Abstract

The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in Taiwan in May 2021 forced universities to enter emergency distance education and face an unprecedented large-scale distance teaching experience. Accordingly, this research intends to use the literature to first explore the learning problems and valuable experiences faced by global higher education under COVID-19 in the past year. Secondly, for the mechanical department at Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, a corresponding questionnaire was designed for professors and students to cross-reference the different experiences and responses of professors and students to distance education at the same time and in the same class environment. Qualitative data shows that most students embraced freedom and liberation in the beginning of the sudden implementation of the six-week distance education, while they soon discovered that the pressure of learning had become greater. Factors for such disturbance include easy distraction at home, increased assignments, and relatively difficult online communication, etc. Professors indicated that when facing students across the screen, they expressed concern about learning status, fairness of assessment, use of hardware and software, and difficulty in on-line communication. The statistical results of opinion quantitative questions show that the students are satisfied at a medium-to-high overall level, while the professors show lower satisfaction at a medium or medium-to-high level. Among the five categories, the most satisfactory one for the students is resources, followed by synchronized remote education, final assessment, efficacy, and school equipment; for the professors, school equipment advances to the second place. In summary, the professors and students have the highest satisfaction with "learning/teaching resources,” even though there are still students who cannot fully participate in classes, given that they can only use mobile phones to attend classes (6% of the testees), their computers are poor, or they have no access to the Internet at home. This shows how unequal resources access and limitations of to online learning for students. Furthermore, the efficacy of learning/teaching is the least satisfactory, showing that although the professors and students have mastered synchronous remote education in the six weeks, most of them still prefer to return back to the familiar and reliable face-to-face classroom education, owing to the difficulties in communication, hardware and software conditions, etc. In addition to the opinions of the professors and students that help disclose the reality of distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study concludes with suggestions for students, professors, and universities that may help in the post-pandemic era.