Satisfaction with remote teaching and the return to in-person teaching: perception of higher education students

Several studies have sought to evaluate how students experienced remote emergency experience due to the pandemic scenario caused by the spread of coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. This article aims to analyze the perception of students of higher education Portuguese, and their satisfaction with the remote emergency experience and the return to face-to-face classes. For this, an online questionnaire was applied to students, from the 1st year of the 1st cycle, of courses in the areas of education, communication sciences and business sciences of polytechnic higher education (n=307). For data analysis, a quantitative approach is adopted, using descriptive statistic and correlation analysis. The results show that 59.3% of the interviewees consider themselves extremely satisfied with returning to face-to-face classes. With regard to satisfaction with online classes, it shows that the majority (46.9%) are at the intermediate level (level 3, on a Likert scale from 1 to 5). Finally, when asked about the teaching regime they prefer, most opt for face-to-face teaching (68.4%), followed by mixed (b-learning) (29.6%) and distance (e-learning) (2.0%). The results are presented taking into account the gender, the course, the fact of being a worker or not and the period in which they study. The results allow us to conclude that remote emergency teaching was not satisfactory, in the perception of these students, and that the return to face-to-face teaching was accepted with great satisfaction. These results contribute to the discussion about the needs of a planned remote teaching, with methodologies and equipment suitable for online teaching.