online education covid 19 essay

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• Review Article
• Published: 27 September 2021

Why lockdown and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to increase the social class achievement gap

• Sébastien Goudeau   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7293-0977 1 ,
• Camille Sanrey   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3158-1306 1 ,
• Arnaud Stanczak   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2596-1516 2 ,
• Antony Manstead   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7540-2096 3 &
• Céline Darnon   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2613-689X 2  

Nature Human Behaviour volume  5 ,  pages 1273–1281 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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The COVID-19 pandemic has forced teachers and parents to quickly adapt to a new educational context: distance learning. Teachers developed online academic material while parents taught the exercises and lessons provided by teachers to their children at home. Considering that the use of digital tools in education has dramatically increased during this crisis, and it is set to continue, there is a pressing need to understand the impact of distance learning. Taking a multidisciplinary view, we argue that by making the learning process rely more than ever on families, rather than on teachers, and by getting students to work predominantly via digital resources, school closures exacerbate social class academic disparities. To address this burning issue, we propose an agenda for future research and outline recommendations to help parents, teachers and policymakers to limit the impact of the lockdown on social-class-based academic inequality.

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The widespread effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in 2019–2020 have drastically increased health, social and economic inequalities 1 , 2 . For more than 900 million learners around the world, the pandemic led to the closure of schools and universities 3 . This exceptional situation forced teachers, parents and students to quickly adapt to a new educational context: distance learning. Teachers had to develop online academic materials that could be used at home to ensure educational continuity while ensuring the necessary physical distancing. Primary and secondary school students suddenly had to work with various kinds of support, which were usually provided online by their teachers. For college students, lockdown often entailed returning to their hometowns while staying connected with their teachers and classmates via video conferences, email and other digital tools. Despite the best efforts of educational institutions, parents and teachers to keep all children and students engaged in learning activities, ensuring educational continuity during school closure—something that is difficult for everyone—may pose unique material and psychological challenges for working-class families and students.

Not only did the pandemic lead to the closure of schools in many countries, often for several weeks, it also accelerated the digitalization of education and amplified the role of parental involvement in supporting the schoolwork of their children. Thus, beyond the specific circumstances of the COVID-19 lockdown, we believe that studying the effects of the pandemic on academic inequalities provides a way to more broadly examine the consequences of school closure and related effects (for example, digitalization of education) on social class inequalities. Indeed, bearing in mind that (1) the risk of further pandemics is higher than ever (that is, we are in a ‘pandemic era’ 4 , 5 ) and (2) beyond pandemics, the use of digital tools in education (and therefore the influence of parental involvement) has dramatically increased during this crisis, and is set to continue, there is a pressing need for an integrative and comprehensive model that examines the consequences of distance learning. Here, we propose such an integrative model that helps us to understand the extent to which the school closures associated with the pandemic amplify economic, digital and cultural divides that in turn affect the psychological functioning of parents, students and teachers in a way that amplifies academic inequalities. Bringing together research in social sciences, ranging from economics and sociology to social, cultural, cognitive and educational psychology, we argue that by getting students to work predominantly via digital resources rather than direct interactions with their teachers, and by making the learning process rely more than ever on families rather than teachers, school closures exacerbate social class academic disparities.

First, we review research showing that social class is associated with unequal access to digital tools, unequal familiarity with digital skills and unequal uses of such tools for learning purposes 6 , 7 . We then review research documenting how unequal familiarity with school culture, knowledge and skills can also contribute to the accentuation of academic inequalities 8 , 9 . Next, we present the results of surveys conducted during the 2020 lockdown showing that the quality and quantity of pedagogical support received from schools varied according to the social class of families (for examples, see refs. 10 , 11 , 12 ). We then argue that these digital, cultural and structural divides represent barriers to the ability of parents to provide appropriate support for children during distance learning (Fig. 1 ). These divides also alter the levels of self-efficacy of parents and children, thereby affecting their engagement in learning activities 13 , 14 . In the final section, we review preliminary evidence for the hypothesis that distance learning widens the social class achievement gap and we propose an agenda for future research. In addition, we outline recommendations that should help parents, teachers and policymakers to use social science research to limit the impact of school closure and distance learning on the social class achievement gap.

Economic, structural, digital and cultural divides influence the psychological functioning of parents and students in a way that amplify inequalities.

The digital divide

Unequal access to digital resources.

Although the use of digital technologies is almost ubiquitous in developed nations, there is a digital divide such that some people are more likely than others to be numerically excluded 15 (Fig. 1 ). Social class is a strong predictor of digital disparities, including the quality of hardware, software and Internet access 16 , 17 , 18 . For example, in 2019, in France, around 1 in 5 working-class families did not have personal access to the Internet compared with less than 1 in 20 of the most privileged families 19 . Similarly, in 2020, in the United Kingdom, 20% of children who were eligible for free school meals did not have access to a computer at home compared with 7% of other children 20 . In 2021, in the United States, 41% of working-class families do not own a laptop or desktop computer and 43% do not have broadband compared with 8% and 7%, respectively, of upper/middle-class Americans 21 . A similar digital gap is also evident between lower-income and higher-income countries 22 .

Second, simply having access to a computer and an Internet connection does not ensure effective distance learning. For example, many of the educational resources sent by teachers need to be printed, thereby requiring access to printers. Moreover, distance learning is more difficult in households with only one shared computer compared with those where each family member has their own 23 . Furthermore, upper/middle-class families are more likely to be able to guarantee a suitable workspace for each child than their working-class counterparts 24 .

In the context of school closures, such disparities are likely to have important consequences for educational continuity. In line with this idea, a survey of approximately 4,000 parents in the United Kingdom confirmed that during lockdown, more than half of primary school children from the poorest families did not have access to their own study space and were less well equipped for distance learning than higher-income families 10 . Similarly, a survey of around 1,300 parents in the Netherlands found that during lockdown, children from working-class families had fewer computers at home and less room to study than upper/middle-class children 11 .

Data from non-Western countries highlight a more general digital divide, showing that developing countries have poorer access to digital equipment. For example, in India in 2018, only 10.7% of households possessed a digital device 25 , while in Pakistan in 2020, 31% of higher-education teachers did not have Internet access and 68.4% did not have a laptop 26 . In general, developing countries lack access to digital technologies 27 , 28 , and these difficulties of access are even greater in rural areas (for example, see ref. 29 ). Consequently, school closures have huge repercussions for the continuity of learning in these countries. For example, in India in 2018, only 11% of the rural and 40% of the urban population above 14 years old could use a computer and access the Internet 25 . Time spent on education during school closure decreased by 80% in Bangladesh 30 . A similar trend was observed in other countries 31 , with only 22% of children engaging in remote learning in Kenya 32 and 50% in Burkina Faso 33 . In Ghana, 26–32% of children spent no time at all on learning during the pandemic 34 . Beyond the overall digital divide, social class disparities are also evident in developing countries, with lower access to digital resources among households in which parental educational levels were low (versus households in which parental educational levels were high; for example, see ref. 35 for Nigeria and ref. 31 for Ecuador).

Unequal digital skills

In addition to unequal access to digital tools, there are also systematic variations in digital skills 36 , 37 (Fig. 1 ). Upper/middle-class families are more familiar with digital tools and resources and are therefore more likely to have the digital skills needed for distance learning 38 , 39 , 40 . These digital skills are particularly useful during school closures, both for students and for parents, for organizing, retrieving and correctly using the resources provided by the teachers (for example, sending or receiving documents by email, printing documents or using word processors).

Social class disparities in digital skills can be explained in part by the fact that children from upper/middle-class families have the opportunity to develop digital skills earlier than working-class families 41 . In member countries of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), only 23% of working-class children had started using a computer at the age of 6 years or earlier compared with 43% of upper/middle-class children 42 . Moreover, because working-class people tend to persist less than upper/middle-class people when confronted with digital difficulties 23 , the use of digital tools and resources for distance learning may interfere with the ability of parents to help children with their schoolwork.

Unequal use of digital tools

A third level of digital divide concerns variations in digital tool use 18 , 43 (Fig. 1 ). Upper/middle-class families are more likely to use digital resources for work and education 6 , 41 , 44 , whereas working-class families are more likely to use these resources for entertainment, such as electronic games or social media 6 , 45 . This divide is also observed among students, whereby working-class students tend to use digital technologies for leisure activities, whereas their upper/middle-class peers are more likely to use them for academic activities 46 and to consider that computers and the Internet provide an opportunity for education and training 23 . Furthermore, working-class families appear to regulate the digital practices of their children less 47 and are more likely to allow screens in the bedrooms of children and teenagers without setting limits on times or practices 48 .

In sum, inequalities in terms of digital resources, skills and use have strong implications for distance learning. This is because they make working-class students and parents particularly vulnerable when learning relies on extensive use of digital devices rather than on face-to-face interaction with teachers.

The cultural divide

Even if all three levels of digital divide were closed, upper/middle-class families would still be better prepared than working-class families to ensure educational continuity for their children. Upper/middle-class families are more familiar with the academic knowledge and skills that are expected and valued in educational settings, as well as with the independent, autonomous way of learning that is valued in the school culture and becomes even more important during school closure (Fig. 1 ).

Unequal familiarity with academic knowledge and skills

According to classical social reproduction theory 8 , 49 , school is not a neutral place in which all forms of language and knowledge are equally valued. Academic contexts expect and value culture-specific and taken-for-granted forms of knowledge, skills and ways of being, thinking and speaking that are more in tune with those developed through upper/middle-class socialization (that is, ‘cultural capital’ 8 , 50 , 51 , 52 , 53 ). For instance, academic contexts value interest in the arts, museums and literature 54 , 55 , a type of interest that is more likely to develop through socialization in upper/middle-class families than in working-class socialization 54 , 56 . Indeed, upper/middle-class parents are more likely than working-class parents to engage in activities that develop this cultural capital. For example, they possess more books and cultural objects at home, read more stories to their children and visit museums and libraries more often (for examples, see refs. 51 , 54 , 55 ). Upper/middle-class children are also more involved in extra-curricular activities (for example, playing a musical instrument) than working-class children 55 , 56 , 57 .

Beyond this implicit familiarization with the school curriculum, upper/middle-class parents more often organize educational activities that are explicitly designed to develop academic skills of their children 57 , 58 , 59 . For example, they are more likely to monitor and re-explain lessons or use games and textbooks to develop and reinforce academic skills (for example, labelling numbers, letters or colours 57 , 60 ). Upper/middle-class parents also provide higher levels of support and spend more time helping children with homework than working-class parents (for examples, see refs. 61 , 62 ). Thus, even if all parents are committed to the academic success of their children, working-class parents have fewer chances to provide the help that children need to complete homework 63 , and homework is more beneficial for children from upper-middle class families than for children from working-class families 64 , 65 .

School closures amplify the impact of cultural inequalities

The trends described above have been observed in ‘normal’ times when schools are open. School closures, by making learning rely more strongly on practices implemented at home (rather than at school), are likely to amplify the impact of these disparities. Consistent with this idea, research has shown that the social class achievement gap usually greatly widens during school breaks—a phenomenon described as ‘summer learning loss’ or ‘summer setback’ 66 , 67 , 68 . During holidays, the learning by children tends to decline, and this is particularly pronounced in children from working-class families. Consequently, the social class achievement gap grows more rapidly during the summer months than it does in the rest of the year. This phenomenon is partly explained by the fact that during the break from school, social class disparities in investment in activities that are beneficial for academic achievement (for example, reading, travelling to a foreign country or museum visits) are more pronounced.

Therefore, when they are out of school, children from upper/middle-class backgrounds may continue to develop academic skills unlike their working-class counterparts, who may stagnate or even regress. Research also indicates that learning loss during school breaks tends to be cumulative 66 . Thus, repeated episodes of school closure are likely to have profound consequences for the social class achievement gap. Consistent with the idea that school closures could lead to similar processes as those identified during summer breaks, a recent survey indicated that during the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom, children from upper/middle-class families spent more time on educational activities (5.8 h per day) than those from working-class families (4.5 h per day) 7 , 69 .

Unequal dispositions for autonomy and self-regulation

School closures have encouraged autonomous work among students. This ‘independent’ way of studying is compatible with the family socialization of upper/middle-class students, but does not match the interdependent norms more commonly associated with working-class contexts 9 . Upper/middle-class contexts tend to promote cultural norms of independence whereby individuals perceive themselves as autonomous actors, independent of other individuals and of the social context, able to pursue their own goals 70 . For example, upper/middle-class parents tend to invite children to express their interests, preferences and opinions during the various activities of everyday life 54 , 55 . Conversely, in working-class contexts characterized by low economic resources and where life is more uncertain, individuals tend to perceive themselves as interdependent, connected to others and members of social groups 53 , 70 , 71 . This interdependent self-construal fits less well with the independent culture of academic contexts. This cultural mismatch between interdependent self-construal common in working-class students and the independent norms of the educational institution has negative consequences for academic performance 9 .

Once again, the impact of these differences is likely to be amplified during school closures, when being able to work alone and autonomously is especially useful. The requirement to work alone is more likely to match the independent self-construal of upper/middle-class students than the interdependent self-construal of working-class students. In the case of working-class students, this mismatch is likely to increase their difficulties in working alone at home. Supporting our argument, recent research has shown that working-class students tend to underachieve in contexts where students work individually compared with contexts where students work with others 72 . Similarly, during school closures, high self-regulation skills (for example, setting goals, selecting appropriate learning strategies and maintaining motivation 73 ) are required to maintain study activities and are likely to be especially useful for using digital resources efficiently. Research has shown that students from working-class backgrounds typically develop their self-regulation skills to a lesser extent than those from upper/middle-class backgrounds 74 , 75 , 76 .

Interestingly, some authors have suggested that independent (versus interdependent) self-construal may also affect communication with teachers 77 . Indeed, in the context of distance learning, working-class families are less likely to respond to the communication of teachers because their ‘interdependent’ self leads them to respect hierarchies, and thus perceive teachers as an expert who ‘can be trusted to make the right decisions for learning’. Upper/middle class families, relying on ‘independent’ self-construal, are more inclined to seek individualized feedback, and therefore tend to participate to a greater extent in exchanges with teachers. Such cultural differences are important because they can also contribute to the difficulties encountered by working-class families.

The structural divide: unequal support from schools

The issues reviewed thus far all increase the vulnerability of children and students from underprivileged backgrounds when schools are closed. To offset these disadvantages, it might be expected that the school should increase its support by providing additional resources for working-class students. However, recent data suggest that differences in the material and human resources invested in providing educational support for children during periods of school closure were—paradoxically—in favour of upper/middle-class students (Fig. 1 ). In England, for example, upper/middle-class parents reported benefiting from online classes and video-conferencing with teachers more often than working-class parents 10 . Furthermore, active help from school (for example, online teaching, private tutoring or chats with teachers) occurred more frequently in the richest households (64% of the richest households declared having received help from school) than in the poorest households (47%). Another survey found that in the United Kingdom, upper/middle-class children were more likely to take online lessons every day (30%) than working-class students (16%) 12 . This substantial difference might be due, at least in part, to the fact that private schools are better equipped in terms of online platforms (60% of schools have at least one online platform) than state schools (37%, and 23% in the most deprived schools) and were more likely to organize daily online lessons. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, in schools with a high proportion of students eligible for free school meals, teachers were less inclined to broadcast an online lesson for their pupils 78 . Interestingly, 58% of teachers in the wealthiest areas reported having messaged their students or their students’ parents during lockdown compared with 47% in the most deprived schools. In addition, the probability of children receiving technical support from the school (for example, by providing pupils with laptops or other devices) is, surprisingly, higher in the most advantaged schools than in the most deprived 78 .

In addition to social class disparities, there has been less support from schools for African-American and Latinx students. During school closures in the United States, 40% of African-American students and 30% of Latinx students received no online teaching compared with 10% of white students 79 . Another source of inequality is that the probability of school closure was correlated with social class and race. In the United States, for example, school closures from September to December 2020 were more common in schools with a high proportion of racial/ethnic minority students, who experience homelessness and are eligible for free/discounted school meals 80 .

Similarly, access to educational resources and support was lower in poorer (compared with richer) countries 81 . In sub-Saharan Africa, during lockdown, 45% of children had no exposure at all to any type of remote learning. Of those who did, the medium was mostly radio, television or paper rather than digital. In African countries, at most 10% of children received some material through the Internet. In Latin America, 90% of children received some remote learning, but less than half of that was through the internet—the remainder being via radio and television 81 . In Ecuador, high-school students from the lowest wealth quartile had fewer remote-learning opportunities, such as Google class/Zoom, than students from the highest wealth quartile 31 .

Thus, the achievement gap and its accentuation during lockdown are due not only to the cultural and digital disadvantages of working-class families but also to unequal support from schools. This inequality in school support is not due to teachers being indifferent to or even supportive of social stratification. Rather, we believe that these effects are fundamentally structural. In many countries, schools located in upper/middle-class neighbourhoods have more money than those in the poorest neighbourhoods. Moreover, upper/middle-class parents invest more in the schools of their children than working-class parents (for example, see ref. 82 ), and schools have an interest in catering more for upper/middle-class families than for working-class families 83 . Additionally, the expectation of teachers may be lower for working-class children 84 . For example, they tend to estimate that working-class students invest less effort in learning than their upper/middle-class counterparts 85 . These differences in perception may have influenced the behaviour of teachers during school closure, such that teachers in privileged neighbourhoods provided more information to students because they expected more from them in term of effort and achievement. The fact that upper/middle-class parents are better able than working-class parents to comply with the expectations of teachers (for examples, see refs. 55 , 86 ) may have reinforced this phenomenon. These discrepancies echo data showing that working-class students tend to request less help in their schoolwork than upper/middle-class ones 87 , and they may even avoid asking for help because they believe that such requests could lead to reprimands 88 . During school closures, these students (and their families) may in consequence have been less likely to ask for help and resources. Jointly, these phenomena have resulted in upper/middle-class families receiving more support from schools during lockdown than their working-class counterparts.

Psychological effects of digital, cultural and structural divides

Despite being strongly influenced by social class, differences in academic achievement are often interpreted by parents, teachers and students as reflecting differences in ability 89 . As a result, upper/middle-class students are usually perceived—and perceive themselves—as smarter than working-class students, who are perceived—and perceive themselves—as less intelligent 90 , 91 , 92 or less able to succeed 93 . Working-class students also worry more about the fact that they might perform more poorly than upper/middle-class students 94 , 95 . These fears influence academic learning in important ways. In particular, they can consume cognitive resources when children and students work on academic tasks 96 , 97 . Self-efficacy also plays a key role in engaging in learning and perseverance in the face of difficulties 13 , 98 . In addition, working-class students are those for whom the fear of being outperformed by others is the most negatively related to academic performance 99 .

The fact that working-class children and students are less familiar with the tasks set by teachers, and less well equipped and supported, makes them more likely to experience feelings of incompetence (Fig. 1 ). Working-class parents are also more likely than their upper/middle-class counterparts to feel unable to help their children with schoolwork. Consistent with this, research has shown that both working-class students and parents have lower feelings of academic self-efficacy than their upper/middle-class counterparts 100 , 101 . These differences have been documented under ‘normal’ conditions but are likely to be exacerbated during distance learning. Recent surveys conducted during the school closures have confirmed that upper/middle-class families felt better able to support their children in distance learning than did working-class families 10 and that upper/middle-class parents helped their children more and felt more capable to do so 11 , 12 .

Pandemic disparity, future directions and recommendations

The research reviewed thus far suggests that children and their families are highly unequal with respect to digital access, skills and use. It also shows that upper/middle-class students are more likely to be supported in their homework (by their parents and teachers) than working-class students, and that upper/middle-class students and parents will probably feel better able than working-class ones to adapt to the context of distance learning. For all these reasons, we anticipate that as a result of school closures, the COVID-19 pandemic will substantially increase the social class achievement gap. Because school closures are a recent occurrence, it is too early to measure with precision their effects on the widening of the achievement gap. However, some recent data are consistent with this idea.

Evidence for a widening gap during the pandemic

Comparing academic achievement in 2020 with previous years provides an early indication of the effects of school closures during the pandemic. In France, for example, first and second graders take national evaluations at the beginning of the school year. Initial comparisons of the results for 2020 with those from previous years revealed that the gap between schools classified as ‘priority schools’ (those in low-income urban areas) and schools in higher-income neighbourhoods—a gap observed every year—was particularly pronounced in 2020 in both French and mathematics 102 .

Similarly, in the Netherlands, national assessments take place twice a year. In 2020, they took place both before and after school closures. A recent analysis compared progress during this period in 2020 in mathematics/arithmetic, spelling and reading comprehension for 7–11-year-old students within the same period in the three previous years 103 . Results indicated a general learning loss in 2020. More importantly, for the 8% of working-class children, the losses were 40% greater than they were for upper/middle-class children.

Similar results were observed in Belgium among students attending the final year of primary school. Compared with students from previous cohorts, students affected by school closures experienced a substantial decrease in their mathematics and language scores, with children from more disadvantaged backgrounds experiencing greater learning losses 104 . Likewise, oral reading assessments in more than 100 school districts in the United States showed that the development of this skill among children in second and third grade significantly slowed between Spring and Autumn 2020, but this slowdown was more pronounced in schools from lower-achieving districts 105 .

It is likely that school closures have also amplified racial disparities in learning and achievement. For example, in the United States, after the first lockdown, students of colour lost the equivalent of 3–5 months of learning, whereas white students were about 1–3 months behind. Moreover, in the Autumn, when some students started to return to classrooms, African-American and Latinx students were more likely to continue distance learning, despite being less likely to have access to the digital tools, Internet access and live contact with teachers 106 .

In some African countries (for example, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Tanzania and Uganda), the COVID-19 crisis has resulted in learning loss ranging from 6 months to more 1 year 107 , and this learning loss appears to be greater for working-class children (that is, those attending no-fee schools) than for upper/middle-class children 108 .

