Abstract—Coronavirus pandemic has impacted the whole
education system. Suddenly, presential classrooms are replaced
by online learning, leaving students and teachers to deal with
various problems without any specific preparation. This
research study examines the perceptions of 78 students from a
Portuguese Higher Education (HE) institution towards online
learning during the Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19)
pandemic. Two months after the implementation of the online
learning, they responded to a survey whose responses were
analyzed by using descriptive statistics and independent
Chi-squared tests. The findings of this study reveal the
difficulties that the students encountered, like the lack of
familiar/spatial conditions at home, the failures of Internet
connection, and the fear of clarifying doubts in this context. The
preference for face-to-face classes was also expressed. However,
the selected platform used for the online classes, the appropriate
development of the explanations and the digital contents made
available by the teachers were appreciated by the students. The
present research also investigates the factors that affected the
study motivation of the students and the future plans regarding
their studies.
Index Terms—COVID-19, online learning, higher education
(HE), mathematics, Portugal.
The authors are with the CIICESI - Escola Superior de Tecnologia e
Gestão, Politécnico do Porto, Felgueiras, Portugal (e-mail: sfc@estg.ipp.pt,
aib@estg.ipp.pt).
Cite: Ana I. Borges and Sidonie F. Costa, "Online Learning in Mathematics Higher Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey Study of Portuguese Students," International Journal of Information and Education Technology vol. 12, no. 10, pp. 1037-1042, 2022.
Copyright © 2022 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).