Comparing Face-to-Face, Emergency Remote Teaching and Smart Classroom: A Qualitative Exploratory Research Based on Students’ Experience during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted traditional face-to-face teaching world-wide and forced education institutions to adopt new, online teaching formats to enable students tocontinue with their studies. This research focuses on students’ perceptions of three teaching differentmodalities: face-to-face (F2F), Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) and Smart Classroom (SC), whichwere implemented in response to the restrictions enforced to combat the spread of COVID-19. Aqualitative study based on two user experience techniques, Pocket Bipolar Laddering and EmotionalAppraisal, was carried out on a group of second-year ICT engineering university students at La SalleCampus Barcelona. The former technique consists in identifying a maximum of three positive andthree negative salient items, while the latter is intended to rate pairs of opposite feelings. In the SCformat, saving time on travel to university was considered an advantage of online learning, whiledisadvantages included less effective instructor–student interaction, distractions when off-campusand teamwork issues. These shortcomings can be addressed by specific online teaching training todevelop a more active form of learning and foment student participation. However, both ERT andSC modalities were considered effective solutions to cope with the social and mobility restrictionsimposed during the pandemic.