Surviving and thriving: how changes in teaching modalities influenced student satisfaction before, during and after COVID-19

Abstract

This paper leverages analytics methods to investigate the impact of changes in teaching modalities shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic on undergraduate students’ satisfaction within a Spanish brick-and-mortar higher education institution. Unlike research that has focused on faculty- or programme-level data, this study offers a comprehensive institutional perspective by analysing large-scale data (N = 83,532) gathered from satisfaction surveys across all undergraduate courses in eight faculties from 2018 to 2021. The longitudinal analysis revealed significant changes (p < 0.05) in satisfaction indicators, particularly overall satisfaction and perceived workload. During the emergency remote teaching period, there was a significant decrease in satisfaction and high levels of variability across courses. However, a year after emergency remote teaching, with increased implementations of technology-supported online and mixed teaching modalities, satisfaction measures not only recovered but exceeded pre-COVID levels in the aforementioned indicators when the teaching modality was fully co-located. The variability of answers also reached historical lows, reflecting more uniform student experiences. These findings highlight the resilience of educators and the current higher education system and suggest a capacity to learn and improve from disruptive pedagogical changes. The study also provides insights into how data analytics can help monitor and inform the evolution of teaching practices.