Abstract
The latest COVID-19 pandemic is a specific and unusual event. It forced universities to close their doors and move fully to distance education. The sudden shift from traditional education to full distance education created many challenges and difficulties for universities, faculty members, and students. This study aims to investigate the challenges and obstacles faced by undergraduate women in Saudi Arabia universities while using online-only learning during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Moreover, this study provides some recommendations to address these challenges from undergraduate women’s perspectives. The study used a qualitative research methodology to investigate the challenges and difficulties. The participants were undergraduate women selected using random purposive sampling technique from the population of College of Computer and Information Sciences (CCIS) at Princess Nourah Bint Abdulrahman University (PNU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The final sample consisted of 68 undergraduate women who responded to a predesigned open-ended questionnaire that was sent via e-mail to targeted respondents. The data gathered from the questionnaire were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results of the research revealed that the most obvious challenges identified by the participants were technical issues, lack of in-person interaction, distractions and time management, lack of a systematic schedule, stress and psychological pressure, missing the traditional university environment, limited availability of digital devices, and lack of access to external learning resources.
Highlights
On March 8, 2020, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education announced the closure of schools and universities in response to the “preventive and precautionary” measures recommended by the Ministry of Health to protect students and staff. e decision covered all educational institutions, including schools, universities, and institutions for technical and vocational training. e Ministry of Education guided the activation of virtual schools and distance education when the schools closed to ensure that the educational process continued in an effective and quality manner [20]
Qualitative research has been used in numerous academic disciplines to achieve deeper understanding of issues related to the target organization [24]. e qualitative approach was used in this study because of its suitability in gathering initial knowledge and exploring the understudied phenomena [25] as there has been no study in the literature reported yet on the challenges faced by undergraduate women during COVID-19, in Saudi Arabia
Our findings support the notion that the current COVID-19 pandemic presented significant challenges and difficulties for undergraduate women. e current pandemic may further exacerbate already existing problems. e timeline of the pandemic is uncertain, further impacting undergraduate women’s educational achievement, lives, and mental health
Summary
On March 8, 2020, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education announced the closure of schools and universities in response to the “preventive and precautionary” measures recommended by the Ministry of Health to protect students and staff. e decision covered all educational institutions, including schools, universities, and institutions for technical and vocational training. e Ministry of Education guided the activation of virtual schools and distance education when the schools closed to ensure that the educational process continued in an effective and quality manner [20]. E Department of E-learning at PNU worked on preparing and implementing an integrated emergency plan aimed at transforming regular education into full-fledged distance education through four stages: preparation for systems, preparation for faculty and students, implementation, and impact measurement. In this regard, the department published manuals and guidelines for all users, in addition to carrying out a set of remote training workshops for faculty members, including basic skills for using the Blackboard platform, setting up virtual classes, recording lectures, and doing educational design. About 118,167 exams were conducted for 5,602 courses, 7,308 engaging webinars were held for online events, and approximately 116 scientific theses were discussed online during that time [23]
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