online resources to keep order in
teaching, which was called “suspend
classes without stopping learning” activity.
Subsequently, the provincial and municipal
education departments issued guidelines
and plans for online learning to ensure that
students at all levels could get access to
education. Hence, during the pandemic，
the form of education in China rapidly
transformed from onsite learning to online
learning.
However, as the largest online
teaching event than ever, it brought certain
new questions worthy to pondering,
especially how was it for students, and
how did students treat it. As the main
group involved in online learning,
students’ views and attitudes towards the
effectiveness, instruction, communication,
advantages, and disadvantages of online
learning, are vital for exploring the
answers and promoting its future
development. Hence, this research targeted
at regional secondary school students,
utilizing the questionnaire to understand
how did they view the online learning.
The main research questions are
below, leading us to get an outline of the
online learning from students’
perspectives:
Generally, how was the online
learning for secondary school students?
How was the effect of online
learning during the pandemic?
How did students perceive the
online learning during the isolation at
home?
To explore the questions above could
help us (1) to understand how secondary
school students think about the online
learning, as they are the main participants,
and have the most intuitive feelings, (2) to
figure out the advantages and
disadvantages of online learning by
collecting and analyzing the empirical
data, and to compare with the traditional
onsite learning in various respects, and (3)
Xu, T. Z. (2021). How do students view online learning: an empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic…
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to summarize the areas of online learning
that need urgent improvement, and provide
some feasible suggestions for its
development. The above are the main
objectives of this research, which have a
strong relevance both to the current
situation for online learning in the context
of the epidemic, and also to its future
improvement and challenge in the post-
epidemic era.
On the one hand, the study focuses
on the development of online education in
the midst of an epidemic. It brings more
regional empirical research data and
international experience, which could
provide more support for education to deal
with the crisis, and piece together the
online education map under the global
epidemic. On the other hand, e-learning, as
an important complementary modality to
traditional school education, has played a
vital role in the epidemic. Yet, as an
immature form of teaching and learning,
the online education not only gained more
opportunities for future development, but
also encountered unprecedented challenges
and revealed many problems during this
epidemic. In such a situation, it is
important to obtain direct, first-hand data
from the reality of students’ learning. As
the main group involved in online learning,
students’ expectations, dissatisfaction,
suggestions and perceptions will contribute
to the future development for e-learning,
especially providing valuable proposals in
terms of the construction of online
platform, teachers’ online instruction
development and application functional
improvement. There is no doubt that online
learning will become an important way of
teaching and learning. In the context of this
trend, the research can provide more
examples and knowledge for its database.
Literature review
In the last year, online education
with home isolation had attracted a lot of
attention worldwide. In China, some
researchers systematically reviewed many
typical online instruction and cases,
providing some valuable references and
guidance for ongoing practice (Jiao Zhou
& Chen, 2020; Xie et al., 2020). Song Xu
and Li (2020) focused on the model
establishment, with analyzing the factors
affecting online teaching and learning, and
proposing an online "teacher-parent-
student" community framework model.
Zou Li and Xie (2020) analyzed the
development of e-learning in universities
in a regional context, and proposed a
regional online education model. Wang et
al. (2020) paid attention to the views and
attitudes of stakeholders, and conducted a
nationwide online questionnaire survey, to
investigate the government, school
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administrators, teachers, students, and
parents. Yang and Zhang (2020) targeted at
primary and secondary school teachers
around 23 provinces, collecting their
attitudes, actions and expectations about
online education by online questionnaire
survey. Fu and Zhou (2020) analyzed the
challenges posed by the epidemic to China
online education among several
dimensions, such as equipment, teachers,
students and parents.
