1. IntroductionAmid the announcement by WHO “World Health Organisation”, at the beginning of 2020, that COVID-19 was a worldwide pandemic, policymakers in most countries universally shifted their educational system to the distance. This was undertaken to ensure the protection of students because of the widespread coronavirus [1]. Electronic (e) learning was the norm and the sole tool of learning in most universities for at least a couple of semesters, thanks to the leaders of universities, who were also keen to protect their students and staff while maintaining the quality of education. Universities provided their staff and students with every possible tool to enhance their e-learning experience of students with a virtual learning environment [1].As expected, scholars responded quickly to the pandemic and its influence on students and their learning experience. A growing academic body of research was conducted to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on education and learning (e.g., [2,3,4]); to highlight the challenges and/or opportunities facing e-learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., [5,6]); to stress the value of e-learning using either a formal learning system or social network sites (e.g., [7,8,9,10,11]); to maintain academic performance using e-learning (e.g., [12,13]); to enhance student satisfaction and engagement (e.g., [14,15]); to create positive e-learning experiences (e.g., [16,17]; and to understand education post-COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., [18]). Learning experiences before COVID-19 were mostly based on face-to-face interaction between students and their educators; however, learning amid COVID-19 turned virtual, where the interaction is online using various digital platforms [1]. There is some important questions about students’ learning experiences amid COVID-19, which could influence the creation of positive learning experiences as well as students’ satisfaction post-COVID-19 pandemic. The research questions are: To what extent do students’ satisfaction with learning experiences differ amid the COVID-19 pandemic in contrast to before? What are the factors that have the most influence on student learning experience and satisfaction before and amid the pandemic caused by COVID-19? What are the lessons we could learn from the COVID-19 pandemic?A review of research to date on students learning experiences, engagement, and satisfaction amid COVID-19 showed that most research examined the impact of COVID-19 on teaching and learning and students’ perception of e-learning in general (e.g., [3,4,16]). Similarly, there was an increasing body of research examining the e-learning experience of students, especially medical and nursing students (e.g., [19,20,21,22,23]). These studies highlighted the limitation of e-learning in the interaction between students and educators, especially in practical courses and training sessions that required physical attendance. However, limited research was undertaken to compare students learning experiences before and amid COVID-19 in many disciplines, such as accounting. There was an attempt pre-COVID-19 pandemic to compare distance and traditional learning among accounting students [24]. It was found that distance learning is a supporting tool beside traditional learning, which is face-to-face, but it cannot replace it. However, students amid COVID-19 adopted distance learning as a single learning tool, which requires an examination, as was undertaken by the current study.Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, the majority of universities in Saudi Arabia, such as in many other countries, did not embrace online learning technologies in education. However, this sudden adoption of an online learning platform in the business and accounting departments could be detrimental to the outcomes of the educational process [25]. There might be an issue with the negative consequences, especially the quality of outcomes among accounting students. One important issue that may lead to the inappropriate performance of accounting students during the online learning process compared to face-to-face education is its quantitative nature, with many tables, figures, and numbers [26]. Studies, e.g., [27,28], reported that quantitative online course results were poorer than those of qualitative courses. The quantitative nature of accounting courses requires a high level of interaction between instructors and students. Ref. [29] found that less communication levels between instructors and students is one of the main problems that face online courses. Additionally, accounting curricula rely heavily on technology, and numerous technologies are applicable to these curricula [30,31,32]. Most of these technologies may require software that cannot be available outside the university’s campus and require more interaction when discussed. According to Means et al. [33], online education approaches are viewed as less effective than conventional teaching, which is face-to-face and in universities, e.g., accounting education. However, if accounting education is severely affected by COVID-19, this will detrimentally affect the profession and the production of skillful accountants for the industry [34].

The current research aimed to compare accounting students’ learning experiences and satisfaction before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The research examined the factors that create positive learning experiences before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It examined the influence of e-learning experiences on student satisfaction before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. It is anticipated that the results of this research will support the provision of positive learning experiences and enhance the e-learning experience post-COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, in the next sections of the paper, we build the relationship between the learning experience and student satisfaction. We then examine this relationship with accounting students before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Using multi-group analysis, we compare student learning experiences and satisfaction before and amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We then discuss these results and conclude the research.

