The abrupt educational paradigm shift in 2020 made the Philippine higher education institutions confront immense changes in the educative process which posed inevitable impacts on learning. Within this context, this study aims to explore and understand the experiences on learning of the selected undergraduate students of De La Salle University – Dasmarin~as who have undergone distance education. A qualitative, phenomenological design was used to produce in-depth and empirical data which were taken from the semi-structured interviews conducted through an online platform from seven students coming from the seven colleges of the university. Thematic analysis was then applied to subsume the processes of coding and creating themes. The results revealed that the students associated their distance education experiences with challenges, opportunities, and the amalgam of these views. Furthermore, the participants’ perceptions on learning were altered, and significant similarities and differences in the experiences during traditional and distance education were described. The findings pointed to the importance of the teachers in the teaching-learning process, the existence of learning difficulties of the tertiary education students, and the high preference of the undergraduate students for traditional classes.
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