Comparative analysis of students' views of online learning in the first and second Covid-19 semesters: Examples from Turkiye, Poland, Republic of North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract

The abrupt change from face-to-face to Online Learning (OL) in the emergency COVID-19 semester surprised and forced students to alter their study habits. Then came the second online period, and students were expected to be happier and more successful since now they were familiar with OL. Was this the case? Had the ways students learned, their perceptions of human interactions among teachers and students in OL, their opinions on the learning environment and their computer literacy changed? Our paper aims to answer those questions using comparative analyses of data sets from the first and second OL periods and attempts to uncover the positive and negative shifts and the topics that remained unchanged. The study’s findings show that COVID-19 related educational changes had multidirectional influences on students’ learning, ingroup interactions, and views about education and OL. Hopefully, the empirical data collected in this study will provide valuable information about OL’s immediate and prolonged effects.