A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON THE EXPERIENCES AND QUALITY OF LEARNING RECEIVED BY DISTANT LEARNERS IN TIME OF COVID - 19 PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 pandemic has a tremendous effect on many aspects of human lives and turns the normal and usual way of living into a new normal. The new normal in education brought new and strange experiences in the academe due to the sudden closure of school which led to the mandatory implementation of distance learning. In this regard, this study was conducted to explore the learning experiences and the quality of learning as perceived by the distant learners. The purposive sampling technique was utilized by the researchers and identified 25 junior high school students where data had been collected. Considering the safety protocols and the participants of the study which are minors, the data were collected from recorded interviews using messenger and audio recording applications. Experiences encountered by distant learners, learning strategies to cope with distant learning, and Quality of learning acquired based on the perception of distant learners were the themes that emerged in the study. This study showed that distance learning provides learners with new and unique learning experiences that the students must adapt to. Adaptation of learners in the demand of distance learning has been achieved by the learners through individual learning strategies and relied on the support given by friends and members of the family. Furthermore, the study also revealed that the quality of learning that students acquired in distance learning are not comparable with the quality of learning acquired by the students in physical or face-to-face classes. Results of this study convey that educational institutions may consider recalibrating the strategies in giving quality education in distance learning that could equate if not surpass the quality of learning that students acquired in the face-to-face learning setup.