Purpose: The study aims at understanding to what extent university instructors are ready for the sudden shift from face-to-face teaching to online teaching and how they perceive the usefulness and feasibility of this new modality of teaching.
Methodology/Approach/Design: Faculty members from the nine campuses of the largest private university in Lebanon were invited to participate in the completion of a survey, made available in English and Arabic. The survey was completed by 692 respondents. Descriptive analyses were performed by summarizing the count and percentage of responses within each category.
Results: Analyses showed that university instructors possess the infrastructure for online teaching. Moreover, they reported positive perceptions about their readiness to teach online and about the feasibility and usefulness of online teaching. However, instructors reported that online teaching was deficient in assessment, teaching large classrooms, and delivering the practical components of the courses they taught.
Practical Implications: Findings suggest that instructors require formal training on how to integrate pedagogy with technology.
Originality/Value: Since online instruction is new in Lebanon, the study findings can help universities and other educational institutions direct their efforts in their endeavor to improve their online experience.
This study recounts the cyclic process that one private school developed and implemented for the purpose of professional development PD of its staff during an academic year. The process consists of five stages that constitute the framework for PD. The content used to implement the PD framework was a learning framework that focuses on students’ active deep learning, FIRST. The implementation of the PD incorporated many tasks such as training, coaching, classroom observations and learning walks, all of which were delegated to teachers as a way to distribute leadership. Other tasks included formative assessment of teachers’ skills, reflection on practice, and planning for action. At the end of the year, the impact of the PD was investigated through questionnaires, classroom observations, lesson plans, and interviews with students. It was found that teachers preferred the newly adopted PD framework to preceding professional development programs and reported to have benefited more than they had previously. Classroom observations conducted by external and internal observers indicated that the teachers were integrating the majority of the newly introduced skills in their classroom performances. Finally, students, when interviewed, used much of the terminology that were elicited from the learning framework, FIRST, which constituted the content of the PD framework their teachers had undergone. In addition, they reported to have learned considerably from the newly adopted activities and practices by their teachers and enjoyed the new approaches used in their classrooms.
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