University College Students’ Experiences with Online Teaching One Year after COVID-19 Lockdown in Spring 2020

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Editors, thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting article.

Dear Authors, I congratulate you on taking on a cognitively and practically important research topic.

It was a scientific pleasure for me to read the text. In my opinion, the topic of online teaching is significant because the recent years of the Covid-19 pandemic have changed the global approach to education, and elements of this model will most likely be implemented in education systems, particularly higher education, for longer.

Such topics must be addressed in both qualitative and quantitative research, and your paper fits in this trend, as you proved in the extensive and well-prepared introduction to the article.

However, I have some doubts/questions, which I will try to quote below:

- Although the focus research is qualitative, which involves in-depth analyses, generalizations were made on a relatively small group of 29 respondents

- In the paper, the authors refer to online education experience, but there is no information on how the surveyed students learned: did they all use the same tools? What platforms did they use (MS Teams, Zoom, others?)? Do they all have experiences of synchronous online and asynchronous learning?This could have influenced the opinion and judgment of whether this factor was considered in the division into focus groups. Does the author have any information about the respondents in this detail at all?

- As the authors admit (439-443), the division into groups and specialties/faculties is a weak point. In my opinion, this may have been a differentiating factor - was it considered when dividing the groups, and if not, why?

- In lines 360-361, the authors write in the conclusions: "The qualitative results show the need to separate experiences from the first disrupted  period in spring 2020 with ‘emergency’ online teaching from more reflected experiences one year after ..." I do not see a direct connection between this conclusion and the presented results/statements of the respondents as well as mentioned in the text clusters. I suggest digging into this thread. The further description is needed.

- The results/examples of statements presented in the text do not, in my opinion, lead to the conclusions contained in the text. I am asking the authors for a detailed explanation of how they analyzed the statements obtained in the focus interviews.

 

- My request and suggestion is to supplement the information on the research method itself, in particular on the process of organizing focus interview sessions and the type of contact between the researcher and the respondents

 

- Please review the text again in terms of language - I noticed an inconsistency in the entry, e.g., 'Covid-19' in lines: 115, 122, 413, 453

 

Generally, I believe your scientific paper should be published because it is of great value; however, after making the clarifications suggested above.

Author Response

Dear reviewer

Thank you very much for your comments to our paper. Below you find our responses. We will use them to make the necessary changes to our paper due to the publication

 

Dear Editors, thank you for the opportunity to review this interesting article.

Dear Authors, I congratulate you on taking on a cognitively and practically important research topic.

It was a scientific pleasure for me to read the text. In my opinion, the topic of online teaching is significant because the recent years of the Covid-19 pandemic have changed the global approach to education, and elements of this model will most likely be implemented in education systems, particularly higher education, for longer.

Such topics must be addressed in both qualitative and quantitative research, and your paper fits in this trend, as you proved in the extensive and well-prepared introduction to the article.

***

However, I have some doubts/questions, which I will try to quote below:

- Although the focus research is qualitative, which involves in-depth analyses, generalizations were made on a relatively small group of 29 respondents

Response: We acknowledge this comment. It has not been our intention to make generalizations based on our qualitative focus interviews alone. We also include our knowledge from our quantitative cluster analysis. We will try to make this clear in the text]

- In the paper, the authors refer to online education experience, but there is no information on how the surveyed students learned: did they all use the same tools? What platforms did they use (MS Teams, Zoom, others?)? Do they all have experiences of synchronous online and asynchronous learning? This could have influenced the opinion and judgment of whether this factor was considered in the division into focus groups. Does the author have any information about the respondents in this detail at all?

Response: This is a very relevant question from the reviewer. We used data from different investigations to be able to compare students learning approaches in different learning environments in the period 2018-2021. In the LEARN datasets focus was not specifically on ‘online teaching’ and teaching activities but on the validated questions/indicators of the students’ learning approaches and learning environment. We have included all university college students in our survey, so it was not possibility to be more exact. However, all the students used the same platform (MS Teams) and during the lock-down all students have experiences with both synchronous online and asynchronous learning – unfortunately it is not possible to be very specific as each teacher during the lock-down used different combinations of synchronous online and asynchronous learning. This was a didactic problem, so the closest we could come to be precise in the analysis, was the division into clusters based i.e., education via physical attendance, or blended, or full online education. The negative experience from many students indicates that many teachers in the first disrupted period in spring 2020 used mostly synchronous online teaching (e.g., long powerpoint presentations, long dialoges and discussion online as they use it in the physical classroom teaching)

We acknowledge that many factors influences how we can divide the students in the different focus groups.

