Distance education and learning processes. A survey at university of Catania during the COVID-19 pandemic

The emergency situation caused by the pandemic COVID-19 has required all Italian universities to implement alternative teaching strategies to traditional face-to-face lessons. Within the University of Catania this situation has determined, since the first moments of the emergency, the start of distance learning paths in a synchronous mode. At the same time teachers were encouraged to video-record the lessons in order to make them available to students also in asynchronous mode. On the basis of this emergency situation, an investigation was immediately launched to detect the consequences of the new teaching methods on student learning processes; the research, in fact, began in the first phase of the lockdown in Italy (March 2020) and will end in January 2021. The contribution aims to present the results of the research conducted on a sample of 300 students of the degree courses of the Department of Education at the University of Catania. The research aims to detect the students' point of view on the strengths and weaknesses of the synchronous and asynchronous ways of using lesson and their respective impact on learning processes. The latter were detected through the administration of the Questionnaire on Learning Processes (QPA) by Klement Polàčeck for university students, consisting of 90 items that investigate the following aspects: intrinsic motivation for learning, metacognition and self-regulated learning, learning strategies, consolidation of learning and superficial learning. The results of the research could provide useful insights sparks to rethink university teaching even at the end of the emergency situation.