These findings show that school closures have exacerbated achievement gaps linked to social class and ethnicity. However, more research is needed to address the question of whether school closures differentially affect the learning of students from working- and upper/middle-class families.

Future directions

First, to assess the specific and unique impact of school closures on student learning, longitudinal research should compare student achievement at different times of the year, before, during and after school closures, as has been done to document the summer learning loss 66 , 109 . In the coming months, alternating periods of school closure and opening may occur, thereby presenting opportunities to do such research. This would also make it possible to examine whether the gap diminishes a few weeks after children return to in-school learning or whether, conversely, it increases with time because the foundations have not been sufficiently acquired to facilitate further learning 110 .

Second, the mechanisms underlying the increase in social class disparities during school closures should be examined. As discussed above, school closures result in situations for which students are unevenly prepared and supported. It would be appropriate to seek to quantify the contribution of each of the factors that might be responsible for accentuating the social class achievement gap. In particular, distinguishing between factors that are relatively ‘controllable’ (for example, resources made available to pupils) and those that are more difficult to control (for example, the self-efficacy of parents in supporting the schoolwork of their children) is essential to inform public policy and teaching practices.

Third, existing studies are based on general comparisons and very few provide insights into the actual practices that took place in families during school closure and how these practices affected the achievement gap. For example, research has documented that parents from working-class backgrounds are likely to find it more difficult to help their children to complete homework and to provide constructive feedback 63 , 111 , something that could in turn have a negative impact on the continuity of learning of their children. In addition, it seems reasonable to assume that during lockdown, parents from upper/middle-class backgrounds encouraged their children to engage in practices that, even if not explicitly requested by teachers, would be beneficial to learning (for example, creative activities or reading). Identifying the practices that best predict the maintenance or decline of educational achievement during school closures would help identify levers for intervention.

Finally, it would be interesting to investigate teaching practices during school closures. The lockdown in the spring of 2020 was sudden and unexpected. Within a few days, teachers had to find a way to compensate for the school closure, which led to highly variable practices. Some teachers posted schoolwork on platforms, others sent it by email, some set work on a weekly basis while others set it day by day. Some teachers also set up live sessions in large or small groups, providing remote meetings for questions and support. There have also been variations in the type of feedback given to students, notably through the monitoring and correcting of work. Future studies should examine in more detail what practices schools and teachers used to compensate for the school closures and their effects on widening, maintaining or even reducing the gap, as has been done for certain specific literacy programmes 112 as well as specific instruction topics (for example, ecology and evolution 113 ).

Practical recommendations

We are aware of the debate about whether social science research on COVID-19 is suitable for making policy decisions 114 , and we draw attention to the fact that some of our recommendations (Table 1 ) are based on evidence from experiments or interventions carried out pre-COVID while others are more speculative. In any case, we emphasize that these suggestions should be viewed with caution and be tested in future research. Some of our recommendations could be implemented in the event of new school closures, others only when schools re-open. We also acknowledge that while these recommendations are intended for parents and teachers, their implementation largely depends on the adoption of structural policies. Importantly, given all the issues discussed above, we emphasize the importance of prioritizing, wherever possible, in-person learning over remote learning 115 and where this is not possible, of implementing strong policies to support distance learning, especially for disadvantaged families.

Where face-to face teaching is not possible and teachers are responsible for implementing distance learning, it will be important to make them aware of the factors that can exacerbate inequalities during lockdown and to provide them with guidance about practices that would reduce these inequalities. Thus, there is an urgent need for interventions aimed at making teachers aware of the impact of the social class of children and families on the following factors: (1) access to, familiarity with and use of digital devices; (2) familiarity with academic knowledge and skills; and (3) preparedness to work autonomously. Increasing awareness of the material, cultural and psychological barriers that working-class children and families face during lockdown should increase the quality and quantity of the support provided by teachers and thereby positively affect the achievements of working-class students.

In addition to increasing the awareness of teachers of these barriers, teachers should be encouraged to adjust the way they communicate with working-class families due to differences in self-construal compared with upper/middle-class families 77 . For example, questions about family (rather than personal) well-being would be congruent with interdependent self-construals. This should contribute to better communication and help keep a better track of the progress of students during distance learning.

It is also necessary to help teachers to engage in practices that have a chance of reducing inequalities 53 , 116 . Particularly important is that teachers and schools ensure that homework can be done by all children, for example, by setting up organizations that would help children whose parents are not in a position to monitor or assist with the homework of their children. Options include homework help groups and tutoring by teachers after class. When schools are open, the growing tendency to set homework through digital media should be resisted as far as possible given the evidence we have reviewed above. Moreover, previous research has underscored the importance of homework feedback provided by teachers, which is positively related to the amount of homework completed and predictive of academic performance 117 . Where homework is web-based, it has also been shown that feedback on web-based homework enhances the learning of students 118 . It therefore seems reasonable to predict that the social class achievement gap will increase more slowly (or even remain constant or be reversed) in schools that establish individualized monitoring of students, by means of regular calls and feedback on homework, compared with schools where the support provided to pupils is more generic.

Given that learning during lockdown has increasingly taken place in family settings, we believe that interventions involving the family are also likely to be effective 119 , 120 , 121 . Simply providing families with suitable material equipment may be insufficient. Families should be given training in the efficient use of digital technology and pedagogical support. This would increase the self-efficacy of parents and students, with positive consequences for achievement. Ideally, such training would be delivered in person to avoid problems arising from the digital divide. Where this is not possible, individualized online tutoring should be provided. For example, studies conducted during the lockdown in Botswana and Italy have shown that individual online tutoring directly targeting either parents or students in middle school has a positive impact on the achievement of students, particularly for working-class students 122 , 123 .

Interventions targeting families should also address the psychological barriers faced by working-class families and children. Some interventions have already been designed and been shown to be effective in reducing the social class achievement gap, particularly in mathematics and language 124 , 125 , 126 . For example, research showed that an intervention designed to train low-income parents in how to support the mathematical development of their pre-kindergarten children (including classes and access to a library of kits to use at home) increased the quality of support provided by the parents, with a corresponding impact on the development of mathematical knowledge of their children. Such interventions should be particularly beneficial in the context of school closure.

Beyond its impact on academic performance and inequalities, the COVID-19 crisis has shaken the economies of countries around the world, casting millions of families around the world into poverty 127 , 128 , 129 . As noted earlier, there has been a marked increase in economic inequalities, bringing with it all the psychological and social problems that such inequalities create 130 , 131 , especially for people who live in scarcity 132 . The increase in educational inequalities is just one facet of the many difficulties that working-class families will encounter in the coming years, but it is one that could seriously limit the chances of their children escaping from poverty by reducing their opportunities for upward mobility. In this context, it should be a priority to concentrate resources on the most deprived students. A large proportion of the poorest households do not own a computer and do not have personal access to the Internet, which has important consequences for distance learning. During school closures, it is therefore imperative to provide such families with adequate equipment and Internet service, as was done in some countries in spring 2020. Even if the provision of such equipment is not in itself sufficient, it is a necessary condition for ensuring pedagogical continuity during lockdown.

Finally, after prolonged periods of school closure, many students may not have acquired the skills needed to pursue their education. A possible consequence would be an increase in the number of students for whom teachers recommend class repetitions. Class repetitions are contentious. On the one hand, class repetition more frequently affects working-class children and is not efficient in terms of learning improvement 133 . On the other hand, accepting lower standards of academic achievement or even suspending the practice of repeating a class could lead to pupils pursuing their education without mastering the key abilities needed at higher grades. This could create difficulties in subsequent years and, in this sense, be counterproductive. We therefore believe that the most appropriate way to limit the damage of the pandemic would be to help children catch up rather than allowing them to continue without mastering the necessary skills. As is being done in some countries, systematic remedial courses (for example, summer learning programmes) should be organized and financially supported following periods of school closure, with priority given to pupils from working-class families. Such interventions have genuine potential in that research has shown that participation in remedial summer programmes is effective in reducing learning loss during the summer break 134 , 135 , 136 . For example, in one study 137 , 438 students from high-poverty schools were offered a multiyear summer school programme that included various pedagogical and enrichment activities (for example, science investigation and music) and were compared with a ‘no-treatment’ control group. Students who participated in the summer programme progressed more than students in the control group. A meta-analysis 138 of 41 summer learning programmes (that is, classroom- and home-based summer interventions) involving children from kindergarten to grade 8 showed that these programmes had significantly larger benefits for children from working-class families. Although such measures are costly, the cost is small compared to the price of failing to fulfil the academic potential of many students simply because they were not born into upper/middle-class families.

The unprecedented nature of the current pandemic means that we lack strong data on what the school closure period is likely to produce in terms of learning deficits and the reproduction of social inequalities. However, the research discussed in this article suggests that there are good reasons to predict that this period of school closures will accelerate the reproduction of social inequalities in educational achievement.

By making school learning less dependent on teachers and more dependent on families and digital tools and resources, school closures are likely to greatly amplify social class inequalities. At a time when many countries are experiencing second, third or fourth waves of the pandemic, resulting in fresh periods of local or general lockdowns, systematic efforts to test these predictions are urgently needed along with steps to reduce the impact of school closures on the social class achievement gap.

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We thank G. Reis for editing the figure. The writing of this manuscript was supported by grant ANR-19-CE28-0007–PRESCHOOL from the French National Research Agency (S.G.).

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Goudeau, S., Sanrey, C., Stanczak, A. et al. Why lockdown and distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to increase the social class achievement gap. Nat Hum Behav 5 , 1273–1281 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01212-7

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The COVID-19 pandemic has changed education forever. This is how 

With schools shut across the world, millions of children have had to adapt to new types of learning. Image:  REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes

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Stay up to date:, education, gender and work.

• The COVID-19 has resulted in schools shut all across the world. Globally, over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom.
• As a result, education has changed dramatically, with the distinctive rise of e-learning, whereby teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms.
• Research suggests that online learning has been shown to increase retention of information, and take less time, meaning the changes coronavirus have caused might be here to stay.

While countries are at different points in their COVID-19 infection rates, worldwide there are currently more than 1.2 billion children in 186 countries affected by school closures due to the pandemic. In Denmark, children up to the age of 11 are returning to nurseries and schools after initially closing on 12 March , but in South Korea students are responding to roll calls from their teachers online .

With this sudden shift away from the classroom in many parts of the globe, some are wondering whether the adoption of online learning will continue to persist post-pandemic, and how such a shift would impact the worldwide education market.

Even before COVID-19, there was already high growth and adoption in education technology, with global edtech investments reaching US$18.66 billion in 2019 and the overall market for online education projected to reach $350 Billion by 2025 . Whether it is language apps , virtual tutoring , video conferencing tools, or online learning software , there has been a significant surge in usage since COVID-19.

How is the education sector responding to COVID-19?

In response to significant demand, many online learning platforms are offering free access to their services, including platforms like BYJU’S , a Bangalore-based educational technology and online tutoring firm founded in 2011, which is now the world’s most highly valued edtech company . Since announcing free live classes on its Think and Learn app, BYJU’s has seen a 200% increase in the number of new students using its product, according to Mrinal Mohit, the company's Chief Operating Officer.

Tencent classroom, meanwhile, has been used extensively since mid-February after the Chinese government instructed a quarter of a billion full-time students to resume their studies through online platforms. This resulted in the largest “online movement” in the history of education with approximately 730,000 , or 81% of K-12 students, attending classes via the Tencent K-12 Online School in Wuhan.

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Other companies are bolstering capabilities to provide a one-stop shop for teachers and students. For example, Lark, a Singapore-based collaboration suite initially developed by ByteDance as an internal tool to meet its own exponential growth, began offering teachers and students unlimited video conferencing time, auto-translation capabilities, real-time co-editing of project work, and smart calendar scheduling, amongst other features. To do so quickly and in a time of crisis, Lark ramped up its global server infrastructure and engineering capabilities to ensure reliable connectivity.

Alibaba’s distance learning solution, DingTalk, had to prepare for a similar influx: “To support large-scale remote work, the platform tapped Alibaba Cloud to deploy more than 100,000 new cloud servers in just two hours last month – setting a new record for rapid capacity expansion,” according to DingTalk CEO, Chen Hang.

Some school districts are forming unique partnerships, like the one between The Los Angeles Unified School District and PBS SoCal/KCET to offer local educational broadcasts, with separate channels focused on different ages, and a range of digital options. Media organizations such as the BBC are also powering virtual learning; Bitesize Daily , launched on 20 April, is offering 14 weeks of curriculum-based learning for kids across the UK with celebrities like Manchester City footballer Sergio Aguero teaching some of the content.

What does this mean for the future of learning?

While some believe that the unplanned and rapid move to online learning – with no training, insufficient bandwidth, and little preparation – will result in a poor user experience that is unconducive to sustained growth, others believe that a new hybrid model of education will emerge, with significant benefits. “I believe that the integration of information technology in education will be further accelerated and that online education will eventually become an integral component of school education,“ says Wang Tao, Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Vice President of Tencent Education.

There have already been successful transitions amongst many universities. For example, Zhejiang University managed to get more than 5,000 courses online just two weeks into the transition using “DingTalk ZJU”. The Imperial College London started offering a course on the science of coronavirus, which is now the most enrolled class launched in 2020 on Coursera .

Many are already touting the benefits: Dr Amjad, a Professor at The University of Jordan who has been using Lark to teach his students says, “It has changed the way of teaching. It enables me to reach out to my students more efficiently and effectively through chat groups, video meetings, voting and also document sharing, especially during this pandemic. My students also find it is easier to communicate on Lark. I will stick to Lark even after coronavirus, I believe traditional offline learning and e-learning can go hand by hand."

These 3 charts show the global growth in online learning

The challenges of online learning.

There are, however, challenges to overcome. Some students without reliable internet access and/or technology struggle to participate in digital learning; this gap is seen across countries and between income brackets within countries. For example, whilst 95% of students in Switzerland, Norway, and Austria have a computer to use for their schoolwork, only 34% in Indonesia do, according to OECD data .

In the US, there is a significant gap between those from privileged and disadvantaged backgrounds: whilst virtually all 15-year-olds from a privileged background said they had a computer to work on, nearly 25% of those from disadvantaged backgrounds did not. While some schools and governments have been providing digital equipment to students in need, such as in New South Wales , Australia, many are still concerned that the pandemic will widenthe digital divide .

Is learning online as effective?

For those who do have access to the right technology, there is evidence that learning online can be more effective in a number of ways. Some research shows that on average, students retain 25-60% more material when learning online compared to only 8-10% in a classroom. This is mostly due to the students being able to learn faster online; e-learning requires 40-60% less time to learn than in a traditional classroom setting because students can learn at their own pace, going back and re-reading, skipping, or accelerating through concepts as they choose.

Nevertheless, the effectiveness of online learning varies amongst age groups. The general consensus on children, especially younger ones, is that a structured environment is required , because kids are more easily distracted. To get the full benefit of online learning, there needs to be a concerted effort to provide this structure and go beyond replicating a physical class/lecture through video capabilities, instead, using a range of collaboration tools and engagement methods that promote “inclusion, personalization and intelligence”, according to Dowson Tong, Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent and President of its Cloud and Smart Industries Group.

Since studies have shown that children extensively use their senses to learn, making learning fun and effective through use of technology is crucial, according to BYJU's Mrinal Mohit. “Over a period, we have observed that clever integration of games has demonstrated higher engagement and increased motivation towards learning especially among younger students, making them truly fall in love with learning”, he says.

A changing education imperative

It is clear that this pandemic has utterly disrupted an education system that many assert was already losing its relevance . In his book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century , scholar Yuval Noah Harari outlines how schools continue to focus on traditional academic skills and rote learning , rather than on skills such as critical thinking and adaptability, which will be more important for success in the future. Could the move to online learning be the catalyst to create a new, more effective method of educating students? While some worry that the hasty nature of the transition online may have hindered this goal, others plan to make e-learning part of their ‘new normal’ after experiencing the benefits first-hand.

The importance of disseminating knowledge is highlighted through COVID-19

Major world events are often an inflection point for rapid innovation – a clear example is the rise of e-commerce post-SARS . While we have yet to see whether this will apply to e-learning post-COVID-19, it is one of the few sectors where investment has not dried up . What has been made clear through this pandemic is the importance of disseminating knowledge across borders, companies, and all parts of society. If online learning technology can play a role here, it is incumbent upon all of us to explore its full potential.

Our education system is losing relevance. Here's how to unleash its potential

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Original research article, impact of the covid-19 pandemic on online learning in higher education: a bibliometric analysis.

• 1 Faculty of Public Administration, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
• 2 Department of Primary Level Education, University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted higher education by forcing the transition to online learning, which became a mandatory teaching process during the lockdowns. Although the epidemiological situation has gradually improved since then, online learning is becoming ever more popular as it provides new learning opportunities. Therefore, the paper aims to present recent research trends concerning online learning in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic by using selected bibliometric approaches. The bibliometric analysis is based on 8,303 documents from the Scopus database published between January 2020 and March 2022, when repeated lockdowns meant most countries were experiencing constant disruptions to the educational process. The results show that the COVID-19 pandemic increased interest in online learning research, notably in English-speaking and Asian countries, with most research being published in open-access scientific journals. Moreover, the topics most frequently discussed in the online learning research during the COVID-19 pandemic were ICT and pedagogy, technology-enhanced education, mental health and well-being, student experience and curriculum and professional development. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged explorations of emergency remote learning approaches like e-learning, distance learning and virtual learning, which are intended to limit physical contact between teachers and students, where the specific requirements of a given field of study often guide which online learning approach is the most suitable. The findings add to the existing body of scientific knowledge and support the evidence-based policymaking needed to ensure sustainable higher education in the future.

1. Introduction

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted higher education by forcing the transition to online learning, which became a mandatory teaching process during the lockdowns ( Aristovnik et al., 2020a ). Despite the educational process saw disruptions on all levels of education, i.e., primary, secondary and tertiary ( Tang, 2023 ), as well as in adult education ( James and Thériault, 2020 ), worker education ( Dedeilia et al., 2023 ) and lifelong education ( Waller et al., 2020 ), higher education students proved to be one of the worst affected groups because the social distancing measures, on top of their education, challenged their financial and housing situation ( Aristovnik et al., 2020a ). Challenges arising from the density of students in educational facilities (e.g., campuses, faculties, dormitories etc.) meant higher education institutions were forced to offer education relying on various information and communication technologies (ICTs) and tried to ensure education comparable in quality to traditional learning, noting that the quality of online learning delivery holds important implications for student satisfaction and student performance ( Keržič et al., 2021 ). Nevertheless, the lockdown periods were devastating for many students also in terms of their emotional functioning ( Raccanello et al., 2022 ). The COVID-19 pandemic eventually grew more predictable and manageable, allowing higher education institutions to gradually shift back to traditional learning approaches. Although the epidemiological situation has improved over time, online learning is becoming increasingly popular as it provides new learning opportunities, especially when combined with traditional learning.

The rapid, yet from the health protection point of view necessary ( Aristovnik et al., 2020b ), shift from traditional learning to online learning considerably affected teaching and learning. The transition to online learning was made without adequate consideration of whether the study materials and teaching methods were suitable for this mode of higher education delivery. This was an ad hoc shift in a situation of great uncertainty for both teachers and students. The transition to online learning has also brought to the surface gaps in higher education providers’ preparedness and their lack of ICT infrastructure, resulting in unequal access to quality education for all, particularly students from rural areas and regions with lower socio-economic development. It is important to note here that the rapid shift to an online learning environment in emergency circumstances should not be confused with properly planned online education equipped with appropriate infrastructure that enables and supports pedagogical work and study in an online environment ( Hodges et al., 2020 ; Fuchs, 2022 ; Misiejuk et al., 2023 ). Apart from the changes in teaching and learning, the social aspect of students’ lives has been affected as well. The most worrying consequence has been social isolation leading to a lack of crucial social interaction for students ( Elmer et al., 2020 ; Bonsaksen et al., 2021 ; Fried et al., 2021 ; Van der Graaf et al., 2021 ) and in some cases also in coronavirus-related post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) ( Ochnik et al., 2021 ). According to Gavriluţă et al. (2022) , three dimensions affected students during the COVID-19 pandemic: educational, social, and emotional. The transition from traditional to online learning entailed a significant transformation in education, requiring changes in teaching practices and new learning approaches. Further, the social aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns is evident in the absence of relational, economic and professional problems (in)directly affecting the transition to adulthood. The new reality changed attitudes to various aspects of life and, in turn, also affected emotional responsiveness. Briefly, substantial changes to everyday student lives were made during the COVID-19 pandemic that may hold far-reaching effects of currently unknown scope in the near and distant future ( Campos et al., 2022 ; Gao et al., 2022 ; Keržič et al., 2022 ; Rasli et al., 2022 ).

Therefore, the educational community requires greater insights into different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on online learning, e.g., students, teachers, pedagogy, ICT technology, online learning approaches and implications for various fields of study. In the context of higher education, some bibliometric studies (e.g., Gurcan et al., 2022 ; Saqr et al., 2023 ) have already sought to address issues involving online learning during the pandemic. Yet, they relied on a limited and narrow bibliographic dataset of peer-reviewed literature or lacked a qualitative synthesis of the results beyond the metrics, thereby neglecting some general comprehensive outlines of the global research into the topic ( Saqr et al., 2023 ). Moreover, despite some bibliometric studies focusing on technical aspects (e.g., Navarro-Espinosa et al., 2021 ; Bozkurt, 2022 ; Tlili et al., 2022 ), the identification of the most effective ICT tools for specific online learning approaches remains unclear. Finally, there are also some bibliometric studies that attempt to determine the effectiveness of online learning in providing higher education ( Brika et al., 2021 ; Baber et al., 2022 ; Bilal et al., 2022 ; Bozkurt, 2022 ; Fauzi, 2022 ; Küçük-Avci et al., 2022 ; Yan et al., 2022 ), however, they often overlook the specific requirements of individual fields of study, thereby neglecting the crucial aspect of tailoring online learning provision to different disciplines.

