The Shift to Online Learning Amidst The Covid-19 Pandemic: Students' Perspectives

On January 30th 2020, Coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared a world pandemic, a decision that would lead to a series of radical changes to our lifestyle. The most important was the suspension of formal education at universities and schools and the use of e-learning models instead as a means of learning. Prompted by these changes, this research paper aims to review the students’ perceptions of their e-learning experience in Blida 2 university during the pandemic. The study reports on students’ perceptions of e-learning, its benefits, drawbacks and challenges. To this end, the researcher used a mixed-method approach, which included an online questionnaire with a large sample of students from different faculties of Blida 2 university, to unravel their e-learning experience. The findings of this study proved that the implementation of e-learning in this university faced several challenges which prevented it from delivering as expected.  Based on these findings some recommendations are put forward to improve the effectiveness of online learning in the Algerian higher education institutions.

Keywords:  e-learning, online learning, coronavirus pandemic, Algerian higher education.