ANU courses moved online about three weeks ago to comply with social distancing measures but ANU Students' Association president Lachlan Day said there were several "shortfalls" with the remote learning system causing problems for thousands of students.

"People are starting to wonder why they are paying, in some cases for international students, many thousands of dollars for a standard of teaching that is not what they expect," Mr Day said.

"There's not really a lot of uniformity in what the expected teaching quality is. Some courses have tried to be quite proactive and put tutorials online so they can still be interactive.

"Other courses may have gotten rid of the interactive portion entirely."

Mr Day expected to see more students deferring or dropping out of courses as a result if online learning was not improved.

"If this does continue into semester two I know there would be quite a number of students who would be looking at deferring for six months until this blows over to ensure they can actually get an education they think is acceptable," he said.

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Robert Walker is one ANU student "seriously considering" deferring his masters degree next semester after struggling to find motivation working online.

"I don't think I'm going to be getting the marks I wanted to be based on everything, and I won't be getting the maximum out of my degree," he said.

Mr Walker said he was happy with his online classes and the way ANU had handled the transition but didn't believe the cost was "justifiable" for students next semester.

International student Ruhin Ma said her learning had been severely impacted by a lack of access to university resources and wanted to see a reduction in fees.

The art history and curatorship student said her course required library resources she couldn't access online and the quality of education remotely could not be "guaranteed".

"The lecturer is still marking us on the previous rubric and standards... without the resources," she said.

ANUSA president Mr Day said the association had not called for a change to fees but for the education standard to be improved.

"What would be good is if it was a lot more consultative in the way they went about the construction of these expectations," he said.

"It is a very slow moving machine... unfortunately as it is a big university it does take a lot of time to make these kind of changes."

ANU deputy vice-chancellor professor Grady Venville said it had been a challenging year and staff were working to ensure students would receive the learning experience the university was known for.

"We've moved quickly to respond to the challenges of COVID-19, moving all our teaching and student support services to remote delivery using a range of online tools within a few weeks," he said.

"We are committed to making sure our students don't lose a semester of study, hence this shift. This has required major investment from the University.

"We are confident this is still a distinctly ANU experience: world leading, research-informed teaching.

"Every university in Australia - and most in the world -- have moved to remote classes - so what ANU is offering is as good as the best in the world right now."

Prof Venville said the university would continue to work with students and take on feedback. A survey is being prepared for students about the remote learning experience.

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