Undergraduate Translation Students’ Perceptions of Online Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Aim. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented challenges at all levels of education. Higher education institutions across the globe had to move traditional campus-based learning online as it was the only available option to continue academic activities. Students’ perceptions of online learning during the COVID-19 crisis have been investigated in many fields of study, however, little known research has been conducted in the field of Translation studies. To fill in the gap, small-scale research was carried out at a University in Lithuania. It aimed to examine undergraduate translation students’ perceptions of learning online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods. To carry out the research, qualitative methodology was used. The data was drawn from 23 translation students’ essays and analysed using inductive content analysis. Results. The study resulted in the identification and description of two major categories and five subcategories that revealed the students’ experience of online learning during the pandemic and their perceptions of its positive and negative impacts. Conclusion. The results demonstrate that all study participants perceived online learning both as a positive and negative experience with the number of the student-reported negative impacts being slightly bigger than that of the positive ones. The findings of this research are important; yet they do not allow for wide scale generalisations as the study was conducted on a small sample. Originality. The present study contributes to the research in the field by providing new insights into the impacts of online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic as seen from the students’ perspective.