Students’ attitudes toward online learning during the pandemic era -focusing on practice courses at a university of education

Through a survey conducted among 64 students at a Gyeongin university of education during the COVID-19 pandemic, this research explores students’ attitude toward online learning, compares them with previous research outcomes, invites student suggestions for better learning, and analyzes their responses to find any intrinsic structure of learning performance. In a similar way to previous research, this study produces the pros (strength) and cons (weakness) of online education as follows. First, students enjoy freedom of time, freedom of place, freedom of repetition, and internet technology of online education. Second, the higher the students’ motivation, the more satisfied they can be with it. Third, most students may have a problem of motivation (immersion), of independent learning, of time management, of task identification, or a feedback problem with online learning; thus, these research findings are generally consistent with previous research. Nevertheless, this study presents some new findings as follows. Online education may also be good for practice lessons, where camera close-ups can show teachers’ movements (such as in hand-sewing) more clearly. Moreover, students who repeatedly use recordings seem to be more satisfied with online lectures than those who simply attend at their disposal. Further, low immersion and weak feedback are two major problems with online lectures; the former may have a greater negative effect on students with low competency, while feedback issues do not undermine student satisfaction as much. Finally, as students may get distracted if the lecture runs for longer than one hour, professors ought to manage class time for better learning outcomes.