The Quality of Online Higher Education Teaching During the Covid-19 Pandemic (original) (raw)
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COVID-19 Crisis: Exploring Community of Inquiry in Online Learning for Sub-Degree Students
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a tremendous impact on the pedagogy and learning experience of students in sub-degree education sector of Hong Kong. Online learning has become the “sole” solution to deal with student learning challenges during this chaotic period. In this study, we explore online learning for sub-degree students by using a community of inquiry (CoI). As such, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on survey data gathered from 287 sub-degree students from the business and engineering disciplines. Results indicated that the network speed for online education determines the perceived cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence of students, whereas gender and academic disciplines of students are not moderating factors that create a significant difference in perceived cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence of students. Our study findings for creating and sustaining a purposeful online learning community are highlighted.
Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 2022
This mixed-method study was conducted to validate the factor structure of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework in the COVID-19 semester (Spring 2020). Spring 2020 is typically characterized as an emergency remote teaching (ERT) period, distinguished from purposefully-designed instruction for online teaching. To examine the CoI framework's usefulness for understanding university students' online learning experiences in this period, the authors collected data using the CoI survey and interviews. The structural equation modeling analyses indicated that teaching presence predicted social and cognitive presences more significantly in the ERT period than regular times. The qualitative findings showed that the courses where teaching presence was high were evaluated as effective by participants even when cognitive and social presences in these courses were relatively low. These findings suggested that course instructors should prioritize planning well-designed online course activities to ensure their teaching presence in times of emergency.
ONLINE TEACHING DURING COVID-19 FROM THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' PERSPECTIVE
Proceedings of INTED2021 Conference, 2021
Recently online teaching has become a fast-growing and developing reality in higher education worldwide. Despite similarities between them, didactical features of online lectures differ from those in face-to-face teaching. Online teaching requires adaptation of methods and techniques that "eteachers" and "e-students" need to acquire and deliver, striving for the same learning outcomes. The quality of teaching, its methods and techniques determine advantages and disadvantages of the teaching process and of the online education. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Spring 2020, Croatian higher educational system abruptly switched from face-to-face teaching to the online variant. The main issue was that all the courses that had initially been conceptualised and implemented only as face-toface, had to adjust to an online form that had previously not been envisioned. Relying on their previously acquired information and communication competences, as well as on their abilities to learn, teachers and students had to adapt to the new situation. This research, focused on students' point of view, had two objectives: 1) to explore the didactical methods used in the online higher education, and 2) to compare students' experiences of online and face-to-face education, specifically depending on their level of adjustment to online education. The sample comprised 272 university students, and the online questionnaire was administered in June 2020. The first objective was tackled with students' assessments of how vastly various teaching methods and techniques had been employed in the online courses in the March-June semester and how useful they had found them. Answers showed that teachers had (almost) always lectured and showed presentations. Then, in descending order, they had used e-mails, chat, other material from Internet and video streaming. Highly similar order was kept when students assessed the usefulness of those methods. Students reported that they had mostly taken part in lectures, in descending order, by listening, watching, chatting, replying to e-mails and to polls. They found their active participation more useful than it had been practiced. For the second objective students compared online and face-to-face education experience on an 18 items scale, and listed advantages and disadvantages of online education. Students' answers were compared regarding their self-assessed level of adjustment to online education: not adjusted, adjusted from the start, or adjusted gradually. Results reveal that students identified many similarities between online and face-to-face lectures, and they were not completely for or against online education. They placed as highest advantages of online education-personal benefits, time-related benefits, and features of the online lecture delivery. When ranking disadvantages, they put delivery of lectures and too many obligations on the top. Then lack of social interactions, technical problems and personal detriments followed. Students with better adjustment assessed online education more positively. It can be concluded that online lectures delivery in this research managed to resemble the face-to-face variation a lot. Students were almost polarised in their preferences towards online education, but they identified a great need for improvement of the online lectures delivery.
Postdigital Science and Education
The Covid-19 pandemic has raised significant challenges for the higher education community worldwide. A particular challenge has been the urgent and unexpected request for previously face-to-face university courses to be taught online. Online teaching and learning imply a certain pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), mainly related to designing and organising for better learning experiences and creating distinctive learning environments, with the help of digital technologies. With this article, we provide some expert insights into this online-learning-related PCK, with the goal of helping non-expert university teachers (i.e. those who have little experience with online learning) to navigate in these challenging times. Our findings point at the design of learning activities with certain characteristics, the combination of three types of presence (social, cognitive and facilitatory) and the need for adapting assessment to the new learning requirements. We end with a reflection on how responding to a crisis (as best we can) may precipitate enhanced teaching and learning practices in the postdigital era.
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The year 2020, apart from the Covid-19 pandemic, was also marked by a way of learning in higher education institutions that had not been applied to a large extent until then-online learning. At the beginning of 2020, due to the circumstances caused by the aforementioned pandemic, universities in Bosnia and Herzegovina were forced to switch to an online form of teaching in order to maintain continuity in work and learning. Such a way of learning required students' computer literacy, which has become one of the basic conditions in modern education. High-quality participation of students in classes meant, in addition to communication with professors and each other, the use of available sources of information necessary for the learning process. This research deals with students' perception of online classes before and after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic as one of the key components of the process of identifying online classes' success. The survey was created in
Frontiers in Psychology
The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled practically all higher education institutions to adopt online education tools over the previous 2 years. Online education has a huge potential to supplement or take the place of in-person instruction. However, there are certain drawbacks of online learning, such as the absence of classroom environment interaction and the difficulty in keeping track of students’ engagement and participation. In this study, a live virtual classroom was developed to aid students in their learning activities. The effectiveness of these live video classes was reported from both students and instructors, as well as the variables promoting their implementation within higher education institutions. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that the instructors found it convenient, as they could readily check course participants understanding by studying their live video lectures. The second major finding was that students felt satisfaction with onl...
Online Teaching in Higher Education during COVID-19 Pandemic
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The whole world population witnesses changes that are happening due to COVID-19 pandemic. One of the greatest changes is shown in the manner of conducting the educational process that has been transferred from traditional onsite to online. This paper analyses what are advantages and what are disadvantages of online teaching in higher education in Croatia, but it is applicable to all levels of education system. As approximately one year has passed since first lockdown and consequently closing all educational institutions, some experience is gained. This paper will try to systematize most of the findings that practice of online education has shown. In a few words, some advantages of quality online teaching are: low expenses, timesaving, learning at one’s own pace, motivation, communication, attention etc. Disadvantages of online teaching are: lack of social face-to-face contact, extreme exposure to screens, all sorts of distractions due to inappropriate work environment, inadequate te...
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The article points out some of the challenges faced by students at the University of Ostrava, Comenius University in Bratislava and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, who had almost no previous practice in online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. The students from the mentioned universities were interviewed to share their experiences with online teaching and learning during the COVID-19 lockdown. In this paper, qualitative pedagogical research in the local conditions of the three mentioned universities is used, with the processing of answers of selected students who were interviewed as an available sample. The students were also asked to describe their impressions of this situation from their social and personal points of view. The focus is on the positive and negative aspects, boundaries, and problems of online university teaching during the pandemic situation, as well as changes in the personal life of the students. The aim of this introductory small-scale study ...
Education Sciences, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic, with the consecutive lockdowns, has led schools around the world to transition suddenly from face-to-face education to online teaching. The purpose of this paper was to investigate secondary school teachers’ beliefs on online teaching presence and school support for online learning during the pandemic. The sample was 238 teachers in Greece who are interested in e-learning and received some preparation to teach online courses. An online questionnaire was administered and three factors were revealed: instruction and organization, facilitation and cognitive activation, and school support. Teachers’ perceived online teaching presence was strong (over 63% expressed agreement), and the highest percentages of agreement were linked to clear instruction, communication of time frames and course topics, and facilitation and encouragement that could help students learn. On the other hand, perceived school support for online learning was weak (over 50% expressed disagreeme...
Journal of Economics, 2021
With the declaration of a pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus by the WHO (World Health Organization) in 2020 and the quarantines that followed, in many countries, including the Republic of North Macedonia, one of the most affected sectors was education. Many universities have discontinued physical attendance, closed classrooms, and switched to online teaching using a variety of virtual platforms. The complete transformation of the educational process in terms of online teaching, had a huge impact on the work of higher education institutions, but also the adaptation of the new conditions by the teaching staff and students. Everyone has experienced the transition from classroom learning to online teaching and learning in different ways. There was a need to purchase additional equipment, better internet, but also to adapt all family members to the new working and living conditions. Therefore, the purpose of researching this paper is to identify the advantages, disadvantages and satisfaction of using online teaching platforms through the prism of higher education institutions, professors and students. The survey will be conducted by submitting two anonymous questionnaires through the online platform docs.google.com. The questionnaire related to higher education institutions will be submitted to the Vice-Rectors for Teaching at all universities in the Republic of North Macedonia, while the questionnaire related to students will be distributed to students at all universities through student unions. The results of the research will be presented summarically. The paper will include a comparative analysis of the problems, opportunities and expectations of online teaching from the perspective of higher education institutions and students.