The bibliometric study presented in the paper accordingly aims to fill the presented gaps in the literature. Specifically, it aims to present a global overview of the recent research trends in online learning in higher education using a comprehensive dataset of literature encompassing different varieties of online learning approaches that can facilitate online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, provide some relevant qualitative synthesis of the results beyond the metrics and examine the relationships between ICT tools, online learning approaches and fields of study. Thus, the present bibliometric study, focusing on higher education, tries to answer the following three research questions:

• RQ1: What is the current state of the online learning research by conducting a descriptive overview and identifying top-cited documents?

• RQ2: What is the scientific production of online learning research across countries and sources?

• RQ3: Which are the main research hotspots and concepts in online learning research?

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. The next section provides a literature review of recent bibliometric studies. The following section outlines the materials and methods applied in the study before the results of the present bibliometric analysis are described in the next section. At the end, the final section provides a discussion and conclusion while summarizing the main findings and implications.

2. Literature review

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led many governments to expand the use of online learning approaches as a solution to the global health challenge. Researchers thus showed rising interest in investigating the field of online learning, its dimensions, and its trends on all levels of education, particularly higher education. Such research relied heavily on bibliometric approaches to analyzing scientific research in the higher education context. Pham et al. (2022) concluded based on the 414 articles that although in the decades prior, there was an increase in the number of articles touching on the components of e-learning, such as the learning management system, this rise was accelerated during the pandemic in both developed and developing countries. This may be attributed to the attention of governmental policies that considered the topic of e-learning to be critical and worthy of priority. Similarly, Fauzi (2022) investigated 1,496 articles and concluded that the research focused on a few specific topics. The first is the delivery factor, which refers to selecting the appropriate learning practices. The second is the health and safety factor that relates to minimizing any risk that e-learning could bring to the mental and physical health of learners or teachers, such as stress, anxiety or even depression. The third topic refers to the field of study and the impact of e-learning. In areas like medical education, where clinical activities and labs have to be attended in person, some online learning approaches might be less appropriate than when used in other areas, such as social studies, where the requirements are less complex or different. Zhang et al. (2022) confirmed this finding after performing bibliometric research on 1,061 articles published between January 2020 and August 2021. They explained that theorists and researchers showed a growing interest in ways to respond to crises, such as the pandemic, and how to develop the best practices to ensure the quality and efficiency of e-learning. Examples of such practices might be inquiry-oriented learning and hands-on activities. This could derive from the already existing tendency of education researchers to respond to unprecedented global challenges or changes. The authors explain that this conclusion addresses interest in e-learning practices holistically.

In the same context, Yan et al. (2022) employed a bibliometric approach and identified that various digital tools are used in e-learning in the field of health studies. After investigating 132 studies, they concluded that selecting appropriate tools depends on many factors, including the field of a given course, the aims, and their effectiveness. They add that these findings can be significant for groups of people such as experts or trainee teachers. Okoro et al. (2022) researched 1,722 articles published between 2012 and 2021 and detected a surge in interest in the mental health of postgraduate students, as revealed by the research trends discussed in these articles. Still, they describe this surge as having been greater between 2020 and 2021, which may be attributed to the COVID-19 restrictions and their implications. Moreover, they believe that this research focus will likely continue soon.

After looking at 2,307 articles published between 2017 and 2021, Baber et al. (2022) detected an increasing trend in researching digital literacy. While this was underway before the pandemic, the latter caused a statistically significant further surge. Digital literacy is approached in the studied articles through parameters like instruction, teachers, learners, ICT and its applications, content knowledge, competencies, skills, perceptions, and higher education. It is also associated with acquiring the qualities required to deal with topics such as misinformation, fake news, technological content knowledge, health literacy, COVID-19, and distance education. The authors state that their study identified dynamics hidden in these research trends, which will likely continue in the next few years.

In higher education specifically, based on 602 articles, Brika et al. (2021) corroborated the growing trend of publishing articles on e-learning during the pandemic and outlined certain sub-topics of it, namely: motivation and students’ attitudes; blended and virtual learning comparison; types of online assessment; stress, anxiety and mental health; strategies to improve learners’ skills; quality; performance of the education delivered; challenges; and the potential of technology to lead to change and reform of higher education syllabi or curricula. The scope of those articles was to paint a bigger picture of how higher education communities and institutions use and treat online learning. This is expected to help with efficient decision-making in the future in order to have better results and functions in higher education and appropriate response to crises.

The bibliometric studies carried out during the pandemic identified a trend among researchers in higher education institutions to investigate more the technology factor and how the progress of the Internet, along with information and communication technologies generally, can further assist new modes of learning, such as online learning and distance learning. This might be attributed to a vision for a better means for new types of learning, as Küçük-Avci et al. (2022) claimed after carrying out a bibliometric analysis of 1,547 articles published between 2020 and 2021. The authors detected certain trends regarding distance learning in higher education. A main finding of their study, along with the increase in studies on distance education and e-learning in higher education, is that before the pandemic, the fact that these approaches were not so mandatory meant there was greater efficiency, probably due to the learners’ motivation. The authors further claim that researchers show a stronger interest in the technological means that can assist these types of learning. In addition, while researching 1,986 articles, Bozkurt (2022) established an increase in the implementation of blended learning by researchers who also aim to investigate the relationship between technological applications and learning institutions. Within these tendencies, researchers consider four thematic fields: a comparison of online and onsite learning with regard to effectiveness and efficiency; the experience, impressions and attitudes of stakeholders and learning community members with respect to blended learning; teacher training and curriculum development that will assure the appropriate and challenge-free implementation of blended learning; and the use of mostly a quantitative approach to research of blended learning.

Bilal et al. (2022) also examined research trends concerned with e-learning in higher education during the COVID-19 period by researching 1,595 studies published between 2020 and 2021. The four main trends they identified were supplementary to those mentioned by other authors: the first is about the challenges regarding online learning or blended learning along with the appropriate strategies in response; the second is student-centered collaborative learning and appropriate curriculum design; the third concerns home-based learning through a type of laboratory and the general conditions surrounding it; and the fourth addresses teachers’ background, training, professional competencies and interdisciplinary learning.

Tlili et al. (2022) focused on mapping COVID-19’s impact on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The overall finding from the 108 articles they considered is that there has been growing interest in these courses generally, and more specifically in research around their function and quality. This interest encompasses the main features of such courses, which provide easy accessibility and flexibility. However, they noted that this interest followed another trend among researchers in the context. In other words, the countries that published on MOOCs before the pandemic are the same countries that published during the period under study. Moreover, they stated that there is interest in the technical characteristics and requirements of such courses. Finally, the authors concluded that although most MOOCs were ICT courses, research has escalated into courses that refer to business, personal development or the humanities.

Several conclusions can be drawn from the above bibliometric studies. First, the series of bibliometric studies conducted during the pandemic demonstrates the rise of interest in online learning in higher education during the pandemic. Of course, there was a tendency toward e-learning before the pandemic, but between 2020 and 2022, this seems to have accelerated. The phenomenon is more intense in countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, India and China. Concerning the area of study, the focus of researchers appears to be greater in fields such as Engineering, Sciences, and Health Sciences, albeit all fields seem to be investigated ( Djeki et al., 2022 ; Pham et al., 2022 ; Vaicondam et al., 2022 ; Zhang et al., 2022 ). Various studies have focused on determining the effectiveness of e-learning classes and courses or pointing out parameters that influence their effectiveness. These could be the appropriate conditions or subtopics like motivation, blended learning, learning tools, teacher training, cooperation between different institutions or efficient practices ( Brika et al., 2021 ; Baber et al., 2022 ; Bilal et al., 2022 ; Bozkurt, 2022 ; Fauzi, 2022 ; Küçük-Avci et al., 2022 ; Yan et al., 2022 ). A specific trend of authors is to examine virtual classes and laboratories ( Kartimi et al., 2022 ; Rojas-Sánchez et al., 2022 ; Zhang et al., 2022 ). Finally, there is a focus on the technology factor. Namely, researchers have concentrated on technical issues and conditions related to e-learning courses and their proper functioning ( Navarro-Espinosa et al., 2021 ; Bozkurt, 2022 ; Tlili et al., 2022 ).

3. Materials and methods

Comprehensive bibliometric data on online learning research during the COVID-19 pandemic were retrieved on 1 March 2022 from Scopus, a world-leading bibliographic database of peer-reviewed literature. The Scopus database was preferred because it has a broader coverage of scientific research than other databases such as Web of Science ( Falagas et al., 2008 ). This was confirmed by an initial search using the same search query in each database, revealing that Scopus provided more relevant documents than Web of Science. Moreover, compared to the Scopus database, the Web of Science has been found to be a database that significantly underrepresents the scientific disciplines of the Social Sciences and the Arts and Humanities ( Mongeon and Paul-Hus, 2016 ). Although English dominates in both Scopus and Web of Science, Scopus generally offers wider coverage of non-English documents, given that the titles, abstracts, and keywords are in English ( Vera-Baceta et al., 2019 ). According to the basic statistical theory, which can also be applied in the context of bibliometric analysis, larger samples lead to analytical outcomes that are likely to be more accurate ( Rogers et al., 2020 ). Therefore, Scopus appears to be a more relevant bibliographic database meeting the specifics of online learning research during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The search strategy was based on title, abstract, and keywords search using the advanced search engine and the search query covered keywords related to different online learning types (using the Boolean operator ‘OR’) and the COVID-19 pandemic (using the Boolean operator ‘AND’). The search was further limited to the period 2020–2022 (using the Boolean operator ‘AND’) to capture documents published between January 2020 and March 2022, when most countries were experiencing constant disruptions in the educational process imposed by repeated lockdowns. As the search query had no language restrictions, the full text of the obtained documents can be in any language, provided that the titles, abstracts, and keywords are in English. Therefore, the language has no impact on the results, as the bibliometric analysis is conducted solely based on the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the documents. According to the presented search query, 9,921 documents were obtained. After further revising the obtained documents, it was identified that some of them are not explicitly related to the context of higher education. By machine screening of documents by title, abstract, and keywords, those related to lower levels of education (i.e., primary and secondary education), as well as adult and worker education (i.e., lifelong education), were excluded from the database. There were 1,618 or 16% of such documents. The remaining 8,303 documents were identified as eligible for further bibliometric examination of online learning research during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bibliometric analysis utilized several bibliometric approaches ( Figure 1 ).

Figure 1 . Bibliometric approaches used in the bibliometric analysis. Own elaboration.

First, a descriptive overview was conducted to examine particular general bibliometric items, including timespan, number of (all, cited, single-authored) documents, authors, sources and author keywords and authors, references, and citations per document as well as to identify the most relevant documents. Scientific production was also examined to determine the most relevant countries and sources. Finally, network analysis was performed to identify the research hotspots according to the keyword co-occurrence network and examine the relationship between the main concepts based on a three-field plot analysis. The presented bibliometric approaches required the use of several different software tools. The descriptive overview was conducted using the Python Data Analysis Library Pandas ( McKinney, 2012 ), scientific production was visualized by the Python Visualization Library Matplotlib ( Hunter, 2007 ), while network analysis was performed using VOSviewer (keyword co-occurrence) ( Van Eck and Waltman, 2010 ) and the Python Visualization Library Plotly (a three-field plot) ( Pandey and Panchal, 2020 ). Specifically, the calculation for the three-field plot analysis included the following steps. Suppose that C 1 , C 2 , … , C m are analysed concepts where each concept C i is defined by a set of keywords and represented by binary indicators W i 1 , W i 2 , … , W i k i , expressed as C i = max j = 1 , … , k i W i j for i = 1 , … , m (matrix column). Using this notation, the relationship between C i and C j can be defined as C 1 T ∗ C j (matrix multiplication) where i and j are from three different sets (ICT tools, online learning approaches, fields of study).

The descriptive overview presented in Table 1 shows the main characteristics of online learning and COVID-19 research in the higher education context. This research area covers a total of 8,303 documents (of which 7,922 (95%) have the full text in English) published in 2,447 sources between January 2020 and March 2022. Slightly less than half (46%) of these documents have at least one citation, while a relatively small number (15%) were written by a single author. The average number of references per document in this research area is 31.39, which is below the general scientific area of Educational Research (44.00) ( Patience et al., 2017 ), suggesting that online learning research during the COVID-19 pandemic is grounded on fewer existing studies than general research. Finally, 3.50 citations per document can be observed for this research area. Due to the potential benefits of online learning, especially when combined with the traditional learning approaches and hence the development of the blended learning environment, this research is expected to further develop and be extended in the ensuing years ( Fauzi, 2022 ). Further, upon analyzing the documents, it is evident that the average year of references is 2014.03, with an h-index of 60 (indicating at least 60 papers with 60 or more citations each) and a g-index of 94 (denoting that the top 94 publications have accumulated citations equal to or greater than the square of 94). Finally, it was found that within the examined dataset, a total of 1,334 documents (16%) have achieved a minimum of 5 citations (C5), while 691 documents (8%) have attained at least 10 citations (C10), 302 documents (4%) have obtained a minimum of 20 citations (C20), 79 documents (1%) have acquired at least 50 citations (C50), and 31 documents (0.4%) have obtained more than 100 citations (C100).

Table 1 . Descriptive overview of online learning and COVID-19 research (2020–2022).

The most relevant (top-10) highly cited documents in online learning and COVID-19 research in the context of higher education are shown in Table 2 . The overview of the most relevant documents reveals several important topics that were intensively discussed. The first most relevant topic concerns ICT. The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges for higher education, especially for medical and surgical education, which requires personal attendance in clinical activities and labs. Accordingly, several innovative ICT tools (i.e., videoconferencing, social media, and telemedicine) and online learning approaches (i.e., flipped classroom or blended learning and virtual learning) were proposed to address this challenge. It is also stressed that by using appropriately established ICT solutions, online learning can lead to more sustainable education ( Adedoyin and Soykan, 2020 ; Chick et al., 2020 ; Dedeilia et al., 2020 ).

Table 2 . Most relevant documents in online learning and COVID-19 research (2020–2022).

The next top-cited topic relates to pedagogy. The disruption of education around the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic required teachers to possess specific pedagogical content knowledge related to designing and organizing better learning experiences with digital technologies. At the same time, challenges for online assessment and post-pandemic pedagogy are also highlighted ( García Peñalvo et al., 2020 ; Iyer et al., 2020 ; Murphy, 2020 ; Rapanta et al., 2020 ). Finally, life and work is another of the most cited topics. Namely, the COVID-19 pandemic has considerably reshaped education and other aspects of life and work, often also through the perspective of mental health or emotional well-being ( Dwivedi et al., 2020 ; Kapasia et al., 2020 ; Aristovnik et al., 2020a ).

Furthermore, it is noteworthy that all of the highly cited documents were published in 2020. However, it is also evident that there are notable and highly relevant publications that emerged in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, there are two documents with a minimum of 100 citations published in 2021. In the COVID-19 pandemic context, Watermeyer et al. (2021) , with 148 citations, examined the implications of digital disruption in universities within the United Kingdom, highlighting the challenges and opportunities arising from the emergency shift to online learning. Meanwhile, Pokhrel and Chhetri (2021) conducted a literature review to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teaching and learning.

The scientific production across countries and sources is presented in terms of the number of documents and citations, whereby additional information is provided by a circle’s size, revealing the h-index as a measure of the scientific impact ( Harzing and Van Der Wal, 2009 ) and by its color, presenting the time dimension in scientific production. The most relevant (top-10) highly cited countries in online learning and COVID-19 research are shown in Figure 2 . While the United States of America stands out among all countries, the United Kingdom, China and India have a relatively large number of documents and citations. The findings are similar to those of other bibliometric studies on this topic ( Saqr et al., 2023 ).

Figure 2 . Most relevant countries in online learning and COVID-19 research (2020–2022). Own elaboration based on the Scopus database.

The most relevant (top-10) highly cited sources in online learning and COVID-19 research in the context of higher education are presented in Figure 3 . Despite conference proceedings being prominent in terms of the relatively high number of documents, the most prominent journals, considering the number of citations, are Journal of Chemical Education, with the highest number of citations as well as documents, followed by Sustainability, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, and Education Sciences. More specifically, the most relevant journals address different topics. First, Journal of Chemical Education covers the attempts, successes and failures of distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic in chemistry education. It covers various topics, including the development of at-home practical activities ( Schultz et al., 2020 ), student engagement and learning ( Perets et al., 2020 ), online assessments ( Nguyen et al., 2020 ) and virtual reality labs ( Williams et al., 2021 ). Further, Sustainability is focused on student and teacher perceptions of e-learning and related challenges ( Khan et al., 2020 ; Aristovnik et al., 2020a ) and sustainability in education during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Sobaih et al., 2020 ) to improve online learning and sustain higher education during uncertain times. Further, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health covers various topics like the health and psychological implications of the COVID-19 pandemic ( Sundarasen et al., 2020 ), including well-being and changes in behavior and habits. Finally, Education Sciences publishes some general research on the challenges and opportunities for online learning ( Almazova et al., 2020 ), including student and teacher experiences ( García-Alberti et al., 2021 ; Müller et al., 2021 ).

Figure 3 . Most relevant sources in online learning and COVID-19 research (2020–2022). Own elaboration based on the Scopus database.

The keyword co-occurrence network is presented in Figure 4 . Note that the nodes indicate keywords and the links the relations of co-occurrence between them. The node size is proportional to the number of keyword occurrences, showing the research intensity (node degree), while the link width is proportional to the co-occurrences between keywords (edge weight). In addition, the node color indicates the cluster to which a particular keyword belongs ( Wang et al., 2020 ; Ravšelj et al., 2022 ). The keyword co-occurrence analysis reveals five research hotspots in online learning in higher education research during the COVID-19 pandemic. These are ICT and pedagogy (red cluster), technology-enhanced education (green cluster), mental health and well-being (blue cluster), student experience (yellow cluster) and curriculum and professional development (purple cluster).

Figure 4 . Keyword co-occurrence network in online learning and COVID-19 research (2020–2022). Own elaboration based on the Scopus database.

A detailed synopsis of the research hotspots, including representative (the most frequent) keywords and documents (with several representative keywords), is presented in Table 3 . The first research hotspot highlights the relevance of ICT and pedagogy in higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The most representative documents looked at the quality of online learning mechanisms ( Gritsova and Tissen, 2021 ), active learning activities ( Yan et al., 2021 ) and the role of e-learning departments in controlling the quality of academic processes ( Hamdan et al., 2021 ). The second research hotspot refers to technology-enhanced education from different perspectives, such as opportunities to incorporate technological and curricular innovations ( Shapiro and Reza, 2021 ), the adoption of different virtual experiences such as telehealth and virtual learning ( Kahwash et al., 2021 ), and the utilization of social media to reach higher education students ( Leighton et al., 2021 ). The third research hotspot emphasizes the problem of mental health and well-being issues that became a prevalent topic of discussion during the COVID-19 pandemic. Namely, several studies showed an increase in depression, anxiety and stress levels among higher education students in response to the COVID-19 pandemic ( Abu Kwaik et al., 2021 ; Keskin, 2021 ; Yaghi, 2022 ). The fourth cluster is about student experience during the COVID-19 pandemic with specific focus on the between interaction and online learning satisfaction ( Bawa'aneh, 2021 ; Bismala and Manurung, 2021 ; She et al., 2021 ). The fifth research hotspot underscores the relevance of curriculum and professional development. Several studies described the ways in which courses were adapted to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the related challenges and strategies ( Chen et al., 2020 ; Gonzalez and Knecht, 2020 ; Rhile, 2020 ).

Table 3 . Research hotspots based on the author keyword co-occurrence network in online learning and COVID-19 research (2020–2022).

Finally, the three-field plot analysis of the relationship between the main concepts (i.e., ICT tools, online learning approaches, fields of study) is presented in a Sankey diagram shown in Figure 5 . The size of a rectangle corresponds to the number of documents for each theme, while the edge width reflects the inclusion index for connected themes ( Wang et al., 2020 ; Ravšelj et al., 2022 ). These three concepts have been proven to be relevant in the context of online learning. Namely, ICT tools are a precondition for delivering course content through different online learning approaches, while the choice of online learning approaches may depend on the field of study ( Ferri et al., 2020 ). During the COVID-19 pandemic, most attention was devoted to exploring e-learning (a combination of asynchronous and synchronous learning), distance learning (pre-recorded online lectures), followed by virtual learning (real-time online lectures). Since all these online learning approaches limit physical contact between teachers and students, they have been referred to as emergency remote learning approaches ( Hodges et al., 2020 ; Fauzi, 2022 ; Fuchs, 2022 ), while other online learning approaches (computer-based learning, blended learning, m-learning) do not necessarily take place in an online learning environment. The emergency remote learning approaches were primarily supported by several ICT tools, particularly by social media (e.g., Facebook), gamification/simulation and virtual reality (integration of game-like elements into online learning platforms, mobile applications, or virtual reality simulations), Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms, as well as telehealth (for educating health professionals). Regarding the fields of study, e-learning, distance learning and virtual learning were mostly addressed in the context of medical/health education, while computer-based learning (i.e., specific engineering software programs etc.) was examined in the context of engineering education. This implies that the specific requirements of a given field of study often guide the selection of the most suitable online learning approaches ( Fauzi, 2022 ).

Figure 5 . Three-field plot showing the network between ICT tools (left), online approaches (middle), and fields of study (right) (2020–2022). Own elaboration based on the Scopus database.

5. Conclusion

The presented bibliometric study provides several important insights arising from research into online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this period, a large volume of scientific knowledge was produced in the context of education that considered a range of aspects ( Saqr et al., 2023 ). Therefore, a combination of selected bibliometric approaches was utilized to extract some general comprehensive outlines of the global research. The bibliometric analysis revealed the following.

