Our Guest Post today comes from Dr. Lynn A. Fish, who is Professor of Management in the School of Business at Canisius College
The pandemic has led higher education to use online education more. It’s important for instructors to understand and develop student expectations for our classes and modes of teaching. With the change to online classes, do instructors and students have the same perceptions of online versus face-to-face education?
Forthcoming research completed at an AACSB Jesuit, Catholic University with a strong focus on teaching face-to-face classes revealed that during the pandemic with instruction mainly online, instructors and students still prefer face-to face instruction on most individual factors (specific to the student or instructor) and program factors (decisions that the instructor makes in developing the course) studied.
However, the instructor and business student perspectives differ on many factors. In general, both groups are more positive toward face-to-face education. Contrastingly, instructors and students who have not experienced online were very homogenous in their perspectives on all factors. In post-pandemic education, as instructors we need to address student expectations versus our own and use online components that may complement our classrooms in ways that we may not have understood prior to the pandemic. For example, in my operations management classes during the pandemic, over 80% of students rated the MyOMLab homework experience positively. Students are interested in keeping the pandemic instructor-developed video lectures available for review. However, they are frustrated with online testing and wish to return to traditional pencil-and-paper.
Future course offering will adjust accordingly to meet their expectations. However, not all institutions are the same and the key is to understand and manage these expectations at your institution after the pandemic. As instructors, it’s important to define and meet student perceptions as we enter the post-pandemic education world.