Computer Science Students’ Perceptions of Emergency Remote Teaching: An Experience Report

In the first 6 months of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced numerous universities across the globe to quickly transfer all their courses online, a response known as Emergency Remote Teaching. Courses initially designed for face to face delivery had to be quickly adapted to a new online format. In this paper, we study the perception of the transition to remote teaching in a group of computer science students. Despite the advantage given by an average higher computer literacy, the results of this study suggest that students found the transition challenging, especially regarding tasks such as asking questions during video lectures and interacting with instructors. The transition seems to have had a greater impact on students of lower level courses. Differences were found also across race and residence status (but not gender). The initial format of the course was also relevant: students fared better if their course relied on online tools before the transition.