This study investigates how the Italian academic system tackled the COVID-19 emergency, in terms of teachers' perceptions of how to provide an effective educational experience during this unprecedented situation. We analyse the degree of academic digitalization, trying to identify the main changes in teaching methods introduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic, underlining those that could also be effective in the ‘new normal’. We developed an explorative survey for professors of Italian universities, analysed by means of PLS-SEM techniques. 286 out of 877 identified academics took part in the survey (i.e., 32.61% of the total population). Due to the nature of the results gathered, we proposed a two-level analysis. First, we implemented a syntactic analysis on the open and closed questions to emphasize the impacts that the pandemic had on instructors and academia as a whole. Second, by implementing SmartPLS procedures, we analysed in depth the quantitative data gathered. Among the main findings of our study, we observed that digitalization and distance-learning played a secondary role in influencing the organization of educational programs compared with the learning experience and its primary role in defining student performance. In short, this study represents one of the very first attempts to analyse the adoption of new teaching practices following an anomalous disruption to our daily lives (i.e., the COVID-19 pandemic). It highlights the need to shift towards active learning approaches in higher education, even within a blended-learning or distance-learning environment, emphasizing a student-centred teaching method and its experientialism. This should lead – from a managerial point of view of academia – to a lower ‘churn rate’ and – from an educational standpoint for policy-makers – to a decrease in dropouts due to lack of interest and a poor learning experience.
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