As suggested by the descriptive overview of the state of Educational Research ( Patience et al., 2017 ), the research into online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic is characterized by greater cooperation between authors, which coincides with the general observation that (international) scientific collaboration grew significantly during the pandemic ( Duan and Xia, 2021 ). Further, online learning research during the COVID-19 pandemic is grounded on fewer studies than Educational Research ( Patience et al., 2017 ), which may be explained by the absence of COVID-19-related literature at the time these documents were published. Nevertheless, noting the potential benefits of online learning approaches also when the epidemiological conditions are favorable, this line of research is expected to further develop and be extended in the ensuing years ( Fauzi, 2022 ). The potential benefits refer especially to the development of a blended learning environment, which combines online and traditional learning approaches ( Rasheed et al., 2020 ). The overview of the most relevant documents revealed three topics that were intensively discussed in the academic community, i.e., ICT, pedagogy, and life and work. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance and role of reliable ICT infrastructure for ensuring effective pedagogy in the online environment, as was needed to prevent the spread of the virus and to protect public health. Apart from the devastating health consequences for those directly affected by the virus and the disrupted educational process, the COVID-19 pandemic also dramatically affected students’ social life and work ( Aristovnik et al., 2020a ). The educational community is increasingly interested in finding ways to respond to crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and develop effective pedagogical practices that assure high-quality and efficient education in the online learning environment ( Zhang et al., 2022 ).

The scientific production of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic was geographically uneven. The greatest scientific production in terms of citations and number of documents can be observed in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom, China and India. Besides developed English-speaking countries, emerging Asian economies also seem to have played a crucial role in online learning research. Similar findings also emerged from other bibliometric studies on this topic ( Saqr et al., 2023 ). Moreover, despite conference proceedings being prominent in terms of the relatively high number of documents, the most prominent journals, considering the number of citations, are Journal of Chemical Education, Sustainability, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and Education Sciences, indicating that online learning research at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic was primarily published in open-access journals, as already observed in other research ( Zhang et al., 2022 ).

The network analysis revealed five research hotspots in online learning research during the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of higher education: (1) ICT and pedagogy, focused on the quality of online learning mechanisms ( Gritsova and Tissen, 2021 ), active learning activities ( Yan et al., 2021 ) and the role of e-learning departments in controlling the quality of academic processes ( Hamdan et al., 2021 ); technology-enhanced education concentrated on opportunities to incorporate technological and curricular innovations ( Shapiro and Reza, 2021 ), the adoption of different virtual experiences such as telehealth and virtual learning ( Kahwash et al., 2021 ), and the utilization of social media to reach higher education students ( Leighton et al., 2021 ); (2) mental health and well-being issues facing higher education students, including depression, anxiety, and stress levels ( Abu Kwaik et al., 2021 ; Keskin, 2021 ; Yaghi, 2022 ); student experience with specific focus on the between interaction and online learning satisfaction ( Bawa'aneh, 2021 ; Bismala and Manurung, 2021 ; She et al., 2021 ) and (3) curriculum and professional development, focused on the ways in which courses were adapted to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the related challenges and strategies ( Chen et al., 2020 ; Gonzalez and Knecht, 2020 ; Rhile, 2020 ).

Further, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the exploration of emergency remote learning approaches such as e-learning, distance learning and virtual learning, which are intended to limit physical contact between teachers and students. These approaches were chiefly supported by several ICT tools, including social media, gamification/simulation, virtual reality, videoconferencing platforms, and telehealth. While computer-based learning, blended learning and m-learning do not necessarily occur in an online learning environment, they may still be suitable for certain fields of study, especially in the post-COVID-19 pandemic period. This implies that the determination of which online learning approach is the most suitable is often guided by the specific requirements of a given field of study ( Fauzi, 2022 ).

Before generalizing these conclusions, it is important to note the limitations of the paper. First, the bibliometric analysis relied on documents indexed in the Scopus database, which might not cover the entire collection of research. Namely, documents that are published in journals indexed in other databases such as Web of Science, Education Research Index, Educational Resources Information Centre, etc. are not included in the analysis. However, to achieve the comparability of bibliometric metrics across documents, the bibliometric metrics are obtained from the single and, in general, broader Scopus database. Given the substantial overlap of documents across different databases of peer-reviewed literature, this limitation might not significantly affect the general observations on global research trends. Nevertheless, to check the robustness of the findings, it is still valuable to consider other bibliometric databases for future research. Second, the bibliometric analysis is conducted the bibliometric is based on a short time period (January 2020 – March 2022), which may also impact the metrics of documents published in closed-access (subscription-based) journals, placing them at a disadvantage compared to documents published in open-access journals. While it is not possible to overcome this limitation at present, conducting a bibliometric study with a longer time span would provide further time-dimensional insights. This would also be beneficial in terms of achieving better comparability between documents published in closed-access and open-access journals. Finally, despite the detailed search queries, some other relevant keywords may have been overlooked in the document search. Finally, the bibliometric method, as a method based on big data analysis, may miss certain highlights from the scientific literature that a systematic literature review would otherwise capture. Therefore it would be beneficial for future bibliometric studies also to incorporate a systematic literature review methodology, as the combined approach can provide a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on online learning in higher education.

The bibliometric study provides some possible avenues for future research. First, in future bibliometric studies, it would be beneficial to conduct in-depth analyses of the relevant contexts that have emerged as highly significant in online learning during the pandemic. These include ICT and innovation, mental health and well-being, online learning and engagement, and curriculum and professional development. Examining these contexts more comprehensively can provide valuable insights into the specific dynamics and trends within each area, contributing to a deeper understanding of the implications of online learning during the pandemic. Second, it would be beneficial to conduct separate bibliometric analyses and comparisons to examine the differences between developed and developing countries. This approach can shed light on the unique research trends, contributions, and challenges faced by each group of countries in the context of online learning during the pandemic. This can provide a more nuanced understanding of the global landscape and identify potential areas for collaboration and knowledge sharing between developed and developing countries. Finally, it would be valuable to investigate the long-term impact of rapid publishing in open-access journals on the recognition and dissemination of scholarly findings in the field of online learning in higher education during the pandemic.

From the practical perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted higher education, but at the same time, it also accelerated the use of online learning tools in the educational process. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has gradually subsided over time, online learning approaches developed during this period continue to hold relevance and value for future education. Therefore, higher education institutions should prioritize leveraging ICT tools and innovative solutions in their educational delivery, which proved effective during the pandemic. Moreover, higher education institutions should also prioritize adapting appropriate online learning approaches and curricula to align with modern realities and the corresponding fields of study. This adaptation is crucial for enhancing student engagement and ensuring that educational programs remain relevant and responsive to the evolving needs of students in various disciplines.

The findings may help not only the scientific community in detecting research gaps in online learning research during the COVID-19 pandemic but also evidence-based policymaking by assisting in identifying appropriate educational practices in emergency circumstances. Specifically, the findings may help higher education policymakers to address the underlying shortcomings of the existing educational framework exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and to design proactive mechanisms to deal effectively with such disruptions, thereby enabling them to create a more resilient and adaptable education system that can successfully navigate unforeseen challenges and ensure the continuity of quality higher education in the future.

Data availability statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.

Author contributions

AA contributed to the design of the study. DR and LU assisted with the data identification, cleaning, and analysis. DR and KK wrote the manuscript in consultation with AA. All authors contributed to the manuscript’s revision and read and approved the submitted version.

This research and the APC were funded by the Slovenian Research Agency under grant numbers P5-0093 and Z5-4569.

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding no. P5-0093 and project no. Z5-4569). A preliminary version of the paper was presented at the International Conference on Information, Communication Technologies in Education (ICICTE) in July 2022. The authors are grateful to colleagues who attended the presentation and provided interesting comments and suggestions. Further, they wish to thank the reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: online learning, e-learning, higher education, bibliometrics, mapping, visualization, VOSviewer, COVID-19

Citation: Aristovnik A, Karampelas K, Umek L and Ravšelj D (2023) Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on online learning in higher education: a bibliometric analysis. Front. Educ . 8:1225834. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2023.1225834

Received: 19 May 2023; Accepted: 14 July 2023; Published: 03 August 2023.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2023 Aristovnik, Karampelas, Umek and Ravšelj. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Aleksander Aristovnik, [email protected] ; Dejan Ravšelj, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

Increased Quality Education Through Cross-Campus Learning Environments

Shaping the Future of Online Learning

Published may 22, 2024.

If you’ve been enrolled in any educational course or postsecondary educational program since 2020, chances are you’ve witnessed the rise in online learning firsthand .

The COVID-19 global pandemic shuttered storefronts, theaters, and classrooms alike, causing major disruptions in how goods and services were delivered. As consumers adopted Instacart for their grocery needs and streamed new blockbuster movies from the comfort of their living rooms, students needed an innovative way to bring their classes home. A year into the pandemic over 60% of all undergraduate students were enrolled in at least one online course , with 28% exclusively enrolled in online courses, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

There are other reasons for the widespread adoption, including accessibility. Rural and international students who may be far removed from traditional educational institutions can now attend Harvard classes anywhere there’s an internet connection. Or, consider working adults seeking to progress or switch careers. Life doesn’t stop for a class, and attending one in-person can be prohibitive. While still challenging, logging into a virtual classroom is far more manageable. Online education is for everyone.

Technological and pedagogical developments have helped online learning progress beyond the days of discussion boards and essay uploads. Now, students can enjoy a multimedia educational experience that is rooted in the latest research, all while participating in the community of their “virtual campus”.

If you’re one of the millions of learners who have experienced online education, you might be interested to learn where it’s going next. At Harvard Online, the question, “what is the future of online learning?” guides an ongoing conversation that drives us everyday.

In this blog, we sat down with Catherine Breen , Managing Director of Harvard Online. With more than two decades of senior executive leadership at Harvard University and oversight of Harvard Online, Breen has an invaluable perspective on the future of online learning, and the exciting role Harvard Online is playing in bringing the future into the present. 

Catherine Breen, Managing Director of Harvard Online, in a team meeting.

Harvard Online (HO): How has the online learning landscape evolved in recent years? 

Catherine Breen (CB): At the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, there was a massive escalation in demand for online learning. Demand began to recede slowly as the months wore on and by late 2022, it started to level out. But we observed two big changes: Internally, the demand for Harvard Online content was still almost three times higher than pre-pandemic. Externally, in reaction to the demand surge, there was significant and rapid growth of new online course offerings and companies that purveyed varying types of digital products.    

HO: What is shaping the future of online learning today? 

CB: Because of the rapid and massive shift to online that occurred around the globe in the spring of 2020, the landscape changed permanently. There are many things shaping the future but here are just a few that I can see from my perspective:

• Increased adoption of online learning across all ages and levels of education: Everyone expanded their online course catalogs; new companies and offerings sprung up everywhere.
• Greater tech investment across organizations and industries: Organizations are investing more time, money, and effort into technology infrastructure, tools, and platforms to support online learning and participants in these courses.
• New pedagogical methods to bridge the gap between traditional and novel learning methods: Instructors have adapted their teaching methods for online, hybrid, and blended environments.
• Enhanced accessibility to quality education and learning experiences: Efforts have been made to improve access for students of all types, abilities, geographies, and backgrounds so that everyone can participate effectively.    

HO: What are the remaining challenges that online learning faces? 

CB: While these changes have improved the online learning experience, challenges remain, including addressing the digital divide, maximizing student engagement, and refining the quality of online courses.

The pandemic accelerated the adoption of online learning and its impact will likely continue to shape higher education for many years to come.  

HO: How does online learning contribute to Harvard's mission of promoting accessibility and inclusion in education, especially for learners who may not have traditional access to higher education?

CB: Online learning levels the playing field for learners in many ways.

Most students think that a Harvard-quality education is out of reach, for a variety of reasons. With online courses, however, learners from around the country and the world can take courses with Harvard instructors at their own pace at a more affordable price point.

Our online courses also typically incorporate a range of multimedia elements, allowing students with different learning styles to flourish. We also ensure that our online learning experiences are accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities. This commitment to inclusivity aligns with the broader goals of promoting equitable access to education.

Lastly, our online courses often include discussion forums and virtual communities where learners can connect and collaborate. This allows for interactions among students from diverse backgrounds and experiences, fostering a sense of belonging and inclusion.  

It’s clear that online learning has a lot to offer everyone, and it’s only getting better. In our next blog in this series, we’ll hear more from Cathy on how institutions can implement online learning modalities effectively. 

If you missed the first blog in this series detailing the future of online learning, you can check out the first blog here . To learn more about Harvard Online, explore our fully online course catalog here .

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March 13, 2020

Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

What do we gain and what do we lose when classrooms go virtual?

By Yoshiko Iwai

Watchara Piriaputtanapun Getty Images

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

I woke up an hour late Wednesday morning, and by the time I had thrown on a sweatshirt, prepared my glass of Emergen-C, and logged onto Zoom , my class had been going on for 15 minutes. The night before I had taken cough syrup for my seasonal cold, and this was the first day my school switched to virtual instruction. Over the course of the three-hour workshop, I noticed my puffy eyes on the panel of faces and became self-conscious. I turned off my video. I became distracted with the noise of sirens outside and muted my speaker, only to then realize: by the time you’re done muting-and-unmuting, the right moment to join the conversation has already passed. I found myself texting on my computer, stepping away to make coffee, running to the bathroom, writing a couple e-mails, and staring at my classmate’s dog in one of the video panels. I don’t think my experience is unique; I imagined similar situations playing out in virtual offices and classrooms across the world.

In the aftermath of the World Health Organization’s designation of the novel coronavirus as a pandemic on March 11, universities across America are shutting down in an attempt to slow its spread. On March 6, the University of Washington took the lead , canceling all in-person classes, with a wave of universities across the country following suit: University of California, Berkeley, U.C., San Diego, Stanford, Rice, Harvard, Columbia, Barnard, N.Y.U, Princeton and Duke, among many others .

This shift into virtual classrooms is the culmination of the past weeks’ efforts to prevent COVID-19 from entering university populations and spreading to local communities: cancellation of university-funded international travel for conferences , blanket bans on any international travel for spring break, canceling study-abroad programs, creating registration systems for any domestic travel.

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Columbia University, which I now attend virtually, moved all classes online starting on March 11. The following morning, president Bollinger declared that classes would be held virtually for the remainder of the school year, and suspended all university-related travel; both international and domestic. The pandemic has affected over 114 countries, killing over 4,000 and shows no sign of abating, leading to chaos in university administration and among students. I find myself obsessing over my family in Japan, especially my mother, whose lung cancer puts her at particular risk. Cancellations are affecting future students as well—admitted students’ events, open houses, and campus tours are all being canceled to minimize contagion.

The quick turn to platforms like Zoom is disrupting curricula, particularly for professors less equipped to navigate the internet and the particularities of managing a classroom mediated by a screen and microphone. I had professors cancel class because they had technical difficulties, trouble with WiFi, or were simply panicked over the prospect of teaching the full class over the new platform. With university IT services focusing efforts on providing professors with how-to webinars on using online platforms, individual student needs for these same services have been placed on hold.

While the initial shift online has created a flurry of chaos, there are benefits to a virtual classroom. Especially in a place like New York, students can continue participating in discussion sections and lectures without riding the subway for an hour, avoiding the anxiety of using public transit or being in other incubators like classrooms, public bathrooms and cafeterias. Students can “sit in” on a class while nursing a common cold or allergies that come with the season, but which can make students a target of serious threats or violence—particularly racialized harassment for Asians. I have found immense relief in not having to pay for Lyfts to campus, avoiding side-eyes for my runny nose or using the little remaining hand sanitizer I have left after holding subway poles. In some situations, online teaching may not even affect student behavior or learning. Studies have shown that medical students learn and perform equally in live versus recorded lectures, and these results are reassuring at a time like the COVID-19 outbreak.

However, the reality is that some subjects are much harder to transfer online. A biochemistry or introductory economics lecture is easier to teach virtually than a music or dance class. The creation of a film or theatrical production requires physical bodies in close proximity. Even in my creative writing workshop, responding to a colleagues’ memoir about her mother’s death is hard to do without looking her in the eye. The screen creates an emotional remove that makes it difficult to have back-and-forth dialogue between multiple people, and it’s almost impossible to provide thoughtful feedback without feeling like you’re speaking into a void.

Over the last few decades, online learning in higher education has been studied extensively. Online MBA programs are on the rise, perhaps unsurprising for a field that often requires virtual conferencing and remote collaboration. Universities now offer online master’s programs to accommodate full-time work and long commutes, or to circumvent the financial barriers of moving to a new location with family. Online bachelor’s degrees are offered by a growing number of schools: Ohio State, University of Illinois Chicago, University of Florida, Arizona State, Penn State and many more. The benefits are the same: classes can be taken anywhere, lack of commute offers more time for studying or external commitments, and the structure is more welcoming to students with physical disability or illness. And yet, online learning hasn’t threatened the traditional model of in-person learning.

A large part of this can be attributed to accountability . Online classes require significantly more motivation and attention. I found it difficult to focus on a pixelated video screen when I could browse the internet on my computer, text on my phone, watch TV in the background, have one hand in the pantry, or just lay comfortably in my bed. The problem, too, is that webinar technology doesn’t quite live up to the hype. Noise and feedback—rustling papers, ambulances, kettles, wind—make it impossible to hear people talk, and so everyone is asked to mute their microphones.

But muting your audio means you can’t jump into a conversation quickly. The “raise hand” function often goes unnoticed by teachers and the chat box is distracting. Sometimes the gallery view just doesn’t work, so you’re stuck staring at your own face or just two of your eighteen classmates. It also means another hurdle for those who hesitate to speak up, even in the best of circumstances. It means you’re just one click away from turning off your camera and being totally off the hook. In an online class over the summer, I once watched a woman—who forgot her camera was still on, though she was muted—vacuum her entire kitchen and living room during a seminar.

In a recent New York Times article, columnist Kevin Roose wrote about his experience working from home while quarantined after COVID-19 exposure. Roose, once a remote worker, cites studies that suggest remote employees are more productive , taking shorter breaks and fewer sick days. But he also writes extensively about the isolation and lack of productivity he feels: “I’ve realized that I can’t be my best, most human self in sweatpants, pretending to pay attention on video conferences between trips to the fridge.” He notes that Steve Jobs, who was a firm believer in in-person collaboration and opposed remote work, once said, “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”

In educational settings, creativity is arguably one of the most important things at stake. The surprises and unexpected interactions fuel creativity—often a result of sitting in a room brushing shoulders with a classmate, running into professors in a bathroom line, or landing on ideas and insights that arise out of discomfort in the room. This unpredictability is often lost online.

In the essay “Sim Life,” from her book, Make It Scream, Make it Burn , Leslie Jamison writes about the shortcomings of virtual life: “So much of lived experience is composed of what lies beyond our agency and prediction, beyond our grasp, in missteps and unforeseen obstacles and the textures of imperfection: the grit and grain of a sidewalk with its cigarette butts and faint summer stench of garbage and taxi exhaust, the possibility of a rat scuttling from a pile of trash bags, the lilt and laughter of nearby strangers’ voices.”

Classrooms offer these opportunities for riffs and surprise, and a large part of being a student is learning to deliver critique through uncomfortable eye contact, or negotiating a room full of voices and opinions that create friction with your own. When I Zoomed into class from my apartment, I missed being interrupted by classmates who complicated my ideas about a poem or short story. I missed being in workshop and bouncing ideas off of each other to find the best structure for a piece. I missed handwritten critiques, and felt limited in Word: no check pluses, no smiley faces, “Wow” feels flat when it’s not handwritten in the margins, and "Great" feels sarcastic in 10-point Calibri. I was frustrated that I could sleep in because online class meant I could wake up five minutes before class and pretend like I’d been ready all morning.

The COVID-19 pandemic will likely continue presenting challenges beyond those that come up in the course of routine virtual education. Even if this viral spread subsides, or a vaccination becomes readily available, the shift from online classes back to in-person learning may create disruptions of its own—adjusting back to higher standards of accountability, weaning off of phone-checking habits, and transferring comments back to hard copies instead of digital notes. Hopefully, these phases of trouble shooting can provide universities, professors and students the opportunity to practice adaptability, patience and resilience. And hopefully, these experiences will serve as preparation for future challenges that come with the next epidemic, pandemic and other disaster.

For now, I am trying to not look at myself in the gallery of faces, stop being distracted by my expressions, resisting the impulses to check my phone or e-mail, or at least recognize these urges when they arise.

Read more about the coronavirus outbreak  here .

What the Covid-19 Pandemic Revealed About Remote School

The unplanned experiment provided clear lessons on the value—and limitations—of online learning. Are educators listening?

Katherine Reynolds Lewis, Undark Magazine

The transition to online learning in the United States during the Covid-19 pandemic was, by many accounts, a failure. While there were some  bright   spots  across the country, the transition was messy and uneven — countless teachers had neither the materials nor training they needed to effectively connect with students remotely, while many of those students   were bored , isolated, and lacked the resources they needed to learn. The results were abysmal: low test scores, fewer children learning at grade level, increased inequity, and teacher burnout. With the public health crisis on top of deaths and job losses in many families, students experienced   increases  in depression, anxiety, and suicide risk.

Yet society very well may face new widespread calamities in the near future, from another pandemic to extreme weather, that will require a similarly quick shift to remote school. Success will hinge on big changes, from infrastructure to teacher training, several experts told Undark. “We absolutely need to invest in ways for schools to run continuously, to pick up where they left off. But man, it’s a tall order,” said Heather L. Schwartz, a senior policy researcher at RAND. “It’s not good enough for teachers to simply refer students to disconnected, stand-alone videos on, say, YouTube. Students need lessons that connect directly to what they were learning before school closed.”

More than three years after U.S. schools shifted to remote instruction on an emergency basis, the education sector is still largely unprepared for another long-term interruption of in-person school. The stakes are highest for those who need it most: low-income children and students of color, who are also most likely to be harmed in a future pandemic or live in communities  most affected  by climate change. But, given the abundance of research on what didn’t work during the pandemic, school leaders may have the opportunity to do things differently next time. Being ready would require strategic planning, rethinking the role of the teacher, and using new technology wisely, experts told Undark. And many problems with remote learning actually trace back not to technology, but to basic instructional quality. Effective remote learning won’t happen if schools aren’t already employing best practices in the physical classroom, such as creating a culture of learning from mistakes, empowering teachers to meet individual student needs, establishing high expectations, and setting clear goals supported by frequent feedback. While it’s ambitious to envision that every school district will create seamless virtual learning platforms — and, for that matter, overcome challenges in education more broadly — the lessons of the pandemic are there to be followed or ignored.