The purpose was a discussion and reflection on their experiences one year after the lock down using their main preferences towards online teaching and how they might have changed/nuances their opinions and how the university college as an organization can use this information. We are in the process of writing an article that discusses the ‘ontology of the classroom’. This will be the next article, where we go deeper into the discussion about learning and classroom.

- As the authors admit (439-443), the division into groups and specialties/faculties is a weak point. In my opinion, this may have been a differentiating factor - was it considered when dividing the groups, and if not, why?

[Response: We agree with the reviewer and therefore we also mention this as a limitation. However, the quantitative results from the cluster analysis we have carried out does not seem to indicate that there are big differences in students learning approaches and learning outcomes depending on specialties/faculties. We take up this issue in a quantitative research article we are working on this spring 2023 and hope to submit April 2023]

- In lines 360-361, the authors write in the conclusions: "The qualitative results show the need to separate experiences from the first disrupted period in spring 2020 with ‘emergency’ online teaching from more reflected experiences one year after ..." I do not see a direct connection between this conclusion and the presented results/statements of the respondents as well as mentioned in the text clusters. I suggest digging into this thread. The further description is needed.

[Response: We agree with reviewer that these lines in the conclusion needs to be explained further. We include our knowledge here from the quantitative cluster analysis and we want to add this in these lines in the conclusion to be more specific]

- The results/examples of statements presented in the text do not, in my opinion, lead to the conclusions contained in the text. I am asking the authors for a detailed explanation of how they analyzed the statements obtained in the focus interviews.

[Response: We agree that our conclusion draws on knowledge from both our quantitative and qualitative examinations from a mixed method design. Therefore, we included some main results from our quantitative cluster analysis in the ‘Introduction’ of the paper. We analyzed the statements in the focus interviews within the same main themes derived from the quantitative analysis. We will try to explain that more clearly in the conclusion]

 - My request and suggestion is to supplement the information on the research method itself, in particular on the process of organizing focus interview sessions and the type of contact between the researcher and the respondents

[Response: We agree and have added some lines in the method section on how we have organized the focus interview sessions and the roles and contact between us as researchers and the students as respondents]

- Please review the text again in terms of language - I noticed an inconsistency in the entry, e.g., 'Covid-19' in lines: 115, 122, 413, 453

[Response: Thank you for this information. We will have a close look at the language in the paper]

Generally, I believe your scientific paper should be published because it is of great value; however, after making the clarifications suggested above.

Response: We appreciate your valuable comments and positive view on its relevance for publication. We look forward to getting it published and hope we have given you adequate responses. Thanks a lot for the time you have used reading and commenting our paper!!

Reviewer 2 Report

I thank the Authors for a competent text. It was prepared at a good substantive and methodological level. I do not raise any major objections, although in my opinion the context of the study should be presented a little better. I recommend the text for publication.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

We appreciate this. Thank you for your recommendation for publication!

Reviewer 3 Report

The objective of this study is to explore the experiences of university college students’ experiences with online teaching one year after the lockdown in spring 2021. Focus group (interviews) with students were used in this study based on their preferences towards online teaching to discuss and reflect on their own study planning, shift in learning environment, their perceived learning outcome, and positive and negative experiences from online teaching.

The article deals with a topical issue of interest to the scientific community.

The theoretical background is appropriate, with up-to-date citations and references. The presentation of qualitative results helps to deepen the research objectives and offers a discussion and conclusions of interest to the scientific community.

Authors should indicate study limitations.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your good comments. We appreciate this very much. 

We indicate our study limitations in the paper (lines 436-443)

Reviewer 4 Report

Using quantitative cluster analysis and focus groups, this study is designed to explore college students’ online learning experience one year after the lockdown in the Spring of 2021. While the authors provided some insightful information on students’ online learning experiences, the study contained some major issues. First, dividing the students into three clusters based on their preferences for online learning and then studying their experience of online learning seems to be unnecessary. Second, the study's major contribution seems to confirm previous research. I do not see much novelty within the study design itself. Third, the research design, research questions, hypotheses, and method were not described in a clear method, especially in the explanation of the necessity of the cluster analysis. In addition, the manuscript contains numerals typos. For example, in line 13, it should be students’ learning strategies.

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

Thank you for your comments and for reading our paper.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors, thank you for the response and all improvments that you made already. I appreciate your effort and all the explanations that you have provided. I will recommend the text for publication however still there is space for more detailed explanation and description about the method itself (as well as the procedures of the interview). I am looking forward to read your paper after publication.

Reviewer 4 Report

I do not see a huge improvement in the revised manuscript. Thus, my review decision remain the same.