During the time of COVID-19 lockdown over spring 2020, universities shifted teaching from on-campus blended learning to an emergency remote fully online approach. The aim of this study was to compare Psychology and Veterinary Science undergraduate students’ academic performance with their responses on a self-reported questionnaire regarding their digital capabilities, individual’s characteristics, and the role of environment on their independent learning process over the first COVID-19 lockdown period. Social-Cognitive Theory was adopted to conceptualise students’ behaviour, individuals’ characteristics, and learning environment with their academic performance to a learning framework. A total of 303 students from both disciplines (133 Psychology and 170 Veterinary Science undergraduate students) participated in this study by completing an online questionnaire after following the teaching shift from blended learning to full remote online approach at a UK University during the 2019–2020 academic year. Differences between students’ responses were identified due to their discipline’s curricular structure, students’ study behaviours (i.e., being exposed to unrelated learning activities), and students’ cognitive effort to think critically in the search, evaluation and managing of digital information. Students with high level of self-regulation and digital capabilities were able to keep focused and engaged during the lockdown. Although universities and teachers were “forced” to shift their teaching approach due to the unfortunate disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, most students have coped with the changed teaching delivery mode relatively easy with minimum guidance. However, teachers should further consider how digital technologies could enhance students’ learning flexibility promoting critical thinking.

The aim of this investigation was for students to express their views on teaching approaches delivered by two teachers under the perspectives of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) development, their preferences on learning material and learning activities. First year psychology students followed both the traditional and a flipped classroom approach delivered by two different teachers. One teacher introduced them to social and the other to clinical psychology. 81 students evaluated their experience on social psychology and 119 students on clinical psychology. Although all students had similar preferences on following either the traditional or the flipped classroom approach in both subject domains, a significant difference in students’ views related to the teachers’ contribution to teaching approach, students’ HOTS development and the choice of learning material was observed. This investigation concluded the importance of the intricate relationship between the choice of learning material and activities, and the teacher’s contribution to the flipped classroom approach and their expectation/behaviour toward technology.

The aim of this investigation was to get an insight into how teachers and students responded to the use of virtual learning environments (VLE) in engineering education and what their expectations were from online courses. Teachers designed their online courses with the assistance of a support e-learning team and questionnaires were used for teachers and students to express their views on the online courses. Teachers pointed out that the online courses by themselves would be able to tackle limited lecture time and strengthen the students’ background knowledge. Students, on the other hand, stated that their difficulties regarding the courses could be facilitated by using a more interactive teaching approach with the use of collaboration tools and receiving individual feedback. Thus, students suggested that teachers adopt a more student-centred approach by using VLE. Teachers’ and students’ perspectives were related to their personal characteristics, as students were more familiar with everyday e-communication tools.

The aim of this investigation was to explore student behaviour when students brought their own digital devices into a lecture theatre. A total of 361 undergraduate psychology students from the University of Liverpool who used at least one digital device during lecture time fully completed an online questionnaire (159 first-, 124 second- and 78 third-year psychology students) during the 2018–2019 academic year. Although all the three years of undergraduate students brought laptops and/or smartphones into a lecture theatre, there was no significant difference in academic performance over the years of studies. The findings have linked student multitasking processes in a lecture theatre to Social Cognitive Theory principles (reciprocal interactions between behaviours, learning environment, and individuals). There was a significant difference between the three years regarding the use of applications and student characteristics after controlling for the different types of devices. Students who used only one application during lecture time were more likely to achieve higher academic performance as they were less distracted from their primary tasks of processing and retaining information. Overall, this investigation concluded the importance of reconsidering the teaching delivery process so as to avoid students’ escapism using devices during lecture theatres due to their engagement level and lecture norm pressures.

Although virtual learning environments (VLEs) have long been forecasted to accelerate the educational revolution, their adoption by teachers and students has not always been as effective as is expected over the years. This challenges universities that extensively investigated educational technologies. Stakeholders are keen to understand the underlying factors and mechanisms that influence technology adoption. However, the extant contradictive and inconsistent research findings from individual country or region fail to address the problem. To provide a holistic view, we follow the PRISMA protocol and synthesize 145 empirical studies across 42 countries and regions from 2001 to 2020. Our main contribution lies in integrating the institutional theory and the elements of country, culture, and university with the decision to adopt VLEs. Specifically, we develop three individual themes and two institutional themes about the factor characteristics. Power distance associates with the institutional cognitive-cultural influence, and long- and short-term orientation affects VLE adoption through the institutional normative facilitation. Masculinity-femininity links to individual cognition, while uncertainty avoidance has a connection with individual digital capability in the VLE adoption processes. We suggest that cultural dimensions should be examined as explanatory variables in future research. Implications and research significance in the COVID-19 pandemic are discussed.