Reshaping Sustainable University Education in Post-Pandemic World: Lessons Learned from an Empirical Study

The outbreak of COVID-19 has affected people all around the world. Governments had no choice but to put people in self-isolation to stop the spread of the virus. As a result, all companies and educational institutions switched to working or studying from home. The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on student teaching and learning in the context of Malmo university. Furthermore, the study proposes recommendations for sustainable post-pandemic education at Malmo University. The study includes ten semi-structured interviews with students followed by a workshop with ten senior lecturers teaching bachelor's and master's courses. The study uses snowball sampling to select students for the interviews and senior lecturers for the workshop. A qualitative data analysis technique, thematic analysis, is used for data analysis on the data collected from interviews with students and the workshop with senior lecturers. The results from the study suggested that online education leads to several benefits for students, such as better time management, higher lecture attendance, flexibility, and discipline in their studies. However, the shift to online education has caused a communication deterioration between students and teachers. Less social interaction with other students leads to depression, anxiety, and stress. The recommendations for post-pandemic education include the unified selection of digital learning tools across courses, a designated budget for digital learning tools, training support, and hybrid learning methods. In conclusion, the study proposes blended and hybrid learning to improve higher education at the university, requiring digital tools to minimize students' communication barriers.

Automated summary

The outbreak of COVID-19 has impacted student teaching and learning at Malmo University. Online education brings benefits for students but also leads to communication deterioration between students and teachers. Recommendations for post-pandemic education include selecting unified digital learning tools, allocating a budget for digital tools, providing training support, and adopting hybrid learning methods.