Suddenly Online: National Undergraduate Survey

Created By:
Digital Promise in partnership with Every Learner Everywhere® and Tyton Partners julio 2020

Topic: Digital Learning & Courseware Effective Teaching Practices Student and Faculty Experience Times of Uncertainty

Institution: 2-Year Institutions 4-Year Institutions

College students’ satisfaction dropped sharply after schools shifted to all-online courses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Undergraduate students struggled to stay motivated and missed receiving feedback from instructors and collaborating with fellow students. Significant numbers of students had problems with their internet connections, software, or computing devices—serious enough to impede their participation in their courses. Still, most students did not attribute their struggles to poor instructor preparation or limitations inherent in online learning. Moreover, online courses that used a larger array of recommended online teaching practices had much higher student satisfaction levels than the courses that used fewer of them. This report describes these and other results from Digital Promise’s national, random-sample survey of more than 1,000 college students whose coursework moved suddenly from in-person to completely online this spring.

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Recommended Citation

Means, B., and Neisler, J., with Langer Research Associates. (2020). Suddenly Online: A National Survey of Undergraduates During the COVID-19 Pandemic. San Mateo, CA: Digital Promise.

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