The major impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are still affecting all social dimensions.
Its specific impact on education is extensive and quite evident in the adaptation from Face-to-Face
(F2F) teaching to online methodologies throughout the first wave of the pandemic and the strict
rules on lockdown. As lesson formats changed radically, the relevance of evaluating student on-line
learning processes in university degrees throughout this period became clear. For this purpose, the
perceptions of engineering students towards five specific course units forming part of engineering
degree courses at the University of Burgos, Spain, were evaluated to assess the quality of the online
teaching they received. Comparisons were also drawn with their perceptions of the F2F teaching of
the course units prior to the outbreak of the pandemic. According to the students’ perceptions, the
teachers possessed the technical knowledge, the social skills, and the personal capabilities (empathy
and understanding of the at times troubled situation of each student) for a very abrupt adaptation
of their courses to an online methodology. The shortcomings of the online teaching were related to
its particularities and each teacher’s personality traits. Overall, engineering teachers appeared well
prepared for a situation of these characteristics and, if similar online teaching scenarios were ever
repeated, the quality of engineering teaching appears to be guaranteed.
