Learning from home : COVID-19 and the use of emergency remote education for executive MBA students

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