Distance learning as an emergency strategy: Students’ opinions about its implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is a health phenomenon that disrupted all aspects of life in society (political, economic, social, and cultural substrates of humanity). The educational field has not been the exception. The abrupt change from a traditional educational model to a virtual teaching model impacted all the educational systems globally. Social inequalities and the enormous digital divide have become evident in this emerging virtual learning period to a greater or lesser degree. In Mexico, the INEGI, through its ECOVID-ED survey, has released problematic results in the education indicators of the Education Institutions. In this sense, the study presented here aims to analyze the effects of distance education as an emerging strategy from the students’ perception and assessment of this modality, for this information to be helpful to guide the design of educational processes that contribute to the improvement of inclusion and equity in higher education institutions (HEIs). We applied a three dimensions’ questionnaire to students in two public universities in the west-central region of Mexico: Students’ characterization; Students’ adaptability to a virtual modality; and the dimension referring to the transformation of the didactic strategies and digital platforms and the student’s perception about possible improvements to those strategies in two public universities in the west-central region of Mexico. The results show that students’ distance education assessment is affected by their perception of the teacher’s digital skills, mastery of the subjects taught, and didactic strategies’ attractiveness, minimizing their responsibility for learning in this modality.