The impact of COVID-19 triggered changes to instruction and assessment on university students’ self-reported motivation, engagement and perceptions

During the northern hemisphere Winter 2020 academic term, university students had to adjust to remote learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This abrupt change provided a unique opportunity to examine students’ motivation, engagement and perceptions of success and cheating under two learning conditions, namely traditional and remote. We used a single survey to collect retrospective self-report data from a convenience sample of Canadian undergraduate students (n = 98) about their motivation, engagement and perceptions of success and cheating before COVID-19 and then in remote learning. Students' achievement goals, engagement and perceptions of success all significantly decreased, while their perceptions of cheating increased. Moreover, we used regression analyses to examine associations amongst achievement goals and engagement, perceptions of success and cheating concerns. Mastery-approach goals were positively associated with more engagement and higher perceptions of success. Achievement goals were unrelated to cheating. Students in large classes and who were originally concerned about cheating became more concerned about cheating in remote learning conditions. Our study provides information to researchers and instructors about how achievement goals relate to student outcomes across learning conditions. By extension, we provide timely recommendations for instructors as they continue to wrestle with how to deliver their courses during the COVID-19 pandemic.