Internationally, the online education,
during the pandemic, also attracted
researchers’ attentions. Mladenova
Kalmukov and Valova (2020) present a
study on the comparison between three
types of e-learning and traditional onsite
learning, through students’ opinions before
and after this pandemic. Their research
found that even the young people had been
called digital generation, their attitudes to
e-learning were a little bit of being
negative, which was quite different as what
we thought about. Velichová Orbánová
and Kúbeková (2020) investigated the
secondary school students in Slovakia, to
find out their views on online learning. The
results indicated that secondary students
preferred to regard online learning as the
combination with traditional onsite
learning. And they stated the time intensity
of online learning was greater than the
traditional form of learning, even though
most of them spent much less time on
learning. Besides, they showed a lot of the
strength and the weakness of online
learning. Baladrón Pazos Correyero Ruiz
and Manchado Pérez (2020) investigated
the students’ views on the transformation,
which was from in-person learning to
online learning, carried out around the
faculties of communication in Spain. The
research found that even the transformation
was successful integrally, there were still
some essential limitations. For example,
the teachers used the traditional instruction
without adjusting to the features and
advantages of online learning. A Japanese
research team, Nenko Кybalna and
Snisarenko (2020), focused on the situation
of online learning around Ukrainian higher
educational institutions, including the
effectiveness, types, negative and positive
aspects, perspectives, and approaches.
Through questionnaires, the research
figured out the most used distance learning
tools, duration of learning, readiness of
participants, factors that affect distance
learning in Ukraine, which echoed the
present results in other researches. There
were also several research teams conducted
investigations in a wide scope among
schools and universities， with the targets
like the students’ knowledge, attitudes, and
practice (Saefi et al., 2020), the students’
intentions to utilize the e-learning system
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(Al-Okaily et al., 2020), and the level of
students’ self-regulated learning during the
pandemic (Sulisworo et al., 2020). These
researches provided large amounts of data
and information to promote the new
learning style.
Based on these existing researches,
our study is also about understanding
students' views on e-learning. However,
we have two distinguishing features in
contrast with the researches above. On the
one hand, we have chosen a specific period
of time, when students just got rid of the
two-months social isolation and went back
to school. At that time, they still had clear
perceptions and feelings about the home-
based online learning experience, which
could enhance the timeliness and accuracy
of the data. On the other hand, the
questionnaire was designed with two short-
answer questions that aimed to fully
explore the implicit knowledge of students'
views and attitudes towards online
learning. Thus, we provide both
quantitative data and qualitative data to
demonstrate our results, where the
quantitative data shows the trends of
development and distributions of problems,
and the qualitative data gives an explicit
description of students' views and attitudes.
Methodology
The study uses the questionnaire
survey to obtain more about the objects’
attitudes, behaviors, opinions and
cognition in the special situation. The key
purpose of the research is to understand
students’ perceptions of online learning.
The survey results could indicate and
generalize the trends and distributions of
students’ opinions from various
dimensions.
The questionnaire is anonymous and
contains two sections. The first part
includes nineteen objective choice
questions, consisting of one-choice and
multiple-choice questions. In the multiple-
choice questions, the sum of the
percentages will be greater than 100 per
cent. The second part includes two
subjective short answer questions, in order
to collect more details of the students’
individual situation, opinions and
suggestions of online learning. Meanwhile,
to ensure the validity of the research, the
questionnaire was tested by two experts,
and necessary modifications were made to
it on the basis of the experts’ consultations.
Besides, in order to ensure the accuracy
and authenticity, the questionnaires were
distributed by class at the beginning of the
resumption of school spring semester. At
that time, students still had a very clear
feeling and opinions towards online
learning. Also, with the help and support
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from many head teachers, there were only
10 invalid questionnaires, maximizing the
effectiveness of the investigation (99.2%).
The population of the research
comprises 1270 secondary school students
in Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China.
Those respondents were from different
grades and different secondary schools.
Among them, 24% of the students were
from senior, 33% of the students were
from sophomore, and the rest of the
students (43%) were freshman.
Meanwhile, 64.6% of the students were
from public schools, and 35.4% of them
were from private schools.
