Skip to main content

Challenges of Online Learning During the COVID-19: What Can We Learn on Twitter?

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1485))

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing global pandemic. With schools shut down abruptly in mid-March 2020, education has changed dramatically. With the phenomenal rise of online learning, teaching is undertaken remotely and on digital platforms, making schools, teachers, parents, and students face a steep learning curve. This unplanned and rapid move to online learning with little preparation results in a poor experience for everyone involved. Thus, this study explores how people perceive that online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic is challenging. We focus on tweets in English scraped from March to April 2020 with keywords related to the COVID-19 pandemic and online learning. We applied the latent Dirichlet allocation to discover the abstract topics that occur in the data collection. We analyzed representative tweets from the qualitative perspective to explore and augment quantitative findings. Our findings reveal that most challenges identified align with previous studies. We also shed light on several critical issues, including mental health, the digital divide, and cyberbullying. Future work includes investigating these critical issues to enhance teaching and learning practices in the post-digital era.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  1. WHO: Who characterizes covid-19 as a pandemic (2020). https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19. Accessed 11 Mar 2020

  2. White House: Proclamation on declaring a national emergency concerning the novel coronavirus disease (covid-19) outbreak (2020). https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/proclamation-declaring-national-emergency-concerning-novel-coronavirus-disease-covid-19-outbreak/

  3. All Things Considered: Arkansas governor among the few not to issue stay-at-home order so far (2020). https://www.npr.org/2020/04/06/828303852/arkansas-governor-among-the-few-not-to-issue-stay-at-home-order-so-far

  4. Renner, L.: Education vs. covid-19: the shift to online learning (2020). https://capitolweekly.net/education-vs-covid-19-the-shift-to-online-learning/

  5. Kaplan, A.M., Haenlein, M.: Higher education and the digital revolution: about MOOCs, SPOCs, social media, and the cookie monster. Bus. Horiz. 59(4), 441–450 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Cleveland-Innes, M.F., Randy Garrison, D.: An Introduction to Distance Education: Understanding Teaching and Learning in a New Era. Routledge (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Meredith, S., Newton, B.: Models of e-learning: technology promise vs learner needs literature review. Int. J. Manage. Educ. 3(3), 43–56 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Selwyn, N.: Education and Technology: Key Issues and Debates. Bloomsbury Publishing (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Prasad, P.W.C., Maag, A., Redestowicz, M., Hoe, L.S.: Unfamiliar technology: reaction of international students to blended learning. Comput. Educ. 122, 92–103 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Brown, M.G.: Blended instructional practice: a review of the empirical literature on instructors’ adoption and use of online tools in face-to-face teaching. Internet High. Educ. 31, 1–10 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Lightner, C.A., Lightner-Laws, C.A.: A blended model: simultaneously teaching a quantitative course traditionally, online, and remotely. Interact. Learn. Environ. 24(1), 2 (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Rasheed, R.A., Kamsin, A., Abdullah, N.A.: Challenges in the online component of blended learning: a systematic review. Comput. Educ. 144, 103701 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Zacharis, N.Z.: A multivariate approach to predicting student outcomes in web-enabled blended learning courses. Internet High. Educ. 27, 44–53 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Cheng, G., Chau, J.: Exploring the relationships between learning styles, online participation, learning achievement and course satisfaction: an empirical study of a blended learning course. Br. J. Edu. Technol. 47(2), 257–278 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Boelens, R., De Wever, B., Voet, M.: Four key challenges to the design of blended learning: a systematic literature review. Educ. Res. Rev. 22, 1–18 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Henrie, C.R., Bodily, R., Manwaring, K.C., Graham, C.R.: Exploring intensive longitudinal measures of student engagement in blended learning. Int. Rev. Res. Open Distrib. Learn. 16(3), 131–155 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Broadbent, J.: Comparing online and blended learner’s self-regulated learning strategies and academic performance. Internet High. Educ. 33, 24–32 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Long, T., Cummins, J., Waugh, M.: Use of the flipped classroom instructional model in higher education: instructors’ perspectives. J. Comput. High. Educ. 29(2), 179–200 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-016-9119-8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Gopalan, C., Bracey, G., Klann, M., Schmidt, C.: Embracing the flipped classroom: the planning and execution of a faculty workshop. Adv. Physiol. Educ. 42(4), 648–654 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Maycock, K.W., Lambert, J., Bane, D.: Flipping learning not just content: a 4-year action research study investigating the appropriate level of flipped learning. J. Comput. Assist. Learn. 34(6), 661–672 (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Li, C., Lalani, F.: The covid-19 pandemic has changed education forever. This is how (2020). https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning/

  22. Bower, M., Dalgarno, B., Kennedy, G.E., Lee, M.J.W., Kenney, J.: Design and implementation factors in blended synchronous learning environments: outcomes from a cross-case analysis. Comput. Educ. 86, 1–17 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Smith, S.: Coronavirus (covid19) Tweets. Kaggle (2020). https://www.kaggle.com/smid80/coronavirus-covid19-tweets

  24. Guerra, J., Quan, W., Li, K., Ahumada, L., Winston, F., Desai, B.: SCOSY: a biomedical collaboration recommendation system. In: 2018 40th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), pp. 3987–3990. IEEE (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Řehůřek, R., Sojka, P.: Software framework for topic modelling with large corpora. In: Proceedings of the LREC 2010 Workshop on New Challenges for NLP Frameworks, pp. 45–50, May 22 2010

    Google Scholar 

  26. Blei, D.M., Ng, A.Y., Jordan, M.I.: Latent Dirichlet allocation. J. Mach. Learn. Res. 3, 993–1022 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Röder, M., Both, A., Hinneburg, A.: Exploring the space of topic coherence measures. In: Proceedings of the Eighth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, pp. 399–408 (2015)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Mabey, B.: pyLDAvis: Python library for interactive topic model visualization. Port of the R LDAvis Package (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Babvey, P., Capela, F., Cappa, C., Lipizzi, C., Petrowski, N., Ramirez-Marquez, J.: Using social media data for assessing children’s exposure to violence during the covid-19 pandemic. Child Abuse Negl. 116, 104747 (2021)

    Google Scholar 

  30. Dhawan, S.: Online learning: a panacea in the time of covid-19 crisis. J. Educ. Technol. Syst. 49(1), 5–22 (2020)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Henderson, E.: Survey reveals significant mental health impact during covid-19 pandemic (2020). https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200702/Survey-reveals-significant-mental-health-impact-during-COVID-19-pandemic.aspx

  32. Gecker, J., Liedtke, M.: AP EXCLUSIVE: US faces back-to-school laptop shortage (2020). https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-ap-top-news-ca-state-wire-technology-lifestyle-01e9302796d749b6aadc35ddc8f4c946

  33. L1ght. Rising levels of hate speech & online toxicity during this time of crisis (2020). https://l1ght.com/Toxicity_during_coronavirus_Report-L1ght.pdf

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Wei Quan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Quan, W. (2021). Challenges of Online Learning During the COVID-19: What Can We Learn on Twitter?. In: Guarda, T., Portela, F., Santos, M.F. (eds) Advanced Research in Technologies, Information, Innovation and Sustainability. ARTIIS 2021. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1485. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90241-4_40

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90241-4_40

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-90240-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-90241-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics