The Impact of Online Education on the Islamic Values of Female Faculty Members during the Lockdown

Abstract

This research focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown-induced online education on the individual value systems within the Saudi value system embedded in Islam and Saudi culture, experienced by the faculty members of the Islamic Studies Department of a Saudi College of Education. The research reviews the pros and cons of online education, individual value systems within the broader Saudi value system, specifications of the Saudi value system and its significance in Islamic studies. The analysis of the study comprises responses from the selected female faculty members of the Saudi College of Education’s Islamic Studies Department through MAXQDA codes and their relevance to the value system of each individual, highlighting reinforced, weakened and disappeared values. The study demonstrates that whereas such phenomena reinforce certain values, they also weaken several others and cause the elimination or emergence of new values. This study also demonstrates that religious, knowledge and behavioural categories of values demonstrate the strengthening, weakening and disappearance of certain values. It shows that the Saudi system of values registers the loss of several values in these three categories, including the emergence of some negative ones. The research points to the inclusion of broader population sampling within the same and different contexts to broaden the scope of the research.