Online Learning Has a Problem. New Research From an Effat University Researcher Shows It Is Not the Same Problem for Everyone.
A study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic finds that students and teachers experience e-learning very differently — and that closing the gap requires addressing both sides of the classroom.
When universities around the world moved their teaching online during the COVID-19 pandemic, the assumption was that the technology would carry most of the weight. Set up the platform, send out the login details, and the learning would follow. What research conducted during that period is increasingly showing is that the technology was only part of the equation — and in many cases, not the part that was failing.
A study co-authored by a researcher at Effat University in Jeddah examines what actually went wrong for the students and professors who struggled with e-learning during that period, why their struggles looked so different from one another, and what institutions and policymakers need to do to make online education work more equitably going forward.
The Same Platform, Two Different Experiences
The study surveyed students and professors at the Instituto PolitĂ©cnico Nacional in Mexico — the country’s second-largest university — during the pandemic period. Around four-fifths of respondents were students, one-fifth were professors, and all were answering 29 questions about their experience of online education across a five-point scale.
One of the study’s most significant findings is that student dissatisfaction and teacher dissatisfaction have different root causes — a distinction that matters because it points toward different solutions.
For students, the primary source of frustration was a feeling of deficient computer skills. The assumption that younger generations are inherently confident with technology does not hold when the technology in question is a specific set of e-learning platforms that many students had little prior experience with. When education moves entirely online, that lack of confidence does not stay contained to the technical side of things. It bleeds into the learning experience itself — producing anxiety, disengagement, and boredom in students who might otherwise be perfectly capable learners.
For professors, the determining factor was different. Teacher satisfaction with e-learning was most closely tied not to their own technical confidence but to the level of support their institution provided. Clear instructions and defined obligations, a coherent long-term strategy for online education, and access to specialised software where needed — these were the variables that separated professors who found e-learning workable from those who did not. Where institutional support was strong, teachers reported higher satisfaction. Where it was absent, they struggled, regardless of the platform they were using.
What the Numbers Show
The survey produced several findings that give texture to the broader picture. Zoom was the overwhelmingly dominant platform, used by 95% of respondents — a concentration that reflects both its ease of adoption and the lack of meaningful alternatives that most institutions offered. Around a quarter of all respondents reported being unhappy with the e-learning tools available to them. Overall satisfaction was higher among teachers than students. And a low sense of community was identified as one of the most significant factors in student dissatisfaction — the social dimension of in-person learning, it turns out, is not a peripheral feature of education but a meaningful contributor to how engaged and supported students feel.
The study did not conclude that e-learning is a failed model. More than half of respondents agreed that integrating technology into learning can be genuinely beneficial, particularly when active learning strategies are built into the design rather than bolted on. But it was equally clear that online education does not create equal experiences for all participants. For some, it removes barriers. For others, it builds new ones — and those students and teachers are navigating those barriers in every class they attend or deliver.
What Needs to Change
The study’s recommendations are directed at the institutions and policymakers with the power to shape how e-learning is delivered.
The digital skills gap between students needs to be treated as a structural problem, not an individual one. When unequal confidence with e-learning platforms produces unequal learning outcomes, the solution is not to tell struggling students to try harder — it is to build the digital skills, internet accessibility, and ICT infrastructure that give everyone a real starting point. Ensuring that marginal and underserved groups are not left behind by the shift to online education should be a policy priority, not an afterthought.
University e-learning policies also need to be redesigned with more ambition. Better digital resources, clearer institutional strategies, and hybrid learning models that extend educational coverage to students who cannot always access reliable technology are identified as high priorities. Professors need to know what is expected of them, what tools are available, and that their institution is committed to supporting them — not just in the first weeks of a platform rollout but as a sustained, long-term investment.
The researchers also point toward two areas that future work should examine. The first is whether more sophisticated approaches to digital collaborative spaces could help rebuild the sense of community that students consistently report missing in virtual classrooms. The second — and perhaps the more pressing — is the question of what happens to e-learning when a crisis disrupts access to the technology it depends on. Offline recovery systems and educational continuity strategies are easy to deprioritise when things are running smoothly. The pandemic made clear, and quickly, that smooth conditions are not guaranteed. Thinking carefully about those contingencies before they become emergencies is exactly the kind of forward planning that the research is calling for.
