Analyzing Students’ Experience of Online Education during COVID-19: A Case Study of NUST, Pakistan

Abstract

The COVID-19 outbreak has had a massive global impact, leading to a shift towards embracing a virtual lifestyle. Pakistan, being a developing country, also experienced the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, the government implemented smart lockdowns and enforced a work-from-home policy for organizations where maintaining social distance was not feasible. In particular, the educational sector was locked down to minimize the spread of the coronavirus. The education system in Pakistan transitioned from face-to-face (FTF) to distance learning (DL) mode, despite limited knowledge among teachers and students about e-learning. Through a statistical analysis, considering NUST as a case study the thesis has examined various parameters introduced in e-learning, including how much students appreciated or criticized e-learning and the facilities provided by the concerned administration of the university. This pandemic opened a new chapter for the educational sector in Pakistan, prompting the adoption of modern technology to create a virtual educational environment capable of handling future pandemics. The study has investigated the perception of NUSTIANS (students at NUST) and their response to this transformation from FTF to DL mode during COVID-19. Moreover, this thesis has analyzed the user-friendliness of the DL mode as a new experience and assessed the level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction of students. The research has used structured questionnaire to collect the information from the students. The questionnaire consists of twenty-four questions divided into six sections namely: educational management, parents' perception, resource social media, quality of services (overall), quality of services (classroom activities), and local/school-level administrative system. A sufficient sample of 318 NUSTIANS, supported by literature and statistical methods, from undergraduate, MS, and PhD programs, has been used in this thesis. Descriptive statistics and visualization techniques have been used to observe the trends and tendencies of various items of the questionnaire. Chi- xi square statistics have been used to check the association between items of the questionnaire. The results of the survey conducted on various aspects of the educational management system's shift from FTF to DL mode reveal a mixed perception among respondents. In the educational management section, a significant portion (45.91%) agreed with the transformation, while a notable proportion (33.96%) disagreed, and the remaining respondents (20.13%) remained neutral. Similarly, in the parents' perception section, a majority (61.01%) agreed that their parents accepted the shift, while a smaller percentage (18.24%) showed disagreement and the remaining respondents (20.75%) remained neutral. On the contrary, the resource social media section indicated that a considerable number of respondents (60.54%) disagreed that there was no technical burden in the transition to DL mode and that the quality of understanding improved. Moreover, in the sections quality of services (overall), quality of services (classroom activities) and the local/school-level administrative system received positive feedback , with overall respondents showing agreeing with the different academic services provided by NUST during pandemics as discussed in chapter 4. The results of this survey will be useful for concerned administrations of schools, colleges, and universities for transitioning to e-learning mode during pandemics