Adopting Remote Teaching in the Time of Covid-19: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

In the wake of the global pandemic – COVID-19, the transitioning of the ongoing education journey into Remote Learning poses challenges and evolving opportunities to thousands of instructors, educators, stakeholders, and learners. This unprecedented COVID-19 situation has mainly situated the teachers and learners into the uncomfortable position for not only having to continue teaching-learning online classes for the first time but also to do it without any notice or preparedness. Behind such backdrop, this paper attempts to explore the challenges and opportunities for adopting Remote Teaching in the time of COVID-19. To this end, this study devised a survey questionnaire for students of Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia, to have a ground reality of the situation and prospects of teaching-learning online. The collected data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The study result suggests that in response to the immediate impact of school closures, it is necessary to facilitate the continuity of education for all through remote learning mode, which is safe and suitable for the current world situation by ensuring the digital devices, internet infrastructure, the availability of the communication network to the peripheral users in rural interiors and teacher-students training for new survival digital skills. The study also reflected that the excellent benefits of learning technology and media apps help continue the wheel of education through impacting the learners’ motivation and immersion to learning. Moreover, this study will be contributing literature in shaping higher education in the post-Covid-19 pandemic era.