Abstract
The current paper discussed the challenges encountered by university teachers during online education in Morocco. It also investigated teachers’ attitudes towards their distance teaching experience. 156 Chouaib Doukkali University teachers, (male=85 and female=71) were administered an online questionnaire via their professional email addresses. The participants, belonging to five faculties, were kindly invited to fill out the question within two weeks. For triangulation purposes, 20 (male=12 and females=8) informants were interviewed about their experience with distance education. Quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics to extract demographic characteristics of the participants and provide measurements of mean values, standard deviations, and frequencies of the variables. Qualitative data were thematically analyzed. Findings showed that although the vast majority of the respondents used online teaching, many faced both technical and logistical barriers, which were reported to impede the good delivery of lessons. Also, the majority of the participants showed a negative attitude towards the COVID-19 online teaching experience. The study discusses some implications for online teaching practice in tertiary education in Morocco.
Highlights
On March 11th, 2020, the WHO characterized COVID-19 as a global pandemic as more than 118,000 cases were identified in 114 countries, and 4,291 people lost their lives (WHO, 2020)
To examine the main hurdles and problems Moroccan university teachers encountered while delivering their online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, the participants were requested to identify the type of obstacles they faced in the pre-implementation phase, the difficulties they encountered while accessing the platform and when preparing digital lessons; they were asked if they had their own computer and access to the Internet
In contrast to Rannastu-Avalos and Siiman (2020), who found none of the participants in their study conceived of the distance teaching experience as useful to collaborative learning, the findings of the current study revealed that most of the respondents claimed that they gained a lot from this experience
Summary
On March 11th, 2020, the WHO characterized COVID-19 as a global pandemic as more than 118,000 cases were identified in 114 countries, and 4,291 people lost their lives (WHO, 2020). To contain its spread among people, save lives and minimize COVID-19 impact, governments worldwide resorted to precautious measures. The lockdowns have, seriously affected educational systems. Both public and private institutions all over the globe closed and teachers were forced to adopt e-teaching. Universities have resorted to virtual modes of delivery as an alternative to classroom classes. Different online platforms have been employed to deliver lessons. This abrupt decision to use distance teaching has been accompanied by several barriers and challenges
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