5. Discussion We undertook this study to examine whether there are significant differences in learning experiences and its relationships with accounting student satisfaction, both before and amid COVID-19. Accounting students used to have traditional learning in face-to-face classrooms with little (as supplement) or no e-learning before COVID-19; however, amid COVID-19, they only have access to e-learning. Hence, there was concern about the detrimental effect of COVID-19 on accounting education and the quality of graduates in terms of knowledge and skills [34]. This is because accounting education requires more interactivity with instructors, which may be limited in e-learning compared to face-to-face [25]. In this study, we examined whether this shift in learning affected the student learning experience and their satisfaction. The results of our research showed an overall positive relationship between learning experience and satisfaction, before COVID-19 (model 1) and amid the COVID-19 (model 2) pandemic. We found that the influence of both assessment and feedback on student satisfaction before COVID-19 was shown to have a greater positive effect and a more significant value than amid the pandemic. This is because students in the accounting discipline would like to receive in-person assessments and obtain in person feedback; the quantitative nature of this discipline with lots of numbers requires personal feedback and assessment. Therefore, students stated that they found their learning experience with both feedback and assessment better in traditional learning (before COVID-19) than e-learning (amid COVID-19). Despite the fact that students may find it easier to submit their assignments for assessment and undertake exams online [36], a traditional classroom is more effective in assessment and feedback than learning [35]. The results also showed that the impact of students’ participation and collaboration as well as support and motivation on their satisfaction was higher with traditional classroom learning (i.e., before COVID-19) than in e-learning (amid the COVID-19 pandemic). Students found themselves more supported, motivated, engaged, and more likely to participate in the course activities in a traditional classroom than in e-learning. These findings are in line with previous literature review [25,26,29], such as that accounting education requires more participation and engagement of students during the discussion to ensure they sufficiently understood the information given with many tables and numbers. Hence, these issues were higher before the pandemic with face-to-face interaction than after the pandemic, since e-learning was a single learning tool. On the other hand, we found that access to information and resources was higher amid the pandemic than before the pandemic. Students found themselves having more access to information online relevant to their courses at their convenience. They can access this information online anytime they want. It was appropriate for them that the learning sources and information is available all the time and they can access it as much as they want. This supports the findings of Alyahya et al., [39], who found that learning facilitates access to information and learning and, hence, creates a positive learning experience. This has a more positive significant influence on students’ satisfaction than before the pandemic. Interestingly, students have better personal reflection and knowledge construction because of e-learning amid the pandemic than before the pandemic. They found that e-learning gave them more confidence to explore course content and solve a problem, which supports the findings of Elshaer and Sobaih [16] and Alyahya et al. [39]. The results overall showed that the influence of experience with traditional learning has a higher effect on students’ satisfaction than the e-learning experience.Our findings are of significant value for accounting education (and other similar disciplines). Our research showed that traditional learning (before the pandemic) is more appropriate than e-learning (amid the pandemic) for creating more support, motivation, collaboration, and participation for students in the e-learning process due to the quantitative nature of accounting education. Additionally, face-to face teaching was found to be more useful for giving assessment and feedback to students than e-learning. Hence, students were more satisfied with their traditional classroom experience than e-learning in these issues. Nonetheless, they found e-learning more appropriate than traditional learning for accessing information and resources, as well as knowledge construction and personal reflection. These findings confirmed that a blend of traditional and e-learning post-pandemic would be more appropriate for creating a learning experience and enhancing students’ satisfaction, which definitely influences their academic performance [12]. 6. Conclusions

The current study compared the learning experiences and satisfaction of accounting students before and amid COVID-19 for ensuring a better and quality education. The results showed an overall positive relationship between learning experience and satisfaction, before (model 1) and amid COVID-19 (model 2). The results confirmed more positive experiences with feedback, assessment, support and motivation, and participation and collaboration before COVID-19 than amid COVID-19. This means that there were more positive experiences with traditional learning than e-learning in relation to these four factors. However, there were more positive experiences with knowledge construction and personal reflection, as well as access to information and resources amid COVID-19 than before COVID-19. This reflects that e-learning, which was provided amid COVID-19, supported students to have access to information and resources and enhance their personal reflection and knowledge construction. These results acknowledge blended learning post-COVID-19 education to gain the benefits of different types of learning and enhance students’ satisfaction, as well as their academic performance.