The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education students’ perceptions of educational applications and platforms

The contemporary development of education is marked by the rapid expansion of online educational applications and platforms. Consequently, it is becoming clear that teachers must consider them and in light of their changing role, know what they can offer in their field to be able to recommend them to students to get additional knowledge or even to integrate them into their teaching. As students in the field of computer science and informatics are particularly accustomed to considering online knowledge resources, we decided to investigate their perception of educational applications and platforms. Based on the analysis of the results of their testing of educational platforms and applications, we found that for them the most important is content, followed by personal preferences, reason, user experience, price, etc., and only in the last place is a certificate. The most frequent word in their research reports proved to be knowledge, which we included under the code reason, followed by research, content, time, free, variety, and quality. It also turned out that students’ experience of testing educational applications and platforms is predominantly positive and has even improved over the course of the last three years, which we attribute to the effects of the Covid-19 coronavirus epidemic. The comparison of pre-pandemic and post-pandemic data also revealed that positive sentiment came to the front, while students now prioritize user experience, reason, and quality over the content and personal preferences compared to the pre-pandemic period, while they are still aware of the need for exploration.