The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed education dramatically, with the sudden shift from face-to-face to emergency remote teaching. Online learning environments may facilitate data-driven instructional process; yet, our understanding regarding data-driven decisions is still limited. This quantitative study examined types of learners' data that higher education instructors have access to, are interested in, and decisions they would consider making upon exposure to, while comparing emergency remote teaching with traditional teaching. Data were collected via an online questionnaire distributed among higher education instructors during the first COVID-19 outbreak (N = 195, affiliated with 108 different academic institutions in 35 countries). Instructors were requested to refer to a face-to-face course that was shifted under these emergency circumstances to online teaching. Findings indicated a broader access to learners' data while teaching the course face-to-face and a slightly greater interest in learners' data while teaching the course in an emergency remote teaching mode. These complimentary findings depict a situation in which instructors lack face-to-face cues about their students without accessing alternative sources of data. Moreover, when teaching online versus face-to-face, instructors showed more interest and higher intention to make decisions based on data about learners' collaborative learning and social and emotional support, which highlights instructors' interest in aspects of learning that are less visible during online teaching.