The Remote Learning Transition at the University of Bologna: Student Experiences and Expectations for a Post-Pandemic Future

The outbreak of the COVID-19 emergency has deeply affected the university institution, contributing to significantly change the student experiences. Starting from the first week of March, a few days after the suspension of classes, the University of Bologna has transferred online – in synchronous mode – most of its teaching. This transfer, therefore, did not fit into a path already structured and oriented to online teaching: it was quite a necessity to implement, in an emergency situation, tools and practices for remote teaching. Starting from data deriving from the survey ‘Living and studying at the time of COVID-19’, carried out within the Permanent Laboratory on Student Housing in Bologna – HousINgBO, which made it possible to collect over 16,000 questionnaires (equal to about 20% of students enrolled at the University of Bologna), the paper highlights the heterogeneity of the population under investigation, paying particular attention to non-resident students, bearers of peculiar experiences in living the relationship with the city and the university, and for whom the University of Bologna represents a privileged observatory. Focusing the attention on the experience of online teaching allows to deepen the different orientations shown by students characterized by different status (residents, off-site, commuters) and backgrounds. Some aspects of this new type of teaching, in fact, were particularly appreciated by a specific target of students and to a much lesser extent by others. Investigating these aspects is useful in view of the questions that the post-pandemic future will reserve for the whole field of education and, in particular, for higher education: how this experience, once the emergency phase is over, can it be effectively enhanced?