Students' perceptions of higher education courses and instructors before and during Covid-19: the case of the Industrial Engineering and Management degree at the University of Porto

Abstract

The recognition of Covid-19 as a global pandemic in March 2020 forced the closure of schools and universities around the world, raising the need to adopt emergency teaching methods. A year and a half later, the situation is still not resolved, but there is more data that allow us to understand the real impact. This study presents a comprehensive analysis of higher education students perceptions about courses and faculty during the last 5 years (2016-2021), with a special focus on the differences in perception between the pre-Covid-19 and the during Covid-19 phases. To this end, the pedagogical surveys that are answered by students from an engineering degree at a Portuguese university at the end of the first and second semester of the academic year are analyzed. The results allow us to identify two distinct moments in the Covid-19 phase: a first in which feelings of positivism and appreciation of students for the instructors and the courses they teach stand out, and a second moment in which students become more demanding and dissatisfied with the courses and with the instructors, leading to a lack of motivation and involvement of students.