“We haven’t done anywhere near the amount of planning or the development of the instructional infrastructure needed to allow for a smooth transition next time schools need to close for prolonged periods of time,” Schwartz said. “Until we can reach that goal, I don’t have high confidence that the next prolonged school closure will be substantially more successful.”

Before the pandemic,  only 3 percent  of U.S. school districts offered virtual school, mostly for students with unique circumstances, such as a disability or those intensely pursuing a sport or the performing arts, according to a RAND  survey  Schwartz co-authored. For the most part, the educational technology companies and developers creating software for these schools promised to give students a personalized experience. But the research on these programs, which focused on virtual charter schools that only existed online, showed  poor outcomes . Their students were a year behind in math and nearly a half-year behind in reading, and courses offered less direct time with a teacher each week than regular schools have in a day.

The pandemic sparked growth in stand-alone virtual academies, in addition to the emergency remote learning that districts had to adopt in March 2020. Educators’ interest in online instructional materials exploded, too, according to Schwartz, “and it really put the foot on the gas to ramp them up, expand them, and in theory, improve them.” By June 2021, the number of school districts with a stand-alone virtual school rose to 26 percent. Of the remaining districts, another 23 percent were interested in offering an online school, the report found.

But the sheer magnitude of options for online learning didn’t necessarily mean it worked well, Schwartz said: “It’s the quality part that has to come up in order for this to be a really good, viable alternative to in person instruction.” And individualized, self-directed online learning proved to be a pipe dream — especially for younger children who needed support from a parent or other family member even to get online, much less stay focused.

“The notion that students would have personalized playlists and could curate their own education was proven to be problematic on a couple levels, especially for younger and less affluent students,” said Thomas Toch, director of FutureEd, an education think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. “The social and emotional toll that isolation and those traumas took on students suggest that the social dimension of schooling is hugely important and was greatly undervalued, especially by proponents for an increased role of technology.”

Students also often didn’t have the materials they needed for online school, some lacking computers or internet access at home. Teachers didn’t have the right training for  online instruction , which has a unique pedagogy and best practices. As a result, many virtual classrooms attempted to replicate the same lessons over video that would’ve been delivered at school. The results were overwhelmingly bad, research shows. ​​For example, a  2022 study  found six consistent themes about how the pandemic affected learning, including a lack of interaction between students and with teachers, and disproportionate harm to low-income students. Numb from isolation and too many hours in front of a screen, students  failed to engage  in coursework and  suffered emotionally .

After some districts resumed in-person or hybrid instruction in the 2020 fall semester, it became clear that the longer students were remote,  the worse their learning delays . For example, national standardized test scores for the 2020-2021 school year showed that passing rates for math declined about 14 percentage points on average, more than three times the drop seen in districts that returned to in-person instruction the earliest, according to a  2021 National Bureau of Economic Research study . Even after most U.S. districts resumed in-person instruction, students who had been online the longest  continued to lag  behind their peers. The pandemic  hit cities hardest  and the effects disproportionately harmed low-income children and students of color in urban areas.

“What we did during the pandemic is not the optimal use of online learning in education for the future,” said Ashley Jochim, a researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. “Online learning is not a full stop substitute for what kids need to thrive and be supported at school.”

Children also largely prefer in-person school. A  2022 Pew Research Center survey  suggested that 65 percent of students would rather be in a classroom, 9 percent would opt for online only, and the rest are unsure or prefer a hybrid model. “For most families and kids, full-time online school is actually not the educational solution they want,” Jochim said.

Virtual school felt meaningless to Abner Magdaleno, a 12th grader in Los Angeles. “I couldn’t really connect with it, because I’m more of, like, a social person. And that was stripped away from me when we went online,” recalled Magdaleno. Mackenzie Sheehy, 19, of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, found there were too many distractions at home to learn. Her grades suffered, and she missed the one-on-one time with teachers. (Sheehy graduated from high school in 2022.)

Many teachers feel the same way. “Nothing replaces physical proximity, whatever the age,” said Ana Silva, a New York City English teacher. She enjoyed experimenting with interactive technology during online school, but is grateful to be back in person. “I like the casual way kids can come to my desk and see me. I like the dynamism — seeing kids in the cafeteria. Those interactions are really positive, and they were entirely missing during the online learning.”

During the 2022-2023 school year, many districts  initially planned  to continue online courses for snow days and other building closures. But they found that the teacher instruction, student experience, and demands on families were simply too different for in-person versus remote school, said Liz Kolb, an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. “Schools are moving away from that because it’s too difficult to quickly transition and blend back and forth among the two without having strong structures in place,” Kolb said. “Most schools don’t have those strong structures.”

In addition, both families and educators grew sick of their screens. “They’re trying to avoid technology a little bit. There’s this fatigue coming out of remote learning and the pandemic,” said Mingyu Feng, a research director at WestEd, a nonprofit research agency. “If the students are on Zoom every day for like, six hours, that seems to be not quite right.”

Despite the bumpy pandemic rollout, online school can serve an important role in the U.S. education system. For one, online learning is a better alternative for some students. Garvey Mortley, 15, of Bethesda, Maryland, and her two sisters all switched to their district’s virtual academy during the pandemic to protect their own health and their grandmother’s. This year, Mortley’s sisters went back to in-person school, but she chose to stay online. “I love the flexibility about it,” she said, noting that some of her classmates prefer it because they have a disability or have demanding schedules. “I love how I can just roll out of bed in the morning, and I can sit down and do school.” Some educators also prefer teaching online, according to  reports  of virtual schools that were inundated with applications from teachers because they wanted to keep  working from home . Silva, the New York high school English teacher, enjoys online tutoring and academic coaching, because it facilitates one-on-one interaction.

And in rural districts and those with low enrollment, some access to online learning ensures students can take courses that could otherwise be inaccessible. “Because of the economies of scale in small rural districts, they needed to tap into online and shared service delivery arrangements in order to provide a full complement of coursework at the high school level,” said Jochim. Innovation in these districts, she added, will accelerate: “We’ll continue to see growth, scalability, and improvement in quality.”

There were also some schools that were largely successful at switching to online at the start of the pandemic, such as Vista Unified School District in California, which  pooled and shared innovative ideas  for adapting in March 2020; the school quickly put together an online portal so that principals and teachers could share ideas and the district could allot the necessary resources. Digging into examples like this could point the way to the future of online learning, said Chelsea Waite, a senior researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, who was part of a collaborative project studying 70 schools and districts that pivoted successfully to online learning. The  project found  three factors that made the transition work: a focus on resilience, collaboration, and autonomy for both students and educators; a healthy culture that prioritized relationships; and strong yet flexible systems that were accustomed to adaptation.

“We investigated schools that did seem to be more prepared for the Covid disruption, not just with having devices in students’ hands or having an online curriculum already, but with a learning culture in the school that really prioritized agency and problem solving as skills for students and adults,” Waite said. “In these schools, kids are learning from a very young age to be a little bit more self-directed, to set goals, and pursue them and pivot when they need to.”

Similarly, many of the takeaways from the pandemic trace back to the basics of effective education, not technological innovation. A landmark report by the National Academies of Sciences called “How People Learn,” most recently updated in 2018, synthesized the body of educational research and identified four key features in the most successful learning environments. First, these schools are designed for, and adapt to, the specific students, building on what they bring to the classroom, such as skills and beliefs. Second, successful schools give their students clear goals, showing them what they need to learn and how they can get there. Third, they provide in-the-moment feedback that emphasizes understanding, not memorization. And finally, the most successful schools are community-centered, with a culture of collaboration and acceptance of mistakes.

“We as humans are social learners, yet some of the tech talk is driven by people who are strong individual learners,” said Jeremy Roschelle, executive director of Learning Sciences Research at Digital Promise, a global education nonprofit. “They’re not necessarily thinking about how most people learn, which is very social.”

Another powerful insight from pandemic-era remote schooling involves the evolving role of teachers, said Kim Kelly, a middle school math teacher at Northbridge Middle School in Massachusetts and a K-8 curriculum coach. Historically, a teacher’s role is the keeper of knowledge who delivers instruction. But in recent years, there has been a shift in approach, where teachers think of themselves as coaches who can intervene based on a student’s individual learning progress. Technology that assists with a coach-like role can be effective — but requires educators to be trained and comfortable interpreting data on student needs.

For example, with a digital learning platform called ASSISTments, teachers can assign math problems, students complete them — potentially receiving in-the-moment feedback on steps they’re getting wrong — and then the teachers can use data from individual students and the entire class to plan instruction and see where additional support is needed.

“A big advantage of these computer-driven products is they really try to diagnose where students are, and try to address their needs. It’s very personalized, individualized,” said WestEd’s Feng, who has  evaluated  ASSISTments and other educational technologies. She noted that some teachers feel frustrated “when you expect them to read the data and try to figure out what the students’ needs are.”

Teacher’s colleges don’t typically prepare educators to interpret data and change their practices, said Kelly, whose dissertation focused on self-regulated online learning. But professional development has helped her learn to harness technology to improve teaching and learning. “Schools are in data overload; we are oozing data from every direction, yet none of it is very actionable,” she said. Some technology, she added, provided student data that she could use regularly, which changed how she taught and assigned homework.

When students get feedback from the computer program during a homework session, the whole class doesn’t have to review the homework together, which can save time. Educators can move forward on instruction — or if they see areas of confusion, focus more on those topics. The ability of the programs to detect how well students are learning “is unreal,” said Kelly, “but it really does require teachers to be monitoring that data and interpreting.” She learned to accept that some students could drive their own learning and act on the feedback from homework, while others simply needed more teacher intervention. She now does more assessment at the beginning of a course to better support all students.

At the district or even national level, letting teachers play to their strengths can also help improve how their students learn, Toch, of FutureEd, said. For example, if a teacher is better at delivering instruction, they could give a lesson to a larger group of students online, while another teacher who is more comfortable in the coach role could work in smaller groups or one-on-one.

“One thing we saw during the pandemic are smart strategies for using technology to get outstanding teachers in front of more students,” Toch said, describing one effort that recruited exceptional teachers nationally and built a strong curriculum to be delivered online. “The local educators were providing support for their students in their classrooms.”

Remote schooling requires new technology, and already, educators are swamped with competing platforms and software choices — most of which have  insufficient evidence of efficacy . Traditional independent research on specific technologies is sparse, Roschelle said. Post-pandemic, the field is so diverse and there are so many technologies in use, it’s almost impossible to find a control group to design a randomized control trial, he added. However, there is qualitative research and evidence that give hints about the quality of technology and online learning, such as  case studies  and school recommendations.

Educational leaders should ask three key questions about technology before investing, recommended Ryan Baker, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania: Is there evidence it works to improve learning outcomes? Does the vendor provide support and training, or are teachers on their own? And does it work with the same types of students as are in their school or district? In other words, educators must look at a technology’s track record in the context of their own school’s demographics, geography, culture, and challenges. These decisions are complicated by the small universe of researchers and evaluators, who have many overlapping relationships. (Over his career, for example, Baker has worked with or consulted for many of the education technology firms that create the software he studies.)

It may help to broaden the definition of evidence. The Center on Reinventing Public Education launched the  Canopy project  to collect examples of effective educational innovation around the U.S.

“What we wanted to do is build much better and more open and collective knowledge about where schools are challenging old assumptions and redesigning what school is and should be,” she added, noting that these educational leaders are reconceptualizing the skills they want students to attain. “They’re often trying to measure or communicate concepts that we don’t have great measurement tools for yet. So they end up relying on a lot of testimonials and evidence of student work.”

The moment is ripe for innovation in online and in-person education, said Julia Fallon, executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, since the pandemic accelerated the rollout of devices and needed infrastructure. There’s an  opportunity  and need for technology that empowers teachers to improve learning outcomes and work more efficiently, said Roschelle. Online and hybrid learning are clearly here to stay — and likely will be called upon again during future temporary school closures.

Still, poorly-executed remote learning risks tainting the whole model; parents and students may be unlikely to give it a second chance. The pandemic showed the hard and fast limits on the potential for fully remote learning to be adopted broadly, for one, because in many communities, schools serve more than an educational function — they support children’s mental health, social needs, and nutrition and other physical health needs. The pandemic also highlighted the real challenge in training the entire U.S. teaching corps to be proficient in technology and data analysis. And the lack of a nimble shift to remote learning in an emergency will disproportionately harm low-income children and students of color. So the stakes are high for getting it right, experts told Undark, and summoning the political will.

“There are these benefits in online education, but there are also these real weaknesses we know from prior research and experience,” Jochim said. “So how do we build a system that has online learning as a complement to this other set of supports and experiences that kids benefit from?”

Katherine Reynolds Lewis is an award-winning journalist covering children, race, gender, disability, mental health, social justice, and science.

This article was originally published on Undark . Read the original article .

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How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay

Students can share how they navigated life during the coronavirus pandemic in a full-length essay or an optional supplement.

Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays

Getty Images

Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic.

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many – a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them – and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic – and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The sudden transition to online learning: Teachers’ experiences of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

Contributed equally to this work with: Elham Goudarzi, Shirin Hasanvand

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Student Research Committee, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences, Khorramabad, Iran

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Social Determinants of Health Research Center, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences, Khorramabad, Iran

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

¶ ‡ SR and MA also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Clinical Education Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

• Elham Goudarzi, 
• Shirin Hasanvand, 
• Shahin Raoufi, 
• Mitra Amini

• Published: November 16, 2023
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287520
• Peer Review
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Introduction

The sudden transition from face-to-face teaching to virtual remote education and the need to implement it during COVID-19 initially posed specific challenges to educational institutions. Identifying and understanding teachers’ experiences pave the way for discovering and meeting educational needs. This study explored faculty members’ teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Materials and methods

The qualitative descriptive design via conventional content analysis was used. It was conducted from January 13, 2020, to May 10, 2022. In-depth interviews (online and in-person) of ten faculty members, three managers, and one staff from Lorestan University of Medical Sciences were conducted. They were purposefully selected with maximum variation. Simultaneously with data collection, analysis was performed using the approach Graneheim and Lundman proposed (2004). Lincoln and Goba’s criteria were used to obtain the study’s rigor.

Six categories emerged from the data: education in the shadow of the crisis, Challenges related to the teaching-learning process, Blurred boundaries between personal and professional lives, Positive consequences of e-learning, Trying to deal with the crisis, And dealing with the crisis.

Conclusions

Initially, teachers faced several challenges in the teaching-learning process and even in their personal life. However, with time, the actions of the teachers and the managers caused an increase in the quality of education. However, planning and foresight are needed in developing countries, including Iran, to appropriately face and optimally manage similar crises and move towards blended learning.

Citation: Goudarzi E, Hasanvand S, Raoufi S, Amini M (2023) The sudden transition to online learning: Teachers’ experiences of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS ONE 18(11): e0287520. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287520

Editor: Muhammad Arsyad Subu, School of Health Binawan: Universitas Binawan, INDONESIA

Received: September 7, 2022; Accepted: June 7, 2023; Published: November 16, 2023

Copyright: © 2023 Goudarzi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All interview files are available from figshare, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23599155.v1 .

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Abbreviations: F2F, Face-to-face; ICT, Information and communications technology

In late December 2019, a new subvariant of COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan, China, spreading rapidly worldwide [ 1 ]. The transmission rate of the virus and the subsequent pandemic were so significant that in the first month of 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a state of emergency [ 2 ]. The first Iranian coronavirus case was officially announced in Qom on February 19, 2020 [ 3 ].

This global pandemic affected all areas of human life, including medical education [ 4 ], and disrupted face-to-face(F2F) learning worldwide. That is, F2F learning was suspended at medical universities, particularly in third-world countries, where the sudden change in educational planning was an inevitable consequence of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic [ 5 ]. Insufficiency of resources and poor infrastructure severely damaged low-income countries [ 6 ]. In response to the closure of education, UNESCO recommended using distance education programs and related educational platforms by educational institutes to benefit from distance education and minimize any disruption in the learning-teaching process [ 7 ].

Distance education is a planned type of education where teaching and learning occur in different environments [ 8 ]. In recent years, the development of distance education has significantly contributed to promoting learning-teaching quality and expanding educational justice [ 9 ]. Certain advantages and disadvantages can be attributed to distance education. Its benefits include the feasibility of teaching regardless of time and place, cost-effectiveness [ 10 ], non-necessity of physical attendance [ 11 ], the existence of a variety of choices [ 12 ], saving time [ 10 ], studying simultaneously with working [ 12 ], and the development of participatory and independent types of learning [ 13 ]. Moreover, high probability of lack of concentration, the need for complex technology [ 12 ], reduced social interactions [ 14 ], unstable internet connection [ 13 ], the inability to comprehend and interpret students’ facial expressions, and inability to hold practical and laboratory meetings are also among the disadvantages of distance education [ 6 ].

One important change after the campus closure was the transition from face-to-face universities to virtual universities to prevent the spread of COVID-19 [ 15 ]. In countries such as Italy, Spain, China, the USA, and even Brazil, distance learning has been widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in medical education [ 16 ]. The use of distance education commenced in Iran with the emergence of the coronavirus. Although distance education was initially presented to students irregularly using social media, Iranian universities gradually adopted a systematic version of distance education using a centralized system of learning management according to the instructions issued by educational authorities. However, this system did not turn out to be an ideal one. Students and faculty members faced challenges such as slow internet speed, limited cyberspace to upload e-content, and reduced teacher-student interactions [ 17 ].

As was indicated in a study on the challenges encountered by faculty concerning distance education, a flawed organizational culture or the lack of a culture of working with e-learning tools such as computers, and the failure to train faculty members about how to operate these tools were also among the essential barriers to efficient distance education. Furthermore, lack of equipment, slow internet speed, lack of sufficient cyberspace for uploading educational materials, being time-consuming and costly, and ignoring the intellectual property rights, such as unauthorized copying of the content and violation of copyright principles in the cyberlearning environment were other challenges raised by the participants [ 13 ]. In another study that focused on the experiences of teachers about distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic, many students expressed their concerns about losing contact with their peers, separation from academic communities, hardware and software inconveniences, lack of a quiet environment, and a separate room at home to attend virtual classes, lack of access to libraries and resources, and deprivation from clinical and laboratory activities. Faculty members complained about increased responsibility and workload and emphasized the necessity of having access to comprehensive mental health services that should be provided for both themselves and students [ 18 ]. In Marek et al. (2021) study, faculty who converted classes to remove learning during COVID-19 experienced much higher workloads and tension than in F2F classes [ 19 ].

A systematic review showed that fewer studies had been conducted in remote emergency teaching or e-learning during the Covid-19 pandemic [ 15 ]. Few studies, especially quantitative, have been conducted in Iran, and faculty members’ experiences have yet to be investigated. This issue is a significant gap because it cannot be supposed that these experiences are similar to those in different cultural and social contexts. Thus, considering the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and its adverse effects on education worldwide, the disruption of teaching-learning processes in universities and teachers, and students’ unpreparedness, it seems necessary to investigate teachers’ experiences and deal with distance education. Such an investigation can contribute to the identification of the facilitators of and impediments to distance education if the COVID-19 pandemic persists or similar crises emerge. Thus, this study explored the teachers’ teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This qualitative study used a conventional content analysis from January 13, 2020, to May 10, 2022, to describe the professor’s teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Content analysis is a study method for forming replicable and proper inferences from data to their context. It provides knowledge, new insights, a manifestation of facts, and a practical action guide. The aim is to acquire a condensed and comprehensive description of the phenomenon, and the result of the analysis is concepts or categories depicting the phenomenon. Conventional content analysis is used when there are no previous studies or research literature about the phenomenon, or it needs to be more cohesive. Researchers do not utilize predetermined categories. Rather, it lets categories and category labels flow from the data [ 20 ].

Participants and data collection

Participants included ten faculty members, three administrators, and one staff of the Department of Education affiliated with Lorestan University of Medical Sciences (Western Iran). Participants were selected by purposeful and maximum variation sampling(gender, marital status, work experience, having experience in e-learning, specialty). Inclusion criteria were willingness to participate in the study and share their experiences.

The data were gathered through unstructured in-depth F2F or electronic interviews by the first author under the supervision of the second author. Since the second author was a faculty, the first author took responsibility for the interviews. However, the second author supervised the interviews because of his experience in qualitative research.

Due to the absence of some faculty members in the university, particularly at the beginning of the study, the interviews were conducted mainly electronically using either telephone or Adobe Connect video-conferencing software and later in person under health protocols. Also, F2F interviews were conducted with the participants’ consent at their workplaces.

The interviews began with questions: "Could you please let us know about your teaching experiences since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic? What challenges did you face? How did you manage your class?" The participants were further investigated by answering probing questions such as "Could you explain more?" and "Could you please give an example?". The interviews were done individually and lasted an average of 20 to 50 minutes.

The data were recorded on a digital audio recorder. Field observations complemented the interviews. Sampling continued until data saturation when the collected data confirmed the previous data. Data saturation occurred after the 12th interview. To make sure two more interviews were conducted. Overall, 14 interviews were conducted with 14 participants. All the participants volunteered to participate in the study, and no one refused. The time and the place of the interviews (F2F) were arranged with the participants.

