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.
Download ReportRecommended 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.
Other Related Resources
January 2022
This report focuses on building the core infrastructure needed for high-quality digital learning and is designed primarily for a mid- to senior-level academic administrators including department chairs, leaders of centers of teaching and learning, technology leaders, and academic leadership.
December 2021
This year our network has prioritized increasing our knowledge and capacity for equity and racial justice work along with centering equity and racial justice in our resources and services. In addition to our personal and professional equity work, we have spent this last year inviting students into our work.