Distance education and learning processes. A survey at University of Catania during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The emergency situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic required all Italian universities to implement alternative teaching strategies to traditional face-to-face lessons. At the University of Catania, this situation prompted the start of distance learning paths in a synchronous mode at the very beginning of the emergency. At the same time, the lecturers were encouraged to video-record the lessons in order to make them available to students also in asynchronous mode. On the basis of this emergency situation, an investigation was immediately launched to identify the consequences of the new teaching methods on student learning processes; the research began in the first phase of the lockdown in Italy (March 2020) and ended in January 2021. The aim of this contribution is to present the results of the research conducted on a sample of 300 students following bachelor degree courses of the Department of Education at the University of Catania. The research aims to detect the students’ points of view on the strengths and weaknesses of the synchronous and asynchronous ways of presenting lessons and their respective impact on learning processes. The results of the research could provide useful insights to rethink university teaching even when the emergency situation comes to an end.