Higher education students’ perceptions of accounting online learning: the emergency context of the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Emergency remote teaching (ERT) through online learning was adopted by the higher education system worldwide to provide students with ongoing education during the Covid-19 pandemic. This paper explores students’ perceptions of the functioning of online classes during the ERT period and how these perceptions influenced their accounting teaching-learning process. A questionnaire was applied to management and economics students, enrolled in a Portuguese HEI, within the context of accounting course units. Applying the PLS method, a theoretical model was estimated. Our results suggest that HEIs should invest in easy access to online teaching platforms and conferencing systems and to promote collaborative and interactive learning. Since ERT contexts may become increasingly recurrent, online learning should provide students with appealing online classes, as part of an engaging educational experience. This study contributes to a research agenda on the impact of a disruptive event on the accounting teaching-learning process in a specific cultural setting.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergency remote teaching
• online teaching-learning process
• accounting education
• COVID-19
• higher education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Portuguese public funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the framework of the project with reference UIDB/04105/2020 and also under the project grants UIDB/05105/2020 and UIDB/05422/2020.