Data analysis

The data analysis was conducted simultaneously by collecting data using the approach proposed by Granehim and Lundman(2004) with the following phases: 1) immediate transcription of interviews, 2) listening to them to obtain a general perception, 3) identification of significant parts and initial codes(the label of a meaning unit), 4) classification of similar initial codes in broader categories (creating categories), and 5) determination of the hidden content in the data [ 21 ]. Hence, after listening to the interviews, they were transcribed and read several times. In the next phase, the significant units were identified and coded. We consider a meaning unit as words, sentences, or paragraphs containing dimensions about each other through their content and context. The condensed meaning units were abstracted and labeled by a code. Subsequently, the codes were classified using a constant comparison technique, identifying differences and similarities, and subcategories were identified. Finally, the findings were compared, and categories were determined. Data analysis was carried out using the MAXQDA 10 software.

Ethics approval and the consent to participate.

The present study was conducted under the Declaration of Helsinki. The code of ethics was also obtained from the Ethical Committee of the Vice-Chancellery for Research and Technology affiliated with Lorestan University of Medical Sciences (Code: I.R.LUMS.REC.1399.242). Providing the necessary explanations about the research objectives, we obtained written informed consent from all the participants. The subjects were allowed to record audio. The first author kept the recorded files in a locked file to ensure the security of the data.

Guba and Lincoln’s (1994) criteria, i.e., credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability, were used to ensure the trustworthiness of the data. Participants with experience in the studied phenomenon were selected to increase the credibility of the data. The researcher’s prolonged engagement and contact with participants (more than one year) were also considered. Moreover, more than one of the authors (the first and second authors) participated in the data analysis. Member-checking was also used. An attempt was made to improve data transferability by describing the participants’ culture, context, and characteristics. The audit trail approach and maximum variation were used to ensure transferability. People with an experience in qualitative research (Outside researchers) evaluated the data analysis process to ensure the findings were consistent.

The intercoder rater is a scale of the agreement between multiple coders about how similar data should be coded [ 22 ]. An inter-coder reliability analysis using Cohen’s Kappa statistic was conducted to determine consistency between coders. Cohen’s Kappa coefficient of agreement s was 0.871.

Fourteen participants participated in this study. Table 1 provides information about the participants.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287520.t001

The qualitative interviews extracted 1215 initial codes, 28 subcategories, and six main categories. Table 2 presents subcategories and categories extracted from the interviews.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287520.t002

Category 1: Education in the shadow of the crisis

University closures necessitated the pursuit of distance education. Nevertheless, many faculty members and administrators thought they faced a temporary crisis. Thus, no significant measure was taken at the onset of the crisis. According to one of the participants, upon the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was maintained that the disease would disappear soon. Hence, no intense action was taken in the first month.

1.1. The idea of being temporary.

Many teachers thought the crisis was temporary, so no particular action was taken early. One of the participants said: ”The disease would disappear soon , so no special action was taken in the first month of the disease”(P1) .

1.2. Being unpredictable and uncertainty.

During this period, the teaching-learning process fluctuated, and faculty members were undecided. Moreover, some hospital wards were closed due to a lack of patients, decreased days of student internships, and a reduced variety of hospital cases. One of the participants said: "In the first months of the crisis , we underwent extremely unpleasant experiences and did not know what to do in that situation . On the one hand , we were worried about the students . On the other hand , we had to reduce , for example , the number of internship days . Furthermore , there were almost no patients in the wards because people were full of fear and panic" (P2) .

1.3. Educational confusion.

The sudden transition in education from F2F to distance education confused teaching and reduced the quality of teaching. As one of the participants mentioned: "Timely preparing all the educational content for students was another challenge for us . Inevitably , this preparation was prone to delay . I can assert that 99% of the faculty members could not provide the educational content for distance education without delay in the first semester following the COVID-19 pandemic because all the courses were offered to students within the distance education framework" (p9) .

1.4. Life insecurity.

Despite the widespread use of distance education in universities, some institutions face particular challenges. Medical students need to take internships in clinical settings. The fear of contracting the disease and the insecurity of life left many educators and administrators with moral and professional challenges. Some clinical faculty members were dealing with the threats posed by COVID-19 in hospitals. Moreover, concerns about the spread of the disease adversely affected the quality and quantity of clinical sessions. As one of the faculty members said:

" in this period , the stress and tension were caused by the COVID-19 pandemic rather than teaching . I feel stressed out every time I attend class , but this time the stress was caused by the question of death or survival . " (p8)

Another said:

"We were exposed to a death threat when we attended the hospital to teach students in this environment . " Every day there were several confirmed COVID-19 cases in the hospital . I remember I contracted the coronavirus the day after examining a confirmed COVID-19 patient (P13) .

1.5. Teachers’ concerns about the failure to learn from students.

Some faculty members expressed concerns about students’ failure to learn practical courses and the subsequent weakening of students’ fundamental and practical knowledge and skills. One of the Midwifery faculty members stated: "I was supposed to teach a 7th-semester student who has never been present in either a cesarean surgery or natural childbirth event in the hospital . This student will graduate in the following semester . I wonder if she can perform her duties as a hospital staff (p12) .

Category 2: Challenges related to the teaching-learning process

There were several challenges regarding interpersonal interactions, assessment, network connection, and educational materials development in the teaching-learning process.

2.1. Decreased quality of interpersonal interactions.

The lack of inclusive participation and direct interactions between teachers and students adversely affected the quality of education. A female faculty member said:

"Interactions , eye contact , and in any case , some emotional-psychological factors between teachers and students are eliminated in distance education" (P4) . "The main problem we had with e-Learning was that we were not in touch with students , and they did not have the opportunity to visit us " (P8) .

2.2. Authentication challenge.

Classroom management is complex in online classes due to the physical absence of teachers, particularly in large classes.

"Coordination of the class time with students was one of the problems I encountered in distance education . Normally , students are expected to attend the class on time following our announcement of the class time . However , some students failed to attend the class on time" (p5) . "It is difficult to coordinate all students in a virtual classroom" (p9) . Another faculty member stated that "it is hard to control a class with a large population" (p12) .

One of the significant concerns of faculty members was the problem of student identification and teachers’ uncertainty about the presence of students in online classes. Some faculty members could not ensure the students’ full-time presence in online classes: "I do not know if the person taking the test is the student or someone else . Thus , identity verification is a major problem . " (p1)

2.3. Assessment challenges.

One of the challenges for faculty members during this period was the limitation in preparing the test questions. They had to prepare new questions at the end of every semester due to the possibility of question leaks: "Students had the chance to take screenshots of questions , which means that the questions could not be reused , and the faculty members had to redesign the questions at the end of every semester . " (p1)

Many faculty members considered students’ copying of one anothers’ homework, cheating, and negligence of ethical principles in preparing their assignments among the disadvantages of distance education: "Concerning the disadvantages of distance education , I can safely assert that the most notable shortcoming of this type of education was the inaccurate assessment of students’ knowledge . It is unclear who is taking the test . Is it the student , a friend , or someone who has been paid to take the test ? " (p1) .

Obtaining unrealistic grades by cheating on each other and copying the answers to questions from the internet has led to a decline in the quality of education and the impossibility of distinguishing between intelligent and weak students. As one of the faculty members mentioned, "A student with the overall average of grades that ranged from 14–15 has now the overall average of 19 ! Does it mean that all of them have become geniuses ? What has happened ? They are indeed cheating ! " (p3) .

2.4. Depreciation of teachers’ equipment.

One of the requirements of distance education is to provide suitable hardware equipment. Some faculty members complained about the depreciation of equipment and personal computers due to frequent transportation to the university and their continuous use because of the lack of a proper hardware system to hold classes. "The teachers had to use their equipment . Many of us did not have access to the necessary audio-visual equipment at the university" (p2) .

2.5. Teachers’ low skills and knowledge of ICT.

Due to the critical situation, teachers were forced to use distance education, while many were unfamiliar with virtual education technologies. This issue caused confusion and confusion in their minds. One of the professors said:

“Professors have a problem with producing content , and how to upload it ? ” What exactly is this learning management system ? Many professors do not know the system either” (p3) .

One o f the managers also confirmed this issue and said:

“In the beginning , we had many problems because maybe 99% of our users were people who had not used the learning management system before this space and were not familiar with it . ” (p11)

2.6. Teachers’ resistance to a sudden change in the teaching strategy.

Some faculty members resisted this abrupt change in the teaching strategy: "At the beginning of using Navid website (our native learning management system) , initially our colleagues and then students resisted the use of this system" (p2) .

Another faculty member stated that;

"The use of distance education had already commenced before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic , but most faculty members refused to teach within the framework prepared for distance education . They did not want to trouble themselves . Since they did not use the Navid LMS before the emergence of the crisis caused by the coronavirus , they needed help to cope with it during the crisis . They do not perform their tasks adequately . Every week , they were called to be reminded of their tasks (p3) .

2.7. Network connection issues.

The preparation of adequate infrastructure and the equipment required for communication and internet connection is highly significant in the development of distance education.

"The lack of a high-speed internet connection was a significant problem adversely affecting this type of education . Another faculty member complained about the inconveniencies related to uploading the educational content , which was time-consuming that sometimes took several hours" (p7) . "Moreover , low-speed internet at the university forced us to participate in online classes at home , where we had access to high-speed internet" (p4) .

2.8. Insufficient support.

Many faculty members complained about the lack of full-time support, a fundamental task of I.T. men. Hence, technical problems that were not resolved aggravated the situation: "They did not respond to our hardware and software questions . " (p6) .

2.9. The challenges in developing e-content.

Faculty members were not skillful in ICDL. Thus, they were not familiar with content development technologies. The ultimate consequence was the production of non-standard content. Moreover, the lack of a quiet environment at home to record audio made it difficult for them to produce the content. One of the faculty members with previous experience in e-learning said: "The teachers experience problems producing and uploading the content" (p3) .

A male faculty member who had twins said: " I need a quiet room to produce the content at home , but I have twins who are almost one year old . The loud sound of their crying and playing was an obstacle to content production" (p12).

2.10. Weaknesses in the implementation of practice-oriented training.

Practical courses are highly significant in medical universities. However, due to the closure of universities, only theoretical courses were offered to students. Consequently, laboratory and clinical courses were not offered regularly. Furthermore, no standard simulators or special clinical and laboratory training tools existed. "The difficulties with distance education aggravate fields of studies with many practical units , such as nursing , medical operating room technology , laboratory sciences , and medicine . Students’ attendance in class is necessary for several of the courses of these fields , and the use of simulators cannot efficiently meet the requirements of practical courses" (P3) .

2.11. Students and teachers’ misuse of distance education.

From the faculty members’ perspective, students refused to attend online classes on time, participate attentively in the classes, study the electronic content on time, and do homework under various pretexts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Students prefer to have a classmate receive educational materials from their teachers to share them with them in the groups they create on social media networks such as WhatsApp and Telegram" (p2) . "Skyroom (a Persian version of Adobe Connect) could be an efficient software for distance teaching , but most students found different pretexts to justify their absence in online classes . They would claim that the teacher’s voice is not clear , the video is frequently interrupted , our internet connection or the power has failed" (p8) .

Unfortunately, there was no reliable monitoring system to evaluate faculty members’ performance in the teaching-learning process, and this disadvantage caused several irregularities.

"Some faculty members do not take e-learning seriously . The teacher , for instance , uploads a file while there is no content in the uploaded file" (p3) . Some faculty members uploaded only three files for a two-credit course , while they were expected to prepare and upload at least 12 files (p6) .

3. Blurred boundaries between personal and professional lives

According to the faculty, e-learning was time-consuming. It increased their workloads and interfered with their professional and personal roles. The faculty members said e-content development during the COVID-19 pandemic was time-consuming.

3.1. Time-consuming distance education.

content development during the COVID-19 pandemic was time-consuming and required time and energy, especially since the professors were not skilled enough. Some problems most professors mentioned were teacher involvement during non-office hours, time-consuming voicing of files, or re-voicing content due to hoarseness during voicing. “If normally , I would check the slide a quarter of an hour before I go to class and leave , but not now ! I would have to spend several hours now، Files and audio , that one and a half or two hours of my session now took four times that time” (p2)

Another English teacher said, "To prepare the file , I had a series of problems . I had to write the whole text of the book in English or scan it and convert it into a file in PowerPointFor each lesson , for example , I prepared 20 slides , each of which I had to write six to seven English lines; the interval when I was recording the sound was very difficult , meaning that I could , for example , mispronounce the word myself" (p12)

One of the professors of epidemiology said: "For example , I used to voice the complications of Quid on the files , and because the disease was unknown , I also talked about COVID , and then when we went forward , we saw that the risk factors for this disease had changed . The rate of change has changed , then the conversations have become old , and , for example , the prevention method has changed , and now we have to do this new-sounding file again . It was not that we had to leave the same file every semester; we had to update these files every time , which was time-consuming” (p9) .

3.2. Increase workload.

With the virtualization at once, the professors’ workload increased significantly, development of standard content Increased the workload of the university’s e-learning department; responding to faculty problems was one of the issues that multiplied the workload of faculty and staff.

One of the professors in charge of developing internship programs said:

“It used to be that we had to put a program on the site from the beginning of the semester , but I can tell you that we wrote maybe 7 to 8 programs in the previous semester , and that put a lot of my work and that of my co-worker into the realm of bed and education” . (p2) " As I said , we used to see students in class , but now we have to be online 24 hours and constantly answering to students , which caused us to devote much family time to this work " (p6) .

3.3. Interference between work and nonwork roles and family restrictions.

The full-time presence of teachers at home and the introduction of virtual education led to role interference, resulting in changes in expectations and dissatisfaction among family members. Many professors confirmed this issue. This role interference was especially evident for teachers with younger children. " Now our work problems have been brought to the family , both child and spouse . My child has been arguing with me many times in the virtual classroom because I said I am the head of the virtual classroom . He does not know his childish needs , But I have to be responsible because my work environment is one with home , which has diminished our mother’s and my wife’s roles" (p6) .

On the other hand, gathering family members at home due to corona restrictions caused noise and congestion in the home environment. They led to a lack of focus and increased psychological pressure on teachers to produce content and hold online classes. This issue led to restrictions on family members, such as forcing children to remain silent. Consider deleting some family plans.

One of the teachers who had a young child said,

“I will never forgive myself . I beat my children ،Because it happened in the middle of the sound; they suddenly entered the room and argued or , for example , asked a question " (p7) “When one’s work environment becomes one with the living environment , many restrictions are created for the family . For example , I had to silence the whole family during class hours،The child should not watch the movie while the house was a space for rest , but because I had a virtual class or recorded content , for example , the noise of the environment was very annoying , and it made me put some restrictions on my family” (p6) “It was challenging , the family was distraught , that is , I had to tell the family to go to that room , and I would have the file in another room” (p12) .

4. Positive consequences of e-learning

4.1. flexibility..

Despite the difficulties experienced and explained by the majority of the teachers, a few of them mentioned the benefits of e-learning. Flexibility is one of the features of e-learning. More precisely, the implementation of distance education does not depend on time and place. Moreover, it does not require a particular physical space shared by students and the teacher. Confirming the issue of flexibility in distance education, one of the faculty members said:

"The most important advantage of distance education is that we can save time because many students who normally reside in dormitories no longer have to travel long distances to attend the campus . We can coordinate and hold classes at any time" (p5) "A remarkable advantage of e-learning is the chance peculiar to students employed in an organization . Many of our students who were employees during this period could benefit from e-learning and keep their jobs" (p7) .

Moreover, although the faculty members encountered several challenges faced by distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic, this crisis and the consequent abrupt alteration in the education system forced the teachers who were negligent of e-learning to turn to this type of education, and to some extent performs their tasks willingly. One of the teachers confirmed the positive impact of the compulsory experience of distance education: "Distance education had positive effects on us . That is , we would never be involved in distance education if the COVID-19 pandemic did not force us to carry out our tasks at home within the framework of e-learning . E-learning turned out to be highly beneficial . We learned how to use software" (p2) .

4.2. Facilitation of educational processes.

"If the COVID-19 crisis had not emerged , it might have taken ten years to reach this point , and we would have had to carry out a seven-year mission in four to five months . Thus , in this respect , the COVID-19 pandemic might have been beneficial in this respect" (p7) . "We had to learn how to use certain software , and I think it was a great chance for us" . (p4)

4.3. Cost reduction.

Faculty members’ experiences revealed that virtualization of education reduces the costs of holding workshops and conferences and provides students with accommodation and food. As one of the administrators mentioned in this regard: "University expenses have significantly decreased . No longer was any fund allocated to routine services such as transportation , dormitory maintenance , and cooking , as well as serving food for students due to the closure following the aggravation of the crisis . Only a few students were still in dormitories to pursue their internship" (p5) .

5. Trying to deal with the crisis

5.1. using social media as a learning tool..

Faculty members were unfamiliar with the university’s learning management system at the onset of the coronavirus crisis. Hence, they used social media messaging applications to continue their teaching task and prevent interruption. One educational administrator stated, "Due to the unpredictability of the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic , it was first decided that the faculty members revise their PowerPoint files for a few sessions and send them to students via social media messaging applications or emails" (p1) .

5.2. Targeted empowerment of faculty members.

After familiarizing, teachers and students with the learning management system, several workshops and short-term courses were held to empower them. One of the teachers who were not competent in producing e-content said: "Although the preparation of standard educational content by faculty members was an educational challenge , the difficulties and problems of content preparation decreased following the participation of the faculty members in the training workshops held by the Education Development Center (EDC) of the university" (p5) .

5.3. Strategies for classroom management.

Faculty members used various tricks to improve their class management following the alleviation of the COVID-19 crisis. They emphasized dividing the students in crowded classes into two groups, giving two distinct types of tests, setting periods for homework, giving appropriate and case-based questions, and using new teaching methods such as an online flipped classroom.

"I tell the students that although the Navid LMS has a forum , Skyroom classes are live . Moreover , Skyroom provides us with a forum too . The cameras are connected within the framework of Skyroom , and we can see each other and share laptop screens" (p10) . "I tried to design the questions so that they would not cheat . I would give them cases so that only those who study the sources pass the exam . I gave exams with conceptual questions" (p14) .

5.4. Strategies for assessment management.

To have a realistic and authentic assessment, some faculty members asserted that learners’ assessment should not be limited to summative assessment. Furthermore, formative assessments and various assignments during the semester should be considered. "I think student assessment should be carried out primarily during the semester and with the assignments they are given" (p1) .

6. Beyond dealing with the crisis

According to the faculty members and administrators, this crisis was beneficial in preparing higher education institutions for future crises. The COVID-19 pandemic foregrounded the significance of e-learning in educational institutions.

6.1. Readiness to respond to future crises.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic imposed tremendous pressure on all aspects of society, including public health, specific potentials were gradually utilized to alleviate the coronavirus crisis. Consequently, the crisis was turned into appropriate educational opportunities. Several advantages can be attributed to the crisis management procedure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pervasiveness of virtual education, the familiarity of teachers with various educational software, their capability to respond to future crises, and the development of specific strategies by the faculty members to guarantee the continuity of education by teachers are significant advantages. One of the teachers who were not familiar with educational software said: "Virtual education was good in this era because it introduced us to different software anyway" (p2) . "

6.2. Search and discover solutions to strengthen the continuity of virtual education.

Following the improvement in faculty members’ capabilities in e-learning, their readiness to respond to future corona-like crises was also improved. If similar problems arise and e-learning becomes necessary, they will no longer have the concerns of previous crises. They can be more prepared to deal with and manage it.

"The experience of e-learning during the COVID - 19 pandemic contributed to our readiness to respond to similar crises in the future . " (p7) . "I started an e-learning course to prepare myself for similar crises because I thought it would not be our last experience in the coming years , and other similar issues are likely to occur in the future . If crises like coronavirus arise , we will hold classes virtually " (P2) .

With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education suffered a great shock and, ultimately, an unexpected and unpredictable crisis worldwide, particularly in Iran. As a result, educational institutions were not ready to face this crisis, and the inevitable consequence was the emergence of education challenges.

In this study, the faculty members stated that they were initially unfamiliar with e-learning. This lack of familiarity and unpreparedness led to stress and mental confusion. Shenoy et al. (2020) and Aliyyah et al. (2020) reported similar instructors’ experiences in their studies. The instructors who participated in these studies stated that they also were exposed to mental confusion at the beginning of the virtualization of education. However, they reported their relative satisfaction over time [ 23 , 24 ].

On the other hand, the faculty members expressed concerns about the students’ learning disabilities and the challenges related to the practical course. This issue was reported in the study by Salmani (2021) in a category entitled Students’ superficial learning as a Challenge in E-learning in the COVID-19 Pandemic [ 25 ]. In another study, the low quality of virtual education compared to F2F teaching and students’ superficial learning have been dealt with [ 26 ].

Other challenges from instructors’ perspectives were raised consistent with previous studies. One of the primary challenges of e-learning based on the faculty members’ experiences was their resistance to e-learning. Some faculty members did not believe in the efficacy of e-learning, which was consistent with the findings of the study conducted by Mohi et al. (2020) [ 27 ]. One of the reasons for faculty members’ resistance to e-learning is that they are accustomed to traditional teaching. For years, they have preferred conventional teaching methods negligent of diversification or development of new methods of e-learning [ 28 ]. If the benefits of e-learning are emphasized, and faculty members become aware of this issue, as noted in the study by Mishra et al. (2021), they will be more motivated to teach [ 6 ].

The lack of high-speed internet bandwidth for preparing and uploading educational content led to faculty members’ dissatisfaction with this type of teaching. Moreover, the lack of standard infrastructure and suitable hardware and software equipment were among the challenges encountered by other faculty members in this period. Using personal equipment led to the depreciation and multiple repairs of these devices. Rezaei et al. conducted a study reporting the challenges encountered by faculty members (2020). They stated that most teachers’ cell phones were obsolete, and their laptops were primarily outdated [ 29 ]. The lack of suitable infrastructure was reported in many studies, particularly in developing countries [ 30 , 31 ]. Teachers called for the support of experienced staff and experts concerning educational technologies and e-content production. Consistent with the present study, Dawn (2019) has pointed out the significance of teachers’ familiarity with e-learning technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 32 ]. Hence, the availability of a technical support team is essential for successfully developing an e-learning system and resolving the faculty members’ problems. Investing in human resources and their training is a significant issue for the development of e-learning [ 31 ].

