From Crisis to a New Normal? Empirical-Based Reflections on What Could Be Kept and What Should Be Adapted in Higher Education Teaching

Kurzfassung

This paper examines the questions of how students perceived higher education teaching in the wake of COVID-19 crisis and what lessons can be learned for shaping a new (post-pandemic) normality at higher education institutions. For this purpose, a survey was conducted among students of the CONRIS network. This survey was enriched with the results of a previous survey among faculty and teaching staff at higher education institutions (also members of the CONRIS network). The explorative survey among the students mainly focused on the areas of communication between the university and its teachers to the students and on teaching at the university under the conditions of Corona. The main goal of this paper is to provide some empirical based guidance on the extent to which the crisis-like development and the accompanying upheavals in teaching could become a new standard in a future system of higher education teaching. The focus is on which elements of the ad-hoc transformation seem worth preserving from the students' point of view and where there is a need for adaptation on the way to a new "normal" teaching at higher education institutions.