Praise for digital education

FAU received very good ratings for study conditions at the University during the coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic created an entirely new set of challenges for university-level teaching. It required teaching staff to convert their lectures and seminars into digital form within a very short space of time, inform students of new procedures and keep them up to date with rapidly changing circumstances. A special study carried out by the Centre for Higher Education (CHE) shows that FAU overcame these challenges with great success. A student survey about studying during the coronavirus pandemic showed positive results overall. Participants praised the University’s communication during the pandemic in particular.

The CHE surveyed students studying business administration, information systems, industrial engineering and management and business and economics from April to August this year. FAU received a very good rating for how it handled the pandemic in general, for example for communication from the University about the current situation. One part of the survey found that ‘FAU reported to students about the coronavirus crisis clearly very early on. Students felt very well informed.’ FAU President Prof. Dr. Joachim Hornegger kept students and staff informed with regular podcasts and newsletters. The opportunity to continue studying as normal and the technology required to do so also received very good ratings from students of the four degree programmes.

Satisfied with online teaching

The switch to online teaching was also positively received by students. The variety of options online, the required technology or the teaching concepts specially created for digital formats all received ratings of good to very good. Participants in the survey studying information systems and industrial engineering and management gave a particularly positive assessment of the wide variety of teaching available online. Students studying business and economics gave very good ratings for the transparency of the requirements and learning objectives within the scope of online teaching as well as the opportunity to complete examinations online. The teaching concepts for online teaching units also received positive feedback. More than three quarters of the students asked gave ratings of good to very good for the availability and reliable feedback of teaching staff. However, they would like to see improvements to the support provided for students to communicate with each other.

About the survey

The CHE evaluated the responses of 6774 students at 124 universities about how their university and their department has dealt with the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. Students studying for a Master’s degree from the first to the sixth semester in business and economics, business studies, industrial engineering and management and information systems took part in the survey. Participants could rate various questions on a scale from 1 (very good) to 6 (very poor) about how degree programmes were organised during the coronavirus pandemic and about the conditions for online teaching. Detailed results are available on theofficial homepage of the CHE.

Further information:

Maria Mateusch
S-DATEN
maria.mateusch@fau.de