The outbreak of the COVID pandemic has dramatically shaped higher education and seen the distinct rise of e-learning as a compulsory element of the modern educational landscape. Accordingly, this study highlights the factors which have influenced how students perceive their academic performance during this emergency changeover to e-learning. In general, the model gave quite consistent results across countries, gender, study fields, and levels of study.
The findings provide a basis for policy recommendations to support decision-makers incorporate e-learning issues in the current and any new similar circumstances.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
COVID, as a global public health crisis, has been brutal on the economy, education and food security of people all around the world, regardless of national boundaries. Affected sectors include tertiary education, featuring one of the worst disruptions during the lockdown periods given that most countries have tried to keep their essential economic activities running.
Still, such activities did not extend to higher education institutions HEIs , which were closed completely after the suspension of face-to-face activities in an effort to avoid the virus spreading among their students and staff and, in turn, the general population.