An essential part of the data indicated challenges related to the suspension practical and laboratory courses. In their study, Sam et al. (2020) also mentioned suspending clinical education activities to reduce disease transmission and decrease patient hospitalization [ 32 ]. This issue is fundamental. Many students may miss the opportunity to acquire communication and technical skills due to reduced internship periods, academic and laboratory activities, and the lack of standard tools for practical courses. Onyema et al. (2020) also cite the limited access to physical and laboratory facilities as an adverse effect of e-learning [ 26 ].

According to many teachers, the reduction in interpersonal interactions, the lack of F2F interactions, and the consequent delay in providing the students with feedback caused the faculty members and students not to know each other’s abilities. In a similar study, the lack of proper communication between students and faculty members and their failure to provide their students with appropriate feedback was mentioned as teaching challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 33 ]. According to De Oliveira et al. (2020), feedback difficulty in identifying students’ strengths and weaknesses is sometimes due to the lack of modern communication between teacher and student [ 34 ].

Another study referred to the lack of efficient interactions in virtual education as the main negative feature of this type of education [ 35 ]. Thus, interactions between teachers and students and timely feedback are central to the success of the educational process.

Student identification was one of the challenges stated by faculty members to be reported in the present study. Similarly, Agarwal MS et al. (2020) reported that many faculty members were uncertain about students’ presence in the virtual classroom. The lack of accurate authentication tools was an obstacle to ensuring students’ presence in virtual classrooms [ 36 ], which was consistent with the findings of this study. In the study by Lau et al. (2020), a defect in the evaluation of students by faculty members due to the lack of proper assessment tools was referred to as one of the most critical challenges of e-learning [ 37 ]. Other studies confirm that teachers can not guarantee that students are not cheating in electronic exams.

Moreover, it is impossible to ensure that the participant in the test is a student or someone else. Thus, the lack of proper assessment tools is one of the main problems of e-learning [ 28 ]. Virtualization of education also led to various kinds of abuse by some students and faculty members, consistent with the study by Agarwal et al. (2020) [ 36 ].

During this period, after overcoming the initial challenges of the COVID-19 crisis, the teachers’ experience in the field of virtual education and how to manage virtual classes increased, which led to the use of a variety of strategies for optimal classroom management and electronic assessment, including variation in teaching methods, keeping the class enjoyable to students, student participation in discussions, randomization of questions, and giving conceptual and challenging questions. These strategies contribute to motivation enhancement in students to participate in virtual classes [ 24 ]. Moreover, being satisfied with a single assessment method reduces the validity of the assessment, and it is essential to use multiple assessment methods instead of summative assessment [ 35 ].

One of the most critical points related to teachers’ experiences during this period was performing the teaching-learning task at home and blurring the boundaries between their personal and professional lives, which is consistent with Abedini et al. (2020) [ 38 ]. The home environment is not designed for academic activities. Hence, family members’ involvement at home causes overlapping roles and dissatisfaction. A similar study indicated that with the full-time presence of teachers at home, family members’ perceptions of the role of teachers changed. They expected teachers to perform the assigned functions alongside family members [ 39 ]. Teachers’ workload was increased according to teachers’ experiences, which was also confirmed in the study [ 40 , 41 ].

Despite the many disadvantages and challenges of virtual education, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, some advantages can be attributed to this educational approach, such as independence about time and place, reduced costs, the possibility of studying and working simultaneously and saving time. These advantages were reported in the study by Mukherjee et al. (2021) [ 39 ]. Alterations in the attitude of teachers toward e-learning and adaptation to it was one of the main advantages and the main factor facilitating the educational process during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taghizadeh et al. asserted that the crisis was a blessing for faculty members. The teachers who were not interested in e-learning became familiar with various educational software [ 37 ].

Furthermore, the experience gained by faculty members has enabled them to deal with similar crises in the future. Vershitskaya et al. (2020) showed that following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty members maintained that e-learning should not be ignored when the COVID-19 crisis is over. Instead, they asserted that it should be used as a supplement to F2F education [ 41 ].

Managers’ attitudes were also considered in addition to the perspectives of faculty members in the present study, which could be considered a strength. However, the lack of students’ opinions concerning e-learning was one of the limitations of this study. The researchers who conducted the present study are teachers. Thus, their assumptions might have biased their interpretations of the data. Consequently, we tried to validate the data analysis by recognizing and ignoring the irrelevant assumptions. Also, Mixed methods studies are suggested to understand e-learning problems in the post-covid era better.

These findings suggest that teachers must become trained the most proficient in e-learning and technology-enhanced learning, and this capability should continue. Special attention should be paid to open educational platforms. The use of e-learning as a response to covid has been accepted and continued. The place of learning in educational institutions should be reviewed. Support infrastructures for instructors and students should be provided. Managers and educational leaders should be encouraged and guided toward adaptive educational design.

At the beginning of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, due to many reasons, including the resistance of teachers and learners to this approach and the lack of necessary infrastructure, the design and implementation of virtual education faced challenges. The teachers had many problems, such as weakness in class management, interference of roles, and even family restrictions. However, with time, the redoubled efforts of the teachers and the management of multiple roles by them, strengthening their knowledge in distance learning and e-content creation, and more participation in e-learning caused an increase in the quality of education. However, planning and foresight are needed in developing countries, including Iran, to appropriately face and optimally manage similar crises and move towards blended learning.

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted within the framework of an MSc thesis. We want to thank all the participants.

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Is Online Learning Effective?

A new report found that the heavy dependence on technology during the pandemic caused “staggering” education inequality. What was your experience?

By Natalie Proulx

During the coronavirus pandemic, many schools moved classes online. Was your school one of them? If so, what was it like to attend school online? Did you enjoy it? Did it work for you?

In “ Dependence on Tech Caused ‘Staggering’ Education Inequality, U.N. Agency Says ,” Natasha Singer writes:

In early 2020, as the coronavirus spread, schools around the world abruptly halted in-person education. To many governments and parents, moving classes online seemed the obvious stopgap solution. In the United States, school districts scrambled to secure digital devices for students. Almost overnight, videoconferencing software like Zoom became the main platform teachers used to deliver real-time instruction to students at home. Now a report from UNESCO , the United Nations’ educational and cultural organization, says that overreliance on remote learning technology during the pandemic led to “staggering” education inequality around the world. It was, according to a 655-page report that UNESCO released on Wednesday, a worldwide “ed-tech tragedy.” The report, from UNESCO’s Future of Education division, is likely to add fuel to the debate over how governments and local school districts handled pandemic restrictions, and whether it would have been better for some countries to reopen schools for in-person instruction sooner. The UNESCO researchers argued in the report that “unprecedented” dependence on technology — intended to ensure that children could continue their schooling — worsened disparities and learning loss for hundreds of millions of students around the world, including in Kenya, Brazil, Britain and the United States. The promotion of remote online learning as the primary solution for pandemic schooling also hindered public discussion of more equitable, lower-tech alternatives, such as regularly providing schoolwork packets for every student, delivering school lessons by radio or television — and reopening schools sooner for in-person classes, the researchers said. “Available evidence strongly indicates that the bright spots of the ed-tech experiences during the pandemic, while important and deserving of attention, were vastly eclipsed by failure,” the UNESCO report said. The UNESCO researchers recommended that education officials prioritize in-person instruction with teachers, not online platforms, as the primary driver of student learning. And they encouraged schools to ensure that emerging technologies like A.I. chatbots concretely benefited students before introducing them for educational use. Education and industry experts welcomed the report, saying more research on the effects of pandemic learning was needed. “The report’s conclusion — that societies must be vigilant about the ways digital tools are reshaping education — is incredibly important,” said Paul Lekas, the head of global public policy for the Software & Information Industry Association, a group whose members include Amazon, Apple and Google. “There are lots of lessons that can be learned from how digital education occurred during the pandemic and ways in which to lessen the digital divide. ” Jean-Claude Brizard, the chief executive of Digital Promise, a nonprofit education group that has received funding from Google, HP and Verizon, acknowledged that “technology is not a cure-all.” But he also said that while school systems were largely unprepared for the pandemic, online education tools helped foster “more individualized, enhanced learning experiences as schools shifted to virtual classrooms.” ​Education International, an umbrella organization for about 380 teachers’ unions and 32 million teachers worldwide, said the UNESCO report underlined the importance of in-person, face-to-face teaching. “The report tells us definitively what we already know to be true, a place called school matters,” said Haldis Holst, the group’s deputy general secretary. “Education is not transactional nor is it simply content delivery. It is relational. It is social. It is human at its core.”

Students, read the entire article and then tell us:

What findings from the report, if any, surprised you? If you participated in online learning during the pandemic, what in the report reflected your experience? If the researchers had asked you about what remote learning was like for you, what would you have told them?

At this point, most schools have returned to in-person teaching, but many still use technology in the classroom. How much tech is involved in your day-to-day education? Does this method of learning work well for you? If you had a say, would you want to spend more or less time online while in school?

What are some of the biggest benefits you have seen from technology when it comes to your education? What are some of the biggest drawbacks?

Haldis Holst, UNESCO’s deputy general secretary, said: “The report tells us definitively what we already know to be true, a place called school matters. Education is not transactional nor is it simply content delivery. It is relational. It is social. It is human at its core.” What is your reaction to that statement? Do you agree? Why or why not?

As a student, what advice would you give to schools that are already using or are considering using educational technology?

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

Natalie Proulx joined The Learning Network as a staff editor in 2017 after working as an English language arts teacher and curriculum writer. More about Natalie Proulx

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The Impact of COVID-19 on Education: A Meta-Narrative Review

Aras bozkurt.

1 Distance Education Department, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey

2 Department of English Studies, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

3 Anadolu Üniversitesi, Açıköğretim Fakültesi, Kat:7, Oda:702, 26470, Tepebaşı, Eskişehir, Turkey

Kadir Karakaya

4 Applied Linguistics & Technology Department, Iowa State University, Ames, IA USA

5 Educational Psychology, Learning Sciences, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK USA

Özlem Karakaya

6 Educational Technology & Human-Computer Interaction, Iowa State University, Ames, IA USA

Daniela Castellanos-Reyes

7 Curriculum and Instruction, Learning Design and Technology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN USA

Associated Data

The dataset is available from the authors upon request.

The rapid and unexpected onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic has generated a great degree of uncertainty about the future of education and has required teachers and students alike to adapt to a new normal to survive in the new educational ecology. Through this experience of the new educational ecology, educators have learned many lessons, including how to navigate through uncertainty by recognizing their strengths and vulnerabilities. In this context, the aim of this study is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the publications covering COVID-19 and education to analyze the impact of the pandemic by applying the data mining and analytics techniques of social network analysis and text-mining. From the abstract, title, and keyword analysis of a total of 1150 publications, seven themes were identified: (1) the great reset, (2) shifting educational landscape and emerging educational roles (3) digital pedagogy, (4) emergency remote education, (5) pedagogy of care, (6) social equity, equality, and injustice, and (7) future of education. Moreover, from the citation analysis, two thematic clusters emerged: (1) educational response, emergency remote education affordances, and continuity of education, and (2) psychological impact of COVID-19. The overlap between themes and thematic clusters revealed researchers’ emphasis on guaranteeing continuity of education and supporting the socio-emotional needs of learners. From the results of the study, it is clear that there is a heightened need to develop effective strategies to ensure the continuity of education in the future, and that it is critical to proactively respond to such crises through resilience and flexibility.

Introduction

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has proven to be a massive challenge for the entire world, imposing a radical transformation in many areas of life, including education. It was rapid and unexpected; the world was unprepared and hit hard. The virus is highly contagious, having a pathogenic nature whose effects have not been limited to humans alone, but rather, includes every construct and domain of societies, including education. The education system, which has been affected at all levels, has been required to respond to the crisis, forced to transition into emergency modes, and adapt to the unprecedented impact of the global crisis. Although the beginning of 2021 will mark nearly a year of experience in living through the pandemic, the crisis remains a phenomenon with many unknowns. A deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the changes that have been made in response to the crisis is needed to survive in these hard times. Hence, this study aims to provide a better understanding by examining the scholarly publications on COVID-19 and education. In doing this, we can identify our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, be better prepared for the new normal, and be more fit to survive.

Related Literature

Though the COVID-19 pandemic is not the first major disruption to be experienced in the history of the world, it has been unique due to its scale and the requirements that have been imposed because of it (Guitton, 2020 ). The economies of many countries have greatly suffered from the lockdowns and other restrictive measurements, and people have had to adapt to a new lifestyle, where their primary concern is to survive by keeping themselves safe from contracting the deadly virus. The education system has not been exempt from this series of unfortunate events inflicted by COVID-19. Since brick-and-mortar schools had to be closed due to the pandemic, millions of students, from those in K-12 to those in higher education, were deprived of physical access to their classrooms, peers, and teachers (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020a , b ). This extraordinary pandemic period has posed arguably the most challenging and complex problems ever for educators, students, schools, educational institutions, parents, governments, and all other educational stakeholders. The closing of brick-and-mortar schools and campuses rendered online teaching and learning the only viable solution to the problem of access-to-education during this emergency period (Hodges et al., 2020 ). Due to the urgency of this move, teachers and instructors were rushed to shift all their face-to-face instruction and instructional materials to online spaces, such as learning management systems or electronic platforms, in order to facilitate teaching virtually at a distance. As a result of this sudden migration to learning and instruction online, the key distinctions between online education and education delivered online during such crisis and emergency circumstances have been obfuscated (Hodges et al., 2020 ).

State of the Current Relevant Literature

Although the scale of the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic on education overshadows previously experienced nationwide or global crises or disruptions, the phenomenon of schools and higher education institutions having to shift their instruction to online spaces is not totally new to the education community and academia (Johnson et al., 2020 ). Prior literature on this subject indicates that in the past, schools and institutions resorted to online or electronic delivery of instruction in times of serious crises and uncertainties, including but not limited to natural disasters such as floods or earthquakes (e.g., Ayebi-Arthur, 2017 ; Lorenzo, 2008 ; Tull et al., 2017 ), local disruptions such as civil wars and socio-economic events such as political upheavals, social turmoils or economic recessions (e.g., Czerniewicz et al., 2019 ). Nevertheless, the past attempts to move learning and teaching online do not compare to the current efforts that have been implemented during the global COVID-19 pandemic, insofar as the past crisis situations were sporadic events in specific territories, affecting a limited population for relatively short periods of time. In contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic has continued to pose a serious threat to the continuity of education around the globe (Johnson et al., 2020 ).

Considering the scale and severity of the global pandemic, the impacts it has had on education in general and higher education in particular need to be explored and studied empirically so that necessary plans and strategies aimed at reducing its devastating effects can be developed and implemented. Due to the rapid onset and spread of the global pandemic, the current literature on the impact of COVID-19 on education is still limited, including mostly non-academic editorials or non-empirical personal reflections, anecdotes, reports, and stories (e.g., Baker, 2020 ; DePietro, 2020 ). Yet, with that said, empirical research on the impact of the global pandemic on higher education is rapidly growing. For example, Johnson et al. ( 2020 ), in their empirical study, found that faculty members who were struggling with various challenges adopted new instructional methods and strategies and adjusted certain course components to foster emergency remote education (ERE). Unger and Meiran ( 2020 ) observed that the pandemic made students in the US feel anxious about completing online learning tasks. In contrast, Suleri ( 2020 ) reported that a large majority of European higher education students were satisfied with their virtual learning experiences during the pandemic, and that most were willing to continue virtual higher education even after the pandemic (Suleri, 2020 ). The limited empirical research also points to the need for systematically planning and designing online learning experiences in advance in preparation for future outbreaks of such global pandemics and other crises (e.g., Korkmaz & Toraman, 2020 ). Despite the growing literature, the studies provide only fragmentary evidence on the impact of the pandemic on online learning and teaching. For a more thorough understanding of the serious implications the pandemic has for higher education in relation to learning and teaching online, more empirical research is needed.

Unlike previously conducted bibliometric analysis studies on this subject, which have largely involved general analysis of research on health sciences and COVID-19, Aristovnik et al. ( 2020 ) performed an in-depth bibliometric analysis of various science and social science research disciplines by examining a comprehensive database of document and source information. By the final phase of their bibliometric analysis, the authors had analyzed 16,866 documents. They utilized a mix of innovative bibliometric approaches to capture the existing research and assess the state of COVID-19 research across different research landscapes (e.g., health sciences, life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities). Their findings showed that most COVID-19 research has been performed in the field of health sciences, followed by life sciences, physical sciences, and social sciences and humanities. Results from the keyword co-occurrence analysis revealed that health sciences research on COVID-19 tended to focus on health consequences, whereas the life sciences research on the subject tended to focus on drug efficiency. Moreover, physical sciences research tended to focus on environmental consequences, and social sciences and humanities research was largely oriented towards socio-economic consequences.

Similarly, Rodrigues et al. ( 2020 ) carried out a bibliometric analysis of COVID-19 related studies from a management perspective in order to elucidate how scientific research and education arrive at solutions to the pandemic crisis and the post-COVID-19 era. In line with Aristovnik et al.’s ( 2020 ) findings, Rodrigues et al. ( 2020 ) reported that most of the published research on this subject has fallen under the field of health sciences, leaving education as an under-researched area of inquiry. The content analysis they performed in their study also found a special emphasis on qualitative research. The descriptive and content analysis yielded two major strands of studies: (1) online education and (2) COVID-19 and education, business, economics, and management. The online education strand focused on the issue of technological anxiety caused by online classes, the feeling of belonging to an academic community, and feedback.

Lastly, Bond ( 2020 ) conducted a rapid review of K-12 research undertaken in the first seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic to identify successes and challenges and to offer recommendations for the future. From a search of K-12 research on the Web of Science, Scopus, EBSCOHost, the Microsoft Academic, and the COVID-19 living systematic map, 90 studies were identified and analyzed. The findings revealed that the reviewed research has focused predominantly on the challenges to shifting to ERE, teacher digital competencies and digital infrastructure, teacher ICT skills, parent engagement in learning, and students’ health and well-being. The review highlighted the need for straightforward communication between schools and families to inform families about learning activities and to promote interactivity between students. Teachers were also encouraged to develop their professional networks to increase motivation and support amongst themselves and to include opportunities for both synchronous and asynchronous interaction for promoting student engagement when using technology. Bond ( 2020 ) reported that the reviewed studies called for providing teachers with opportunities to further develop their digital technical competencies and their distance and online learning pedagogies. In a recent study that examines the impact of COVID-19 at higher education (Bozkurt, 2022 ), three broad themes from the body of research on this subject: (1) educational crisis and higher education in the new normal: resilience, adaptability, and sustainability, (2) psychological pressures, social uncertainty, and mental well-being of learners, and (3) the rise of online distance education and blended-hybrid modes. The findings of this study are similar to Mishra et al. ( 2021 ) who examined the COVID-19 pandemic from the lens of online distance education and noted that technologies for teaching and learning and psychosocial issues were emerging issues.

The aforementioned studies indicate that a great majority of research on COVID-19 has been produced in the field of health sciences, as expected. These studies nonetheless note that there is a noticeable shortage of studies dealing with the effects of the pandemic in the fields of social sciences, humanities, and education. Given the profound impact of the pandemic on learning and teaching, as well as on the related stakeholders in education, now more than ever, a greater amount of research on COVID-19 needs to be conducted in the field of education. The bibliometric studies discussed above have analyzed COVID-19 research across various fields, yielding a comparative snapshot of the research undertaken so far in different research spheres. However, despite being comprehensive, these studies did not appear to have examined a specific discipline or area of research in depth. Therefore, this bibliometric study aims to provide a focused, in-depth analysis of the COVID-19-related research in the field of education. In this regard, the main purpose of this study is to identify research patterns and trends in the field of education by examining COVID-19-related research papers. The study sought to answer the following research questions:

• What are the thematic patterns in the title, abstract, and keywords of the publications on COVID-19 and education?
• What are the citation trends in the references of the sampled publications on COVID-19 and education?

Methodology

This study used data mining and analytic approaches (Fayyad et al., 2002 ) to examine bibliometric patterns and trends. More specifically, social network analysis (SNA) (Hansen et al., 2020 ) was applied to examine the keywords and references, while text-mining was applied (Aggarwal & Zhai, 2012 ) to examine the titles and abstracts of the research corpus. Keywords represent the essence of an article at a micro level and for the analysis of the keywords, SNA was used. SNA “provides powerful ways to summarize networks and identify key people, [entities], or other objects that occupy strategic locations and positions within a matrix of links” (Hansen et al., 2020 , p. 6). In this regard, the keywords were analyzed based on their co-occurrences and visualized on a network graph by identifying the significant keywords which were demonstrated as nodes and their relationships were demonstrated with ties. For text-mining of the titles and abstracts, the researchers performed a lexical analysis that employs “two stages of co-occurrence information extraction—semantic and relational—using a different algorithm for each stage” (Smith & Humphreys, 2006 , p. 262). Thus, text-mining analysis enabled researchers to identify the hidden patterns and visualize them on a thematic concept map. For the analysis of the references, the researchers further used SNA based on the arguments that “citing articles and cited articles are linked to each other through invisible ties, and they collaboratively and collectively build an intellectual community that can be referred to as a living network, structure, or an ecology” (Bozkurt, 2019 , p. 498). The analysis of the references enabled the researchers to identify pivotal scholarly contributions that guided and shaped the intellectual landscape. The use of multiple approaches enables the study to present a broader view, or a meta-narrative.

Sample and Inclusion Criteria

The publications included in this research met the following inclusion criteria: (1) indexed by the Scopus database, (2) written in English, and (3) had the search queries on their title (Table ​ (Table1). 1 ). The search query reflects the focus on the impact of COVID-19 on education by including common words in the field like learn , teach , or student . Truncation was also used in the search to capture all relevant literature. Narrowing down the search allowed us to exclude publications that were not education related. Scopus was selected because it is one of the largest scholarly databases, and only publications in English were selected to facilitate identification of meaningful lexical patterns through text-mining and provide a condensed view of the research. The search yielded a total of 1150 papers (articles = 887, editorials = 66, notes = 58, conference papers = 56, letters = 40, review studies = 30, book chapters = 9, short surveys = 3, books = 1).

