Undergraduate's Perspective on Being an Effective Online Student During Lockdown due to COVID-19 Pandemic: An Educational Data Mining Study

The mandatory implementation of online education due to the COVID-19 outbreak has drawn research about this modality - analyzing students' perspectives about course designs, the instructors' performance, and the institution's services. In contrast, little is known about what an undergraduate should do to perform well academically, a factor that can even impact the retention of students who face this modality for the first time, according to self-determination theory and student-centered learning. This work was guided by the question: What are the effective strategies for excellent school performance in online education according to the undergraduates themselves? We performed qualitative data analysis of thirty-four letters written by second-year engineering students, with one semester of experience in online education at a private university in Mexico using an educational data mining methodology. The qualitative analysis used text and sentiment analysis tools. The texts contained academic and wellness recommendations for other learners who would start their education in this modality. The research showed that, in addition to the actions generally valid for academic success in face-to-face courses, participants advised the relevance of taking notes, leveraging digital tools, and defining a specific study space at home when learning in the online modality. In terms of wellness, participants recommended looking at the positive side of things, having a good diet, sleeping well, and resting from the computer. Higher education is a complex system in which different stakeholders participate; however, beyond excellent content, professors, technologies, and learning platforms, students consolidate learning through their actions.