Results and discussion
Generally, the results of the research
indicated that students were able to adapt
quickly to the new mode of learning, and
could maintain a high completion rate
during this unprecedented, mega-scale, and
unexpected online learning process. 94%
of respondents were basically able to
complete the daily learning tasks assigned
by teachers, while 100% senior year
students could better complete those
learning tasks. Besides, as regards self-
management, 55% of students were able to
study effectively on their own, with 20%
of them noting that they were able to make
and complete their own study plans
conscientiously. However, the rest 45% of
students pointed out that there were many
temptations to concentrate on study, of
whom 38% indicated that there was limited
time for study, 7% indicated that they
seldom studied during pandemic.
“Distracting”, “playing with my mobile
phone”, and “being dazed when listening
to online classes” were the dominate
behaviors and main culprits, which echoed
other research findings (Zeng, 2020; Song
Xu & Li, 2020).
The results of the study demonstrated
more characteristics of students’ online
learning situation. The following will be
organized by various dimensions of
students’ opinions and behaviors during
the home isolation, such as the study
motivation, learning outcomes, advantages
and disadvantages, supervision, collective
atmosphere, adaptability, and attitudes.
These elements and data may
comprehensively show the regional outline
for the secondary school students’ online
learning during the pandemic.
Study motivation
The results showed that only about
35% of students said they studied by
“internal motivation”, yet nearly 70% of
students expressed they were motivated to
study online by external sources, of whom,
40% were motivated by the tasks assigned
by teachers online, 18% were motivated by
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'peer influence', that was they believed that
their classmates were taking online
learning seriously and they could not
afford to be left behind, and 7% relied on
parental urging (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Secondary students’ learning motivation during home isolation in Xuzhou City.
35%
40%
18%
7%
internal learning
needs
tasks assigned by
teachers
peers influence
parents supervision
and urging
internal motivation
external motivation
Source: author’s calculations based on the conducted survey.
Meanwhile, the final year students’
reactions showed that in terms of time-
management and learning motivation, they
generally outperformed than the students in
other grades, especially in the area of time
management, with 32% of final-year
students saying that they were able to make
a study plan and completed it consciously,
which was almost twice as many as non-
final year students’ rate.
Learning outcomes
The online learning outcomes of
secondary students in Xuzhou City during
the Covid-19 pandemic could be described
with several dimensions, including the
quality of task completion, prediction of
exam results, and addressing learning
difficulties. The majority of respondents
said they could not complete their learning
tasks as well as they did at school, 16% of
respondents stated that online learning was
as effective as face-to-face learning at
school, and only 7% of students believed
they learnt better at home than school. To
take the matter further by asking students
to predict their exam performance, most
respondents (82%) believed that they
would do better in the classroom and only
a small group of students (3%) thought
they would do better online, while the rest
either thought their test scores would be
"not very different" or chose "not sure".
Although online learning, especially
asynchronous online learning, overcomes
the barriers of space and time, allowing for
more flexibility and freedom, it seems less
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convenient when students encounter
difficulties, such as “hardly expressing
questions, particularly the mathematical
symbols or chemical equation”, “too little
teacher-student interaction online”,
“equipment problems”, or “unable to
communicate at all times”. Therefore,
according to “problems solving”, less than
half of respondents said they would solve
the problems in the moment, while 31% of
respondents said they would write them
down and solve them when they returned
to school, and the rest (15%) said they "did
not intend to solve them". Furthermore,
among the students who chose to solve
problems immediately, more of them
would turn to search internet (45%) or ask
peers (38%) rather than seeking help from
teachers online (17%), which revealed
teachers were no longer the first choice for
students to turn to when it came to online
learning. However, we all know teachers
play a significant and irreplaceable role in
education with their phronesis, hence it is
worth pondering (Liu & Sun, 2020).
Comparing the data from graduating
classes and non-graduating classes, we
found there was corresponding tendency,
while the former’s performance was more
significantly than the latter’s. More details
present in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Comparison between graduate and non-graduate students in several online learning performances.
23%
95%
59%
32%
7%
82%
49%
17%
complete task online with high quality
better exam performance with schooling
solve problem online immediately
good self-management with online learing
graduate students
non-graduate students
Source: author’s calculations based on the conducted survey.
