Abstract
This article presents a literature review focusing on international research concerning distance education and students’ study strategies during the last 20 years. As distance education in higher education is a steadily growing trend and in particular because the COVID-19 pandemic has escalated the transition from campus education to different forms of distance education, knowledge about students’ study strategies and appropriate teaching strategies has become highly important. With this research review, we aimed to identify patterns and trends in research on distance education focusing students study strategies before and after the pandemic. The research synthesis identified and interpreted similarities and differences in the studies’ designs and findings, which we analyzed using integrative thematic analysis. Students’ study strategies seem to have changed to some extent during the pandemic, with more emphasis on their own responsibility and the need for a developed teaching strategy to align with the changing framework related to the emergency provision of distance education. We concluded that students have to develop metacognitive strategies, because self-regulated learning and a more flexible pedagogy seem to be important in teachers’ transitions and competence in digitalization. Therefore, more research targeting these aspects is needed.
Highlights
During the last 20 years, distance education has become increasingly widespread in higher education worldwide
We focus on research on students’ study strategies in distance education, because many universities, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, have had to transform their face-toface, on-campus education to distance education, even if students’ study strategies vary depending on their personal conditions
The research contained a range of related terms for distance education, for example, emergency distance education, emergency remote teaching, online learning, online education, remote education, and remote learning, but they all targeted off-campus education
Summary
During the last 20 years, distance education has become increasingly widespread in higher education worldwide. Several international research articles have focused on students’ study and learning strategies in distance education in higher education (see Appendix A). The research contained a range of related terms for distance education, for example, emergency distance education, emergency remote teaching, online learning, online education, remote education, and remote learning, but they all targeted off-campus education. The disparities between these terms indicate slight differences in the planning and execution of courses, but they are all extensions of distance learning [1] and due to the 2020–2021 pandemic the term “emergency distance education” [2] We use the term “distance education”, as the umbrella term, for all variations of distance education
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