When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, universities all over the world had to close down their campuses and move all education online in just a matter of days [1]. At KTH, where a vast majority of the education typically takes place on campus, this caused a very rapid change. In this study, we wanted to evaluate how the students had experienced their education and surveyed students enrolled in year 1-3 of the 5 year computer science and engineering programme, and in both years of the master of science program in computer science.

The surveys were distributed in May 2020, as part of a mandatory assignment in the program integrating courses in the respective programmes [2]. It was mandatory for the students to fill out the survey, but the students were not graded on their responses. We got responses from almost all active students, altogether 794 respondents (139, 173, 148, 166, 168, for each grade respectively). We asked the students to compare the typical campus education before the pandemic, with the spring semester's digital education, on a number of aspects, such as stress, procrastination, motivation, and their experienced possibility to fulfill the learning outcomes. We also specifically asked the students to compare the quality of different course activities, such as lectures, tutorials, and computer labs. All of these questions were asked on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = Distance education is considerably better, to 7 = Campus education is considerably better, and with 4 being a neutral value. In addition, we also asked the students to name the main advantages and disadvantages of this new education format, in two open-ended questions.

In general, the results show that the majority of the students preferred the on-campus setting in all aspects and regarding all course activities. This was shown to be statistically significant as one-sample Wilcoxon signed ranked tests, testing the null hypnosis that the median =4 (that is that distance education and on-campus were experienced as equivalent), all had p-values< 0.05, favoring the on-campus setting. The students were slightly more positive about the online lectures, and many students stated, in the open question, that having recorded lectures makes it easy to pause and rewatch if needed. The students also appreciated the flexibility that comes with remote teaching and that their commuting time disappeared. There were also a couple of differences between different grades, where for instance first-year Master students were more positive about online lectures compared to 2nd and 3rd-year bachelor students. The main disadvantages that students mentioned were lack of motivation, study discipline, and lack of social interactions with other students as well as teachers. During the conference, a more detailed presentation of the collected data will be given. It is, however, also important to remember that the results show the students’ perceptions of online education given during the first months of the pandemic. It does not imply that distance education, in general, is experienced as less sufficient, it rather shows that last-minute changes from a familiar on-campus setting to a remote one are very challenging. When evaluating the results during the pandemic it is important to note that distance education is not the same as emergency online education [3].

Remote emergency teaching is challenging, and this is well reflected in the students’ perception of their education during the spring semester of 2020. We should, however, learn from the experience and for instance, recorded lectures seem to be something the students would appreciate also in a post-covid-19 world.