  In December 2019, the first case of SARS-CoV-2 infection was identified in
Wuhan, China. Since that day, COVID-19 has spread worldwide, affecting 153
million people. Education, as many other sectors, has managed to adapt to the
requirements and barriers implied by the impossibility to teach students
face-to-face as it was done before. Yet, little is known about the implications
of emergency remote teaching (ERT) during the pandemic. This study describes
and analyzes the impact of the pandemic on the study patterns of higher
education students. The analysis was performed by the integration of three main
components: (1) interaction with the learning management system (LMS), (2)
Assignment submission rate, and (3) Teachers' perspective. Several variables
were created to analyze the study patterns, clicks on different LMS components,
usage during the day, week and part of the term, the time span of interaction
with the LMS, and grade categories. The results showed significant differences
in study patterns depending on the year of study, and the variables reflecting
the effect of teachers' changes in the course structure are identified. This
study outlines the first insights of higher education's new normality,
providing important implications for supporting teachers in creating academic
material that adequately addresses students' particular needs depending on
their year of study, changes in study pattern, and distribution of time and
activity through the term.
