The significance of disciplinary context and student status to experiences of remote learning: Lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic

Covid-19 precipitated a rapid transition from face-to-face to remote learning in higher education. Although research has considered student experiences of this transition, much of the scholarship is discipline-specific, with less written from a cross-disciplinary perspective. This study compares the remote-learning experiences of students enrolled on different degree programmes at the University of Liverpool, including both traditional and non-traditional (or ‘mature’) students. A survey (n=121) completed by undergraduate students studying ‘hard’ and applied sciences (n=63) and the humanities and social sciences (n=58) reveals important disciplinary differences in student experiences. Mature students are found to be disproportionately affected by barriers to learning. Disciplinary differences also emerge in terms of staff approaches to online teaching. The findings underscore the importance of acknowledging disciplinary context and student status when planning for remote learning and offer empirical support for the University of Liverpool’s Hybrid Active Learning model.This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0.