We suppose that the pressure from
academic work push final year students
overcome the difficulties and discomfort,
and significantly perform better than non-
final year students in terms of self-
management, quality of academic
completion, problem solving and
motivation maintenance (Chen & Liu,
2021).
Advantages and disadvantages
With data analyzing, learning with
more relaxation and interests, freely
allocating time, convenient and fast
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communication were the primary
advantages of online learning. At the same
time, the data also reflected students'
perceptions of traditional onsite learning,
with being able to focus more on learning,
stronger learning atmosphere, more
efficient and effective, and communicate at
any time. More details are shown in the
Figure 3 and Figure 4.
Figure 3. students’ opinions about advantages of online learning.
Source: author’s calculations based on the conducted survey.
Figure 4. students’ opinions about advantages of offline learning.
Source: author’s calculations based on the conducted survey.
Furthermore, the answers of
subjective questions showed that the lack
of effective teacher supervision, more
humanity online communication
environment and collective learning
atmosphere were the main weakness of
online learning.
Supervision
While online learning transcends the
constraints of time and space, and meets
the individual learners’ needs, it also
requires a high level of self-directed
learning ability. However, with limited
self-control and a lack of effective teacher
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supervision, students inevitably suffered
from low learning efficiency, poor
concentration and mediocre learning
outcomes. Studies have shown that a large
part of the reason why online learning is
"high in selection but low in completion" is
because there is no effective monitoring
and evaluation method, and many students'
self-learning ability is not sufficient to
support them to complete an online course
(Ma et al., 2019). In our survey, 73% of
respondents said that online learning had
more 'temptations' than studying at school,
which made it more spontaneous, such as
"I study when I want to, but not when I
don't" (35%), and "I have limited time to
study" (38%).
From the perspectives of students,
the level and quality of parents’
involvement during the pandemic was also
not high. For example, only 3% of students
said their parents always monitored their
study during home isolation, and 30% of
students said their parents regularly
monitored their learning, while 63% of
students said their parents 'occasionally
monitored' or 'hardly monitored' their
study. This was a significant difference,
reflecting the low level of parental
involvement for their children’s learning.
In addition, 57% of students’ parents
supervised their children’s learning by
checking their homework, while only 9%
of students’ parents were able to help their
children with research and problem
solving. The pandemic led to the time and
space separation for teaching and learning
activities, so that parents became the first
person, who should take a more important
role than ever in supervising and guiding
students in online learning, and interacting
with teachers in home-school cooperation
(Li Wang & Chai, 2021; Gao, 2020).
Collective atmosphere
Many students clearly stated that the
group learning atmosphere was one of the
main advantages of studying at school,
where they could whisper to each other,
sharing ideas and raising hands to ask
questions at any time. However, this is a
need that cannot be met by online learning,
as the distance learning technology is still
unable to provide a more humanity online
communication environment (Jiao Zhou &
Chen, 2020). Online learning during the
epidemic was often in a 'many-to-one'
mode, where dozens of students could see
their teachers, but not each other. Without
working together, collaborative discussion,
sense of rhythm and tension, and sense of
social presence was weak (Teng, 2013).
63% of students said they had significantly
less interaction with their teachers while
studying online at home. Besides, the
frequency of student-student
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communication had also decreased. Nearly
half of students said that they did not
communicate with each other as often as
they did at school, of whom, only 14%
talked about their study as the main topics.
The data of graduate students were better,
with 27% of students talking about study
online, yet, the tendency was similar.
Adaptability
In decades, distance education has
been used as an adjunct to schooling, but in
the pandemic, it had become the main
instruction approach. This transformation
led to a certain degree of non-adaptability
for students. Almost half of respondents
(35%) indicated that the online learning at
home was not very suitable for study, 9%
respondents indicated it was very
unsuitable for learning. Figure 5 provides
more comparison in adaptability between
graduate students and non-graduate
students.
Figure 5. The comparison between graduate and non-graduate students’ adaptability about online learning.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
non-
graduate
students
graduate
students
Source: author’s calculations based on the conducted survey.
