The Lockdown in Retrospect: An International, Mixed Methods Perspective on Student and Faculty Experiences with COVID-19 Remote Learning

A paradigm-shifting event of global proportions, the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it a necessary change to remote education for millions of students and faculty around the world. To better understand the global impact of this emergency transition, the present study offers a large-scale, multi-institutional look at the self-reported experiences of students and faculty during lockdown. Specifically, this paper first offers a quantitative look into individual differences in how students of varying academic beliefs experienced the transition. To contextualize these student results, a qualitative analysis of data on faculty follows. Processed according to a direct comparison of the faculty at two different universities, details are shared about (a) the highlights of what faculty believed students experienced during this unexpected transition, and (b) how faculty believed they could have proceeded differently had they known what they do now. Implications and lessons learned from this data are then discussed.