UNIVERSITY STUDENTS DURING PANDEMIC. A CASE STUDY ON A FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL-POLITICAL SCIENCE UNDERGRADUATES.

Rezumat

In this paper, we present some key features regarding a quantitative panel study conducted in 2020 at the Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Science, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași. To examine how the undergraduates perceive distance learning in the context of university closure due to the spread of COVID-19 disease, we organized two „waves" of research by questionnaire: 593 respondents in March 2020 and 499 respondents in June 2020, both samples being representative. This research had four main objectives: (a) studying comparatively the university students opinion about the decision to suspend the traditional face-to-face teaching activities; (b) studying the university students opinion about the online communications with professor or tutors, with their colleagues; (c) studying the main online activities initiated during the pandemic for academic formation; (d) constructing a statistical index of pandemic difficulties for comparative analysis within specific groups of the target population. Some of the conclusions of this study showed that during this semester, marked by pandemic context, the intensity level of the communication process between students and their teachers has increased relatively balanced for all years of study. Also, the online teaching activities carried out at a constant pace respected the pre-pandemic schedule. Thus, the time spent on learning was quite similar compared with the pre-pandemic period.