Quantitative study: face-to-face and online teaching of German to polytechnic students

Learning German is of vital importance for students in technical schools (engineering, applied sciences), who use the language mainly for career advancement. As a consequence of the confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education in Spain was forced to take on remote (online) teaching. This change of format resulted in a higher number of students enrolling in German courses in the years following the confinement at the Universidad Polit & eacute;cnica de Madrid (Spain). However, the dropout rate increased. A quantitative observational study was carried out among German language students at the Language Centre of the Universidad Polit & eacute;cnica de Madrid for the initial A1 and A2 levels- a total of 178 participants- in order to compare face-to-face and online teaching in terms of grades and dropout rate. The study concluded that the correlation between the dropout rate and absenteeism is higher in online than in face-to-face teaching.