scholarly journals COVID-19 Enforced Shift to Distance Education: Readiness and Challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-359
Author(s):  
Yousef Alshaboul ◽  
Diala Hamaidi ◽  
Yousef Arouri ◽  
Asia Alshaboul

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a worldwide revolution in our understanding of how to conduct education. International lockdowns were the catalyst for a global shift from traditional face-to-face learning to distance learning. This comparative study utilized a mixed method approach to investigate the readiness of Higher Education instructors and students and the challenges arising from the shift to distance education in two different Arab countries, Qatar and Jordan. Generally, the findings gleaned from the questionnaires (230 instructors and 551 students) revealed certain inconsistencies with the findings that emerged from the interviews (18 instructors and 38 students) in terms of both the level of readiness and the challenges faced. The results showed a substantial variation in instructors and students’ readiness at both participating universities. While factors like country, age, gender, specialization, years of experience/year in the program, and the number of online training courses prior to the COVID-19 epidemic proved to cause statistically insignificant differences in instructors and students’ readiness, variables including age, gender and prior experience in online courses were relatively influential for students in terms of the challenges they faced.

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Folashade Afolabi

Coronavirus has affected not only the human health but also the educational sector. As a result of this pandemic, schools were forced to suspend face-to-face learning and implement an alternative method of learning which is online learning. The focus of this paper is to investigate the accessibility and efficiency of learning during the lockdown period. The paper examined the effectiveness of vodcast (video and podcast) lessons as a strategy in online teaching by using learning management system (LMS) and to what extent the strategy met the needs of the learners during the challenging period of the covid-19 pandemic. The study adopted mixed method research which consisted of three main phases of design. The questionnaire used in this study comprises 15 items and is divided into two sections and 50 participants participated in the study. The findings indicated that learners displayed positive perceptions towards the use of vodcast lessons during the pandemic period. Furthermore, they reported that online learning should be used to complement face-to-face teaching even after the pandemic period is over.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 3559-3575
Author(s):  
Zhao Jia ◽  
Dandan Tang ◽  
Borhannudin Bin Abdullah ◽  
Roxana Dev Omar Dev ◽  
Shamsulariffin bin Samsudin

Compare face to face learning, the implication of online courses has been discussed for several years in higher education. However, in 2020 the rise of the global COVID-19 pandemic has created obvious shifts in university students’ life. In order to ensure the “suspension of classes”, university students took part more in online classes compare to physical education (PE) classes in China. It is significant to explore students’ views on PE online learning that is benefit for teachers to provide students with high quality of online PE courses, which will be better to guide students to take PE lessons and also improve students’ health. This study investigated the issues of students’ perceptions toward online physical education courses in Tianjin University of Technology in China based on a case study. The findings of this study indicate that some students don’t like taking online PE courses due to there were some disadvantages of online PE lesson. Some students enjoy taking online PE courses because of the interesting sports videos. This study also explored teachers’ view on how to motivate college students to engage in physical education classes and recommends specific strategies for teachers to motivate college students to take online PE courses.


Author(s):  
Bo Xing

Massive open online courses (MOOCs), also known as kind of free and accessible online education environment, have been deeply appeals to people and broadly covered in different medium. Nowadays, it seems MOOCs are everywhere. Originally, MOOCs are designed to offer learning content to the participants who do not have an adequate educational infrastructure, or where cost has become a barrier to educational access. However, as the MOOCs become more popular, an important question need to be asked: how do traditional face-to-face learning students benefit from MOOC environments as well? This chapter introduces MOOCs as an assistant platform to rebuild the course structure in order to tie education more closely to work. The major advantage of this hybrid teaching and learning model is that it is flexible as it allows students to work through materials at their own pace and at a time that is most convenient to them. Although the successful integration of such different teaching and learning modalities is a big challenge, the presented case study and the preliminary experimental results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid methodology.


Author(s):  
Jose Luis Monroy Anton ◽  
Juan Vicente Izquierdo Soriano ◽  
Maria Isabel Asensio Martinez ◽  
Felix Buendia Garcia

The healthcare sector in the 21st century presents a big technological development. All fields of medicine are deepening their knowledge, which increases the volume of material that must be handled by professionals in each specialty. This large volume of material should be taken into account by health professionals, because it contributes to a better quality of care. The traditional way of teaching has been face-to-face classes; however, with rising technologies, virtual training via computers and virtual teachers are being implemented in some institutions. This change in the way of teaching also leads to changes in how to assess the knowledge gained through this method of learning. The aim of this chapter is to provide a small analysis of online training courses for health professionals, and deepen into an appraisal system developed to integrate different complementary variables, and how they can be implemented as a method addressed to assess online courses in a more comprehensive way.


