Most university students and professors say online learning has ‘negative impact,’ new survey finds

It was commissioned by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and will be released Tuesday.

“As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the scramble to move courses online, we have lost that human connection, and educational quality has suffered,” said Rahul Sapra, president of the association and a professor at Ryerson University.

The poll of 2,700 students, professors and post-secondary librarians found that 62 per cent of students and 76 per cent of faculty believe online learning has had a “negative impact on education quality.”

Some 77 per cent of students feel there has been a “negative impact on my ability to learn course material” with online learning, and 80 per cent of faculty say there has been a “negative impact on my teaching ability or ability to convey important learning material to students,” in part because of bigger classes and increased workload.

Students are also worried about their academic achievement, mental health and their finances, Navigator found.

Kayla Weiler, of the Ontario branch of the Canadian Federation of Students, said the results are in line with what students have been saying.

“There are student fears about being behind — especially in the prerequisite courses for future courses,” she said, adding that they will need extra help to catch, up as well as more mental health support, when in-person learning resumes.

Kimberly Ellis-Hale, a contract sociology professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, said “sometimes it’s a real challenge to connect with students over Zoom … students do need as much contact as possible,” and she makes herself available before and after online classes to help students.

“I think we are all struggling,” she said. “I am used to large classes — on campus I have 200. I am good with that. But you can read a room — you can’t do that on Zoom.”

Online, however, her classes have grown — she has more than 200 students this semester, and next semester more than 550.

“Young people are experiencing higher levels of stress, higher levels of anxiety than any other age group,” she said. “They don’t know how they are going to earn next term’s tuition, they are worried about their families ... they don’t get to talk to each other (in person, in class) and they don’t get to make friends.”

She said she misses saying good morning in person to students as they enter class. Zoom “is so impersonal,” she added. “And trust me, I try. I’m there. We do group work, we have discussions, we do ‘show your pet’ before class begins to try to get to know each other a little bit.”It helps to give them a sense of belonging, she said.

Professors are also providing a lot of emotional support to students on top of academic support, she added.

The Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations represents 17,000 professors and academic librarians across the province.

Past president Gyllian Phillips, an English professor at Nipissing University, said everyone agrees with “going online with emergency measures to protect health on campus” but “everyone is suffering online.”

The association is calling on the provincial government to invest in improved resources and smaller classes so that professors have more time with students, and also to help students by lowering tuition fees given, the lack of employment opportunities during the pandemic. The province would also need to provide funding to make up for the loss of reduced tuition, she added.

“This poll illustrates to universities — it’s a wake-up call — students do not like it,” Phillips said. “They do not like remote instruction, faculty do not like it. It’s not as effective as in-class.”

The survey of 2,208 faculty and librarians and 502 university students was conducted in October and November, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 and 4.4 percentage points respectively, 19 times out of 20.