Search strings used to create research corpus

Data Analysis and Research Procedures

This study has two phases of analysis. In the first phase, text mining was used to analyze titles and abstracts, and SNA was applied to analyze keywords. By using two different analytical approaches, the authors were able to triangulate the research findings (Thurmond, 2001 ). In this phase, using lexical algorithms, text mining analysis enabled visualizing the textual data on a thematic concept map according to semantic relationships and co-occurrences of the words (Fig.  1 ). Text mining generated a machine-based concept map by analyzing the co-occurrences and lexical relationships of textual data. Then, based on the co-occurrences and centrality metrics, SNA enabled visualizing keywords on a network graphic called sociogram (Fig.  2 ). SNA allowed researchers to visually identify the key terms on a connected network graph where keywords are represented as nodes and their relationships are represented as edges. In the first phase of the study, by synthesizing outputs of the data mining and analytic approaches, meaningful patterns of textual data were presented as seven main research themes.

Thematic concept mapping of COVID-19 and education-related papers

Social networks analysis of the keywords in COVID-19 and education-related papers

In the second phase of the study, through the examination of the references and citation patterns (e.g., citing and being cited) of the articles in the research corpus, the citation patterns were visualized on a network graphic by clusters (See Fig.  3 ) showing also chronical relationships which enabled to identify pivotal COVID-19 studies. In the second phase of the study, two new themes were identified which were in line with the themes that emerged in the first phase of the study.

Social networks analysis of the references in COVID-19 and education-related papers 2019–2020 (Only the first authors were labeled – See Appendix Fig. ​ Fig.4 4 for SNA of references covering pre-COVID-19 period)

Strengths and Limitations

This study is one of the first attempts to use bibliometric approaches benefiting from data mining and analysis techniques to better understand COVID-19 and its consequences on published educational research. By applying such an approach, a large volume of data is able to be visualized and reported. However, besides these strengths, the study also has certain limitations. First, the study uses the Scopus database, which, though being one of the largest databases, does not include all types of publications. Therefore, the publications selected for this study offer only a partial view, as there are many significant publications in gray literature (e.g., reports, briefs, blogs). Second, the study includes only publications written in English, however, with COVID-19 being a global crisis, publications in different languages would provide a complementary view and be helpful in understanding local reflections in the field of education.

Findings and Discussion

Sna and text-mining: thematic patterns in the title, abstract, and keywords of the publications.

This section reports the findings based on a thematic concept map and network graphic that were developed through text mining (Fig.  1 —Textual data composed of 186.234 words visualized according to lexical relationships and co-occurrences) and sociograms created using SNA (Fig.  2 —The top 200 keywords with highest betweenness centrality and 1577 connections among them mapped on a network graph) to visualize the data. Accordingly, seven major themes were identified by analyzing the data through text-mining and SNA: (1) the great reset, (2) digital pedagogy, (3) shifting educational landscape and emerging educational roles, (4) emergency remote education, (5) pedagogy of care, (6) social equity, equality, and injustice, and (7) future of education.

• Theme 1: The Great Reset (See path Fig.  1 : lockdown  +  emergency  +  community  +  challenges  +  during  >  pandemic and impact  >  outbreak  >  coronavirus  >  pandemic and global  >  crisis  >  pandemic  >  world; See nodes on Fig.  2 : Covid19, pandemic, Coronavirus, lockdown, crisis ). The first theme in the thematic concept map and network graphic is the Great Reset. It has been relatively a short time since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 a pandemic. Although vaccination had already started, the pandemic continued to have an adverse impact on the world. Ever since the start of the pandemic, people were discussing when there would be a return to normal (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020a , b ; Xiao, 2021 ); however, as time goes by, this hope has faded, and returning to normal appears to be far into the future (Schwab & Malleret, 2020 ). The pandemic is seen as a major milestone, in the sense that a macro reset in economic, social, geopolitical, environmental, and technological fields will produce multi-faceted changes affecting almost all aspects of life (Schwab & Malleret, 2020 ). The cover of an issue of the international edition of Time Magazine reflected this idea of a great reset and presented the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to transform the way we live and work (Time, 2020 ). It has been argued that the pandemic will generate the emergence of a new era, and that we will have to adapt to the changes it produces (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020 ). For example, the industrial sector quickly embraced remote work despite its challenges, and it is possible that most industrial companies will not return to the on-site working model even after the pandemic ends (Hern, 2020 ). We can expect a high rate of similar responses in other fields, including education, where COVID-19 has already reshaped our educational systems, the way we deliver education, and pedagogical approaches.
• Theme 2: Digital pedagogy (See path on Fig.  1 : distance learning  >  research  >  teacher  >  development  >  need  >  training  +  technology  +  virtual  >  digital  >  communication  >  support  >  process  >  teaching  >  online  >  learning  >  online learning  +  course  >  faculty  >  students  >  experience ; See nodes on Fig.  2 : online learning, distance learning, computer-based learning, elearning, online education, distance education, online teaching, multimedia-based learning, technology, blended learning, online, digital transformation, ICT, online classes, flexible learning, technology-enhanced learning, digitalization ). Owing to the rapid transition to online education as a result of COVID-19, digital pedagogy and teachers’ competencies in information and communication technology (ICT) integration have gained greater prominence with the unprecedented challenges teachers have faced to adapt to remote teaching and learning. The COVID-19 pandemic has unquestionably manifested the need to prepare teachers to teach online, as most of them have been forced to assume ERE roles with inadequate preparation. Studies involving the use of SNA indicate a correspondence between adapting to a digital pedagogy and the need to equip teachers with greater competency in technology and online teaching (e.g., Blume, 2020 ; König et al., 2020 ). König et al. ( 2020 ) conducted a survey-based study investigating how early career teachers have adapted to online teaching during COVID-19 school closures. Their study found that while all the teachers maintained communication with students and their parents, introduced new learning content, and provided feedback, they lacked the ability to respond to challenges requiring ICT integration, such as those related to providing quality online teaching and to conducting assessments. Likewise, Blume ( 2020 ) noted that most teachers need to acquire digital skills to implement digitally-mediated pedagogy and communication more effectively. Both study findings point to the need for building ICT-related teaching and learning competencies in initial teacher education and teacher professional development. The findings from the SNA conducted in the present study are in line with the aforementioned findings in terms of keyword analysis and overlapping themes and nodes.
• Theme 3: Shifting educational landscape and emerging educational roles (See path on Fig.  1 : future > education > role > Covid19; See nodes on Fig.  2 : higher education, education, student, curriculum, university, teachers, learning, professional development, teacher education, knowledge, readiness ). The role of technology in education and human learning has been essential during the COVID-19 pandemic. Technology has become a prerequisite for learning and teaching during the pandemic and will likely continue to be so after it. In the rapid shift to an unprecedented mode of learning and teaching, stakeholders have had to assume different roles in the educational landscape of the new normal. For example, in a comprehensive study involving the participation of over 30 K higher education students from 62 countries conducted by Aristovnik et al. ( 2020 ), it was found that students with certain socio-demographic characteristics (male, lower living standard, from Africa or Asia) were significantly less satisfied with the changes to work/life balance created by the COVID-19 pandemic, and that female students who were facing financial problems were generally more affected by COVID-19 in their emotional life and personal circumstances. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, there is likely to be carry over in the post-pandemic era of some of the educational changes made during the COVID-19 times. For example, traditional lecture-based teacher-centered classes may be replaced by more student-centered online collaborative classes (Zhu & Liu, 2020 ). This may require the development and proliferation of open educational platforms that allow access to high-quality educational materials (Bozkurt et al., 2020 ) and the adoption of new roles to survive in the learning ecologies informed by digital learning pedagogies. In common with the present study, the aforementioned studies (e.g., Aristovnik et al., 2020 ; König et al., 2020 ) call for more deliberate actions to improve teacher education programs by offering training on various teaching approaches, such as blended, hybrid, flexible, and online learning, to better prepare educators for emerging roles in the post-pandemic era.
• Theme 4: Emergency remote education (see path Fig.  1 : higher education  >  university  >  student  >  experience  >  remote; See nodes on Fig.  2 : Covid19, pandemic, Coronavirus, higher education, education, school closure, emergency remote teaching, emergency remote learning ). Educational institutions have undergone a rapid shift to ERE in the wake of COVID-19 (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020a ; Bozkurt et al., 2020 ; Hodges et al., 2020 ). Although ERE is viewed as similar to distance education, they are essentially different. That is, ERE is a prompt response measure to an emergency situation or unusual circumstances, such as a global pandemic or a civil war, for a temporary period of time, whereas distance education is a planned and systematic approach to instructional design and development grounded in educational theory and practice (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020b ). Due to the urgent nature of situations requiring ERE, it may fall short in embracing the solid pedagogical learning and teaching principles represented by distance education (Hodges et al., 2020 ). The early implementations of ERE primarily involved synchronous video-conferencing sessions that sought to imitate in-person classroom instruction. It is worth noting that educators may have heavily relied on synchronous communication to overcome certain challenges, such as the lack of available materials and planned activities for asynchronous communication. Lockdowns and school closures, which turned homes into compulsory learning environments, have posed major challenges for families and students, including scheduling, device sharing, and learner engagement in a socially distanced home learning environment (Bond, 2020 ). For example, Shim and Lee ( 2020 ) conducted a qualitative study exploring university students’ ERE experiences and reported that students complained about network instability, unilateral interactions, and reduced levels of concentration. The SNA findings clearly highlight that there has been a focus on ERE due to the school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is key to adopt the best practices of ERE and to utilize them regularly in distance education (Bozkurt, 2022 ). Moreover, it is important to note that unless clear distinctions are drawn between these two different forms of distance education or virtual instruction, a series of unfortunate events in education during these COVID-19 times is very likely to take place and lead to fatal errors in instructional practices and to poor student learning outcomes.
• Theme 5: Pedagogy of care (See path Fig.  1 : r ole  >  education  >  Covid19  >  care ; See nodes on Fig.  2 : Stress, anxiety, student wellbeing, coping, care, crisis management, depression ). The thematic concept map and network graphic show the psychological and emotional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on various stakeholders, revealing that they have experienced anxiety, expressed the need for care, and sought coping strategies. A study by Baloran ( 2020 ), conducted in the southern part of the Philippines to examine college students’ knowledge, attitudes, anxiety, and personal coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic, found that the majority of the students experienced anxiety during the lockdown and worried about food security, financial resources, social contact, and large gatherings. It was reported that the students coped with this anxiety by following protective measures, chatting with family members and friends, and motivating themselves to have a positive attitude. In a similar study, Islam et al. ( 2020 ) conducted an investigation to determine whether Bangladeshi college students experienced anxiety and depression and the factors responsible for these emotional responses. Their cross-sectional survey-based study found that a large percentage of the participants had suffered from anxiety and depression during the pandemic. Academic and professional uncertainty, as well as financial insecurity, have been documented as factors contributing to the anxiety and depression among college students. Both studies point to the need for support mechanisms to be established by higher education institutions in order to ensure student wellbeing, provide them with care, and help them to cope with stress, anxiety, and depression. Talidong and Toquero ( 2020 ) reported that, in addition to students’ well-being and care, teachers’ perceptions and experiences of stress and anxiety during the quarantine period need to be taken into account. The authors found that teachers were worried about the safety of their loved ones and were susceptible to anxiety but tended to follow the preventive policies. A pedagogy of care has been presented as an approach that would effectively allow educators to plan more supportive teaching practices during the pandemic by fostering clear and prompt communication with students and their families and taking into consideration learner needs in lesson planning (e.g., Karakaya, 2021 ; Robinson et al., 2020 ). Here it is important to stress that a pedagogy of care is a multifaceted concept, one that involves the concepts of social equity, equality, and injustice.
• Theme 6: Social equity, equality, and injustice (See path on Fig.  1 : Impact  >  outbreak  >  coronavirus  >  pandemic  >  social ; See nodes on Fig.  2 : Support, equity, social justice, digital divide, inequality, social support ). One of the more significant impacts of COVID-19 has been the deepening of the existing social injustices around the world (Oldekop et al., 2020 ; Williamson et al., 2020 ). Long-term school closures have deteriorated social bonds and adversely affected health issues, poverty, economy, food insecurity, and digital divide (Van Lancker & Parolin, 2020 ). Regarding the digital divide, there has been a major disparity in access to devices and data connectivity between high-income and low-income populations increasing the digital divide, social injustice, and inequality in the world (Bozkurt et al., 2020 ). In line with the SNA findings, the digital divide, manifesting itself most visibly in the inadequacy and insufficiency of digital devices and lack of high-speed Internet, can easily result in widespread inequalities. As such, the disparities between low and high socio-economic status families and school districts in terms of digital pedagogy inequality may deepen as teachers in affluent schools are more likely to offer a wide range of online learning activities and thereby secure better student engagement, participation, and interaction (Greenhow et al., 2020 ). These findings demonstrate that social inequities have been sharpened by the unfortunate disparities imposed by the COVID-19, thus requiring us to reimagine a future that mitigates such concerns.
• Theme 7: Future of education (See word path on Fig.  1 : Future  >  education  >  Covid19  >  pandemic  >  changes and pandemic  >  coronavirus, outbreak, impact  >  world ; See nodes on Fig.  2 : Sustainability, resilience, uncertainty, sdg4). Most significantly, COVID-19 the pandemic has shown the entire world that teachers and schools are invaluable resources and execute critical roles in society. Beyond that, with the compulsory changes resulting from the pandemic, it is evident that teaching and learning environments are not exclusive to brick-and-mortar classrooms. Digital technologies, being at the center of teaching and learning during the pandemic period, have been viewed as a pivotal agent in leveraging how learning takes place beyond the classroom walls (Quilter-Pinner & Ambrose, 2020 ). COVID-19 has made some concerns more visible. For example, the well-being of students, teachers, and society at large has gained more importance in these times of crisis. Furthermore, the need for educational technology and digital devices has compounded and amplified social inequities (Pelletier et al., 2021 ; West & Allen, 2020 ). Despite its global challenges, the need for technology and digital devices has highlighted some advantages that are likely to shape the future of education, particularly those related to the benefits of educational technology. For example, online learning could provide a more flexible, informal, self-paced learning environment for students (Adedoyin & Soykan, 2020 ). However, it also bears the risk of minimizing social interaction, as working in shared office environments has shifted to working alone in home-office settings. In this respect, the transformation of online education must involve a particular emphasis on sustaining interactivity through technology (Dwivedi et al., 2020 ). In view of the findings of the aforementioned studies, our text-mining and SNA findings suggest that the COVID-19 impositions may strongly shape the future of education and how learning takes place.

In summary, these themes extracted from the text-mining and SNA point to a significant milestone in the history of humanity, a multi-faceted reset that will affect many fields of life, from education and economics to sociology and lifestyle. The resulting themes have revealed that our natural response to an emerging worldwide situation shifted the educational landscape. The early response of the educational system was emergency-based and emphasized the continuance of in-person instruction via synchronous learning technologies. The subsequent response foregrounded the significance of digitally mediated learning pedagogy, related teacher competencies, and professional development. As various stakeholders (e.g., students, teachers, parents) have experienced a heightened level of anxiety and stress, an emerging strand of research has highlighted the need for care-based and trauma-informed pedagogies as a response to the side effects of the pandemic. In addition, as the global pandemic has made systemic impairments, such as social injustice and inequity, more visible, an important line of research has emerged on how social justice can be ensured given the challenges caused by the pandemic. Lastly, a sizable amount of research indicates that although the COVID-19 pandemic has imposed unprecedented challenges to our personal, educational, and social lives, it has also taught us how to respond to future crises in a timely, technologically-ready, pedagogically appropriate, and inclusive manner.

SNA: Citation Trends in the References of the Sampled Publications

The trends identified through SNA in citation patterns indicate two lines of thematic clusters (see Fig.  3 -A network graph depicting the citing and being cited patterns in the research corpus. Node sizes were defined by their citation count and betweenness centrality.). These clusters align with the results of the analysis of the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the sampled publications and forge the earlier themes (Theme 4: Emergency remote education and Theme 5: Pedagogy of care).

• Thematic Cluster 1: The first cluster centers on the abilities of educational response, emergency remote education affordances, and continuity of education (Bozkurt & Sharma, 2020a ; Crawford et al., 2020 ; Hodges et al., 2020 ) to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on education, especially for more vulnerable and disadvantaged groups (UNESCO, 2020 ; Viner et al., 2020 ). The thematic cluster one agrees with the theme four emergency remote education . The first trend line (See red line in Fig.  3 ) shows that the education system is vulnerable to external threats. Considering that interruption of education is not exclusive to pandemics – for example, political crises have also caused disruptions (Rapp et al., 2016 ) – it is clear that coping mechanisms are needed to ensure the continuity of education under all conditions. In this case, we need to reimagine and recalibrate education to make it resilient, flexible, and adaptive, not only to ensure the continuity of education, but also to ensure social justice, equity, and equality. Given that online education has its own limitations (e.g., it is restricted to online tools and infrastructures), we need to identify alternative entry points for those who do not have digital devices or lack access to the internet.

“What we teach in these times can have secondary importance. We have to keep in mind that students will remember not the educational content delivered, but how they felt during these hard times. With an empathetic approach, the story will not center on how to successfully deliver educational content, but it will be on how learners narrate these times” (p. iv).

Conclusion and Suggestions

The results from this study indicate that quick adaptability and flexibility have been key to surviving the substantial challenges generated by COVID-19. However, extreme demands on flexibility have taken a toll on human well-being and have exacerbated systemic issues like inequity and inequality. Using data mining that involved network analysis and text mining as analytical tools, this research provides a panoramic picture of the COVID-19-related themes educational researchers have addressed in their work. A sample of 1150 references yielded seven themes, which served to provide a comprehensive meta-narrative about COVID-19 and its impact on education.

A portion of the sampled publications focused on what we refer to as the great reset , highlighting the challenges that the emergency lockdown brought to the world. A publication pattern centered around digital pedagogy posited distance and online learning as key components and identified the need for teacher training. Given the need for adaptability, a third theme revealed the demand for professional development in higher education and a future shift in educational roles. It can be recommended that future research investigate institutional policy changes and the adaptation to these changes in renewed educational roles. The ERE theme centered on the lack of preparation in instituting the forced changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The publications related to this theme revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic uncovered silent threads in educational environments, like depression, inequality, and injustice. A pedagogy of care has been developed with the aim of reducing anxiety and providing support through coping strategies. These research patterns indicate that the future of education demands sustainability and resilience in the face of uncertainty.

Results of the thematic analysis of citation patterns (Fig.  3 ) overlapped with two of the themes found in our thematic concept map (Fig.  1 ) and network graphic (Fig.  2 ). It was shown that researchers have emphasized the continuity of education and the psychological effects of the COVID-19 crisis on learners. Creating coping strategies to deal with global crises (e.g., pandemics, political upheavals, natural disasters) has been shown to be a priority for educational researchers. The pedagogy of resilience (Purdue University Innovative learning, n.d. ) provides governments, institutions, and instructors with an alternative tool to applying to their contexts in the face of hardship. Furthermore, prioritizing the psychological long-term effects of the crisis in learners could alleviate achievement gaps. We recommend that researchers support grieving learners through care (Noddings, 1984 ) and trauma-informed pedagogy (Imad, 2020 ). Our resilience and empathy will reflect our preparedness for impending crises. The thematic analysis of citation patterns (1: educational response, emergency remote education affordances, and continuity of education; 2: psychological impact of COVID-19) further indicates suggestions for future instructional/learning designers. Freire ( 1985 ) argues that to transform the world we need to humanize it. Supporting that argument, the need for human-centered pedagogical approaches (Robinson et al., 2020 ) by considering learning a multifaceted process (Hodges et al., 2021 ) for well-designed learning experiences (Moore et al., 2021 ) is a requirement and instructional/learning designers have an important responsibility not only to design courses but an entire learning ecosystem where diversity, sensitivity, and inclusivity are prioritized.

ERE is not a representative feature in the field of online education or distance education but rather, a forced reaction to extraordinary circumstances in education. The increasing confusion between the practice of ERE and online learning could have catastrophic consequences in learners' outcomes, teachers' instructional practices, and institutional policies. Researchers, educators, and policymakers must work cooperatively and be guided by sound work in the field of distance learning to design nourishing educational environments that serve students’ best interests.

In this study, text mining and social network analysis were demonstrated to be powerful tools for exploring and visualizing patterns in COVID-19-related educational research. However, a more in-depth examination is still needed to synthesize effective strategies that can be used to support us in future crises. Systematic reviews that use classical manual coding techniques may take more time but increase our understanding of a phenomenon and help us to develop specific action plans. Future systematic reviews can use the seven themes identified in this study to analyze primary studies and find strategies that counteract the survival of the fittest mindset to ensure that no student is left behind.

Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to all educators and instructional/learning designers who ensured the continuity of education during the tough times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article is produced as a part of the 2020 AECT Mentoring Program.

SNA of references covering pre-COVID-19 period (Only the first authors were labeled)

Authors’ Contributions

AB: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing, Visualization, Funding acquisition.; KK: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing.; MT: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing.; ÖK: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing.; DCR: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing.

This paper is supported by Anadolu University, Scientific Research Commission with grant no: 2106E084.

Data Availability

Declarations.

This is a systematic review study and exempt from ethical approval.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Contributor Information

Aras Bozkurt, Email: moc.liamg@trukzobsara .

Kadir Karakaya, Email: ude.etatsai@ayakarak .

Murat Turk, Email: [email protected] .

Özlem Karakaya, Email: ude.etatsai@melzo .

Daniela Castellanos-Reyes, Email: ude.eudrup@dletsac .

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