Author(s):  
Christina M. Tschida ◽  
Elizabeth M. Hodge ◽  
Steven W. Schmidt

The rapid expansion of distance education in higher education has left a high demand for faculty willing to design and teach online courses, often with little or no training. The path from face-to-face to online courses is not an easy one and can be filled with frustration and doubt for many faculty. Professional development often focuses on technology tools rather than pedagogical issues of online learning or course content. This chapter focuses on research that examines the experience of several faculty from the college of education at a state university in the Southeast United States, as they learned to teach online. It presents their negotiations of issues of online platform and pedagogy and their efforts to find professional development to meet their needs. The implications for institutions of higher learning are important as distance education continues to increase and more and more faculty are asked (or told) to transfer their courses online.


Author(s):  
Si Fan ◽  
Quynh Lê ◽  
Yun Yue

As one of the key infrastructures within web-based learning, courseware is adopted by schools and universities to enable a systematic learning delivery and education management. Students in both traditional face-to-face learning and online courses can benefit from this technology. The wide range of courseware platforms are supporting course needs by offering great flexibility in information delivery, communication services, and collaboration. This chapter looks at the role of web-based courseware in tertiary education, using MyLO (My Learning Online) as an example. It reveals that courseware systems like MyLO have a great potential in facilitating collaborations and enhance interactions among lecturers and students. To achieve this, potential efforts from all perspective are required; including students, lecturers and faculties.


Author(s):  
Nidhish Francis ◽  
Abishek B. Santhakumar

Digital learning has gained a lot of attention over the recent years and is increasingly being utilised as a substitute for both distance education and face-to face learning activities. This chapter initially defines and briefly discusses the advantages and disadvantages of digital learning. With the advancement in technology, there are various digital tools that are now available to enhance the effectiveness of digital learning experience, and some of the major innovative digital tools are detailed in the chapter.


Urban Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ka Yan Lai ◽  
Iain Scott ◽  
Ziwen Sun

As the number of historical urban cemeteries where interment is no longer available continues to grow, the everyday use and restorative benefit of these spaces (beyond commemoration and remembrance) is worthy of further exploration. This study primarily investigates the everyday use of two historical urban cemeteries in Edinburgh through behavioural observation (N = 185). We also explore further the relationships between cemetery qualities and perceived restorativeness through an interviewer-administered survey (N = 134) and face-to-face interviews (N = 24) at the sites. The survey findings showed that usage and aesthetics in the cemeteries were both significantly and positively associated with various restorative qualities including ‘being away’, ‘fascination’ and ‘compatibility’. The data provided from the interviews and behavioural observations complement the survey findings that the everyday use of urban cemeteries (i.e., using them as an alternative route for pedestrian journeys or simply walking the dog) could facilitate users’ mental restorative process. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, provision of facilities (e.g., benches and toilets) was found to have no significant association with any restorative qualities. Using a mixed method approach, this study provides a novel understanding of how the urban population uses, and perceives, old urban cemeteries in contemporary Scotland.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Greville Rumble

The development of networked learning and the increasing development of online courses by both traditional and distance education institutions has raised many questions concerning the costs of online learning relative to both face-to-face teaching and other approaches to distance education. Additionally, attention has turned to the problem of costing networked learning, though as yet little progress has been made. This paper discusses both the emerging evidence on the costs of networked learning, relative to other forms of education, and its costing.


2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Krasny ◽  
Bryce DuBois ◽  
Mechthild Adameit ◽  
Ronnie Atiogbe ◽  
Lukman Baih ◽  
...  

Social support and face-to-face learning may enhance outcomes for students who face barriers in accessing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In this study, we investigated how self-identified volunteer leaders guide and foster interactions among small groups of students who face technical and conceptual barriers in accessing MOOC content. Several months prior to the start of the MOOC (Environmental Education: Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Addressing Wicked Problems), we asked for volunteers among the registered students to lead groups for participants whose primary language was other than English and where limited Internet access, culture, or other barriers curtailed access to and understanding of course materials and pedagogy. Based on a survey and open-ended interviews (n=10), we found that group leaders were instrumental in overcoming barriers related to language, content, cultural ways of learning, access, and time. They also fostered cooperative learning strategies, which helped students acquire course content, and encouraged collaborative group projects leading to their groups adopting some features of online knowledge communities. We propose the term social learning MOOC (slMOOC) to capture a growing trend of incorporating collaborative learning strategies in xMOOCs. 


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