The experiences of students transitioning back to in-person learning post-Covid-19

This paper reports on a preliminary study that was carried out to understand the experiences of engineering students transitioning to on-campus learning following the Covid-19 pandemic. Two cohorts were considered: year 1 students joining the university for the first time after having experienced considerable disruption for the final two years of their schooling and year 2 students who experienced their first year at university almost entirely online. Data was gathered from student surveys which found that the greatest areas of difficulty for students were the academic level of the programme and the workload. A limited comparison was drawn between this finding and some pre-pandemic data which suggests that the difficulty that students had in this area was higher than for students before the pandemic, indicating that two years of disrupted education may have had a negative impact on students’ preparedness for higher education. Qualitative open-ended responses by students showed that there was a clear preference for face-to-face teaching, but that students see clear benefits to online resources and lecture recordings, and value having some flexibility in how they learn. Some reduction in student performance was noted.