From it we could find the graduate
students mainly chose the 'home
environment was more suitable for
studying' (55%) and 'home environment
was less suitable for studying' (36%). None
of them chose 'home environment was very
suitable for studying', which was a
significant difference from the non-
graduate students’ choice.
Attitude
It is foreseeable that online learning
will become one of the key methods of
education in the future. And with the
Covid-19 pandemic having been gradually
under control in China, the hybrid of
online and offline teaching will be widely
used in schools and universities for a long
time to come. For the question about
students’ opinions to the future of online
learning development, it is that many
students held positive, confident and
expectant attitude. 42% of respondents
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believed that online learning would
become a mainstream teaching method in
the future, while some students had a wait-
and-see attitude (23%), and the rest of
them (35%) supposed the online learning
would not be one of the main teaching
approaches in the future. However, there
was a more negative view among graduate
students. 33% of respondents believed that
online education 'would not' become a
mainstream teaching method in the future,
much more than the 'would' (28%). This
percentage was in contrast to the other
grades students’. And more details can be
seen in Figure 6.
Figure 6. The comparison between graduate and non-graduate students’ opinions to future development of online
learning.
Source: author’s calculations based on the conducted survey.
We analyzed that the anxiety of the
imminent university entrance exams made
it difficult for them to 'settle in' as well as
other grades students. As a result, although
final year students outperformed than other
grades students in terms of quality of task
completion, efficiency and self-learning
ability, they were more eager to return to
the familiarity and authenticity of the
traditional onsite learning.
Conclusion
As the main learning pathway for
students during the pandemic, online
education not only caught up the
opportunities for development, but also
underwent the challenge. It is no doubt that
the future of online learning is positive and
worth anticipating. Through data analysis,
the results of this research about the
regional secondary school students’
perception about online learning have
brought several significant findings.
In the first research question, we
examined the general overview of
students’ online learning. The results
indicated that generally students were able
to adapt quickly to the new mode of
Xu, T. Z. (2021). How do students view online learning: an empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic…
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learning, and could maintain a high
completion rate to learning tasks, yet, in
particular, there were several problems that
were deserved careful thinking. Most
students reflected that online learning
decreased their learning motivation and
abilities of self-management, and they
could not complete the learning tasks as
well as they did at schools. Besides,
although students confirmed that online
learning has many strengths, they also
pointed out the shortcomings of online
learning. It lacks effective teacher
supervision, humanity online
communication environment, and
collective learning atmosphere.
In the second research question, we
analyzed the effect of online learning on
students. The results showed that most
secondary school students preferred to
study at school, rather than online, which
was quite different from their characters as
digital generation. The majority of
respondents said they could not complete
their learning tasks as well as they did at
school. The data from the two short-answer
questions showed that it seemed less
convenient when students encountered
difficulties during online learning, such as
“hardly express the mathematical symbols
or chemical equation” or “equipment
problems”. Furthermore, for the learning
outcomes, they predicted that they could
not perform better in the following exams.
Hence, even the online learning during the
pandemic in China went on well, there
were still a lot of problems that influenced
students’ learning experience and
achievements.
In the third research question, we
explored students’ attitude and opinions to
online learning. The results indicated that it
should be not optimistic about students’
adaptability for online learning, as almost
half of the respondents said the online
learning at home was not very suitable for
study. Contrarily, many students held a
positive, confident, and expectant attitude
towards the future development of the
online learning, and believed it would
become a mainstream teaching and
learning method in the future. The entirely
different attitudes precisely proved our
assumption that the online learning both
encountered a huge challenge during the
pandemic and caught up an opportunity of
boosting its status and impact in the
education domain.
Information technology in education
has been in development in China for more
than a decade. With the policy, Education
Informatization 2.0 Action Plan, issued by
the Ministry of Education in 2018, China
has entered the era of "Internet +
Education". And intelligent and
informative education has become an
Xu, T. Z. (2021). How do students view online learning: an empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic…
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important guarantee and strategic choice to
lead the modernization of education. The
epidemic was a severe test for the
construction of e-learning. Hence, through
the exploration for the three questions in
this research, we found what students cared
about most and what students needed most
during online learning with the home
isolation, which were the effective teacher
supervision, collective learning
atmosphere, and teachers’ information
literacy. It is no doubt that the answers
expose the existing problems for online
education, and have vital impacts on the
quality of its implementation. It is that the
research has a significant contribution to
the field of knowledge for online learning,
and provides a specific direction for
development and breakthrough points of
improvement for online learning.
