Abstract
The COVID-19 Pandemic affected all sectors worldwide including education sector changing the students learning environment at a large scale. In the education sector, governments had to close schools and universities around the world and turn into online mode of delivery. The sudden transformation to online learning demands educators and institutions to develop more innovative teaching methods in supporting students during this growing crisis. It is pertinent that this is the era of large-scale online learning, where education is delivered remotely utilizing various digital platforms. To this end, this move presented many challenges to students, educators, families, administrators, and government regulations. In this paper, we conduct an oriented and well-rounded survey that captures all aspects of distance learning verticals as perceived by educators in order to study online delivery aspects, including teaching models, communication media, and teaching best practices in distance learning. The paper will answer subtle and comprehensive questions related to student satisfaction and success, technical needs and challenges, teaching models, educator mobility, etc. across different universities in the UAE. In particular, the paper tries to identify best model to use given many key issues related to the adoption of e-learning during COVID-19. Overall, the survey results showed almost all participants agreed that online learning during the COVID-19 is a very good alternative solution to Face-to-Face approach. However, teaching models do vary in promoting students’ participation and students’ engagement. All participants agree that absence of the proper infrastructure at home will hinder the operation especially in courses with hands-on components. Finally, the educators questioned the credibility of online assessments despite the enforced exam integrity tools and methods. The paper concluded with many recommendations for continuous development of the distance learning systems during and after COVID -19.
Highlights
The sudden 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in several immediate lockdowns all over the world on all aspects including education (Umoh et al, 2020)
To examine the challenges faced by the educators in adapting to the online education requirements in United Arab Emirates (UAE) imposed by COVID-19 crisis
We present the data collected on the perceptions of educators on the effectiveness of online education during COVID-19 crisis in UAE
Summary
The sudden 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in several immediate lockdowns all over the world on all aspects including education (Umoh et al, 2020). Most countries enforced common rules to contain the spread of COVID-19 through social distancing and using face masks or even complete lockdown. Many governments were enforced to shutdown teaching institutions as a necessary precaution measure to restrict the spread of pandemic (Viner et al, 2020). The sudden transformation to online learning has changed completely the shape of normal teaching practice demanding educators and institutions to develop more innovative teaching methods in supporting students during this growing crisis. As the pandemic continues and its variations spread around the world, more data shall be collected on the effect of continual institutions shutdown on the learning practices
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