Abstract:
The advent of COVID-19 led to the disruption of normal face-to-face in person
teaching methods and the rapid, forced adoption of previously rejected distance
learning methods on a global scale. This forced adoption on led to a unique
opportunity to examine experiences and retain learnings. Existing research focused
mainly on reflective accounts of high school, ungraduated and other first time
learners in the higher education environment. The objective of this research to
examine the experiences of executive MBA students, who are likely to have different
needs to younger less established learners and who experienced emergency remote
education while learning from home. Through qualitative analysis of reflective
accounts of executive MBA students, the challenging and beneficial experiences of
students as well as the calls for retention of distance learning practices after the end
of the pandemic were established. The study identified that different needs arise in
the home environment leading to special challenges while learning form home in
addition to a lack of peer interactions being identified as a severe inhibitor to learning.
Beneficial experiences included more convenience from schedule flexibility and
avoiding traffic while calls for retention of practices suggested that examinations and
less interactive sessions, such as research workshops, remain online
