When Lecturers have a Choice: Covid-19 Teaching Format Preferences in a Large-Scale Course of Freshmen Students in Switzerland

Abstract

Covid-19 is increasingly forcing educational institutions to explore new avenues and weight the pros and cons between on-site instruction, online instruction, and mixed formats. Understanding teaching format preferences of lecturers may be helpful for creating meaningful solutions with educational technologies. The paper at hand documents and reflects on the organization and implementation of a large-scale first-semester course in Switzerland in the fall term 2020, where seminar lecturers were free to decide on their used course format (on-site, online, mixed). The format preferences of all 39 seminar lecturers were captured and evaluated. Our results indicate that seminar lecturers predominantly opted for mixed or online seminars; often they like to conduct the very first lesson on site for the purpose of becoming familiar with the students.