E-teaching and E-learning in Social Work Education in Pandemic from Students’ Perspective

The pandemic have entailed major changes for education programs affected university learning nowadays, and for sure more in the future. The universities were forced to abandoned face-to-face teaching and to adopted e-teaching overnight. Students’ lives have changed radically regarding of learning, passing the exams, perform specialized practice, and also the social life. The main objective of this study is to explore various barriers that the students of the social work study program at the University of Pitesti had during pandemic. The problem addressed was structured on several topics including: students’ perception of e-learning, students’ fear of getting low grades and losing subsidized places, teachers’/ students’ skills in using technology, the stress during the exams, student health in the pandemic and the impact on employment. This study used a qualitative research method that involved analyzing qualitative narrative data collected through in-depth interviews with students. The results show that the transition to e-learning and e-teaching had advantages such as flexibility and accessibility, but there are limitations too, such as social isolation, lack of student-teacher interaction, connectivity issues (technical problems) and more importantly – specialized practice limitation. The results of the study highlight the fear faced by students regarding their professional future due to the fact that they do not have enough skills acquired in practice (knowing that education in social work involves a lot of practical activities and direct interaction with vulnerable groups), that will affect their success in employment. The findings of this study will be helpful for policy makers including educational community to conduct and deliver smooth online education and practice in good conditions in such crisis situations.


Keywords: Covid-19, students’ online experience, students performance, online barriers