Jump starting e-learning: The impact of COVID-19 on perceived learning success: A real-time case study

The global upheaval caused by COVID-19 in 2020 has by many been considered as the biggest accelerator for digitalization in various areas, and Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are no exception to this. Universities had to abruptly shift to digital formats also termed e-learning. Some universities have been better prepared for online teaching than others, but for most within the educational community it has been a new experience to study or teach most if not all courses online without any further physical touch points. Due to the semester schedule, lecturers and students at Munich Business School had to adapt during an on-going semester and switch their way of teaching and learning more or less overnight, from offline teaching only to online teaching only. This situation has offered a unique opportunity to add to the literature on effective learning as well as e-learning by comparing exclusively offline and online learning environments across the same student population and measuring their impact on perceived learning success. This unique situation has further allowed for the development of a new model to explain possible drivers of perceived learning success under such circumstances. While an unexpected upheaval like COVID-19 may not happen in this exact same scenario again, new pandemics and global crises can easily impact future teaching environments in a similar manner, at least with regards to the limited time available to make such a switch. Consequently, the model presented here encourages further research and, if sufficiently validated in future research, has the power to provide insights into how to design an effective learning environment in HEI