Effective teacher supervision is an
important means of enhancing the
outcomes of online learning, and we
believe that the establishment of online
learning communities is an effective way
to improve the situation. Online learning is
primarily a form of self-learning, during
which the self-discipline has a significant
impact on learning outcomes. However,
many researchers have found that students'
attention is often disturbed by a variety of
matters, resulting in lower efficiency and
effectiveness. Assigning tasks is an
outcome-based path of supervision, but
there is a risk of copying and cheating
(Mladenova Kalmukov & Valova, 2020).
Teachers need to find some more effective
methods to conduct process-based
supervision. In a learning community,
students naturally form bonds of mutual
supervision and motivation, and this peer
monitoring system can 'extends' the
teacher's hands and eyes, helping them to
monitor students learning effectively in
exceptional circumstances.
The collective online learning
atmosphere is the most complained part of
e-learning by students, of which the main
manifestation is a sharp reduction in social
presence. On the one hand, there is less
verbal communication between teachers
and students than in a classroom, which
seems traditional lecture-based teaching is
now reintroduced in distance learning. On
the other hand, the mental communication
between teachers and students seems to be
'isolated' with social isolation. It is difficult
to accurately communicate with eyes,
expressions, body movements, emotions,
feelings, and spirit. Briefly, to some extent,
e-learning simplifies communication for
teacher-student and student-student to
words or text, without richer human face-
to-face interaction. Hence, the humanity
communication should be taken into
consideration for the future development of
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online learning, which both need
technology support and more active
involvement of teachers and students.
Teachers’ information literacy is an
essential part of online education, which
has been uncovered many problems, such
as boring lecturing, lack of interactions,
and invalid supervision. According to the
regional experience, we suppose that
teachers should learn and utilize diverse
distance education applications to enhance
their information literacy. They should
make full use of various online resources
and multimedia technologies to execute
rich interaction and communication. Most
importantly, teachers should deeply think
and explore online pedagogies, rebuild the
e-learning patterns, style, and online class
culture, so that they could always provide
students with high-quality education, no
matter what the form is (Mu & Wang,
2020).
It is foreseeable that blended online
and offline teaching will be the main mode
of teaching in schools and colleges for a
long time to come. This pandemic has
brought a huge challenge to online
education around the world, and it is also a
catalyst for the development. Therefore, it
is necessary for the basic education school
teachers, who already have more than two
months of experience in online teaching, to
widely and actively engage in the
information era.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Mr. Xu, Mrs. Tian
and several other teachers for their help
and support in the process of data
collection. The research is funded by the
China National Education Scientific
Planning Project (BHA190127).
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Xu, T. Z. (2021). How do students view online learning: an empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19 Pandemic…
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Article Information
Received on March 28th, 2021
Accepted on April 06th, 2021
Published on April, 28th, 2021
Author Contributions: Tian-Zi Xu was responsible for the
preparation, collecting, analysis and interpretation of the
questionnaire; writing and reviewing the content of the
manuscript. Tian-Zi Xu was also responsible for approving
the final version to be published.
Conflict of Interest: None reported.
Article Peer Review
Double review.
Funding
The research is funded by the China National Education
Scientific Planning Project (BHA190127).
How to cite this article
APA
Xu, T. Z. (2021). How do students view online learning: an
empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19
Pandemic. Rev. Bras. Educ. Camp., 6, e11853.
http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e11853
ABNT
XU, T. Z. How do students view online learning: an
empirical study of online learning during the Covid-19
Pandemic. Rev. Bras. Educ. Camp., Tocantinópolis, v. 6,
e11853, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.20873/uft.rbec.e11853