A narrative approach to university instructors’ stories about promoting student engagement during COVID-19 emergency remote teaching in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic affected all aspects of human life, with significant impacts on education, as higher education institutions across the world were forced to make rapid transition to a fully online education format with no time to prepare. This qualitative study applied the narrative approach to examine the stories of six university instructors regarding their experiences with promoting student engagement during the COVID-19 emergency remote teaching. The study findings present the instructors' feelings during the transition to distance education, the challenges they faced, and their efforts to promote their students' engagement by using various strategies and assessments and by providing the students with emotional support. The findings also present the effect of local culture and millennial generation student status on students' engagement.

Emergency Remote Language Teaching During Pandemic

“…Teachers' response and feedback during emergency remote teaching also contribute to students' positive affective engagement (Aladsani, 2021;Meskill et al, 2021;and Yu et al, 2020). Teachers who showed a high level of digital empathy and emotional support improved students' sense of belonging in the online learning community (Aladsani, 2021;Meskill et al, 2021). In addition, the feeling of being supported and being part of such a community hindered students' negative feelings towards their online class.…”

“…They adjust their learning behavior and schedule following the dynamic of their class. More students participated in classroom discussions and expressed their thoughts more than usual (Aladsani, 2021;Meskill et al, 2021;Walker & Koralesky, 2021). The chat room box in an online synchronous classroom allowed students to participate in the discussion simultaneously and provide the opportunity for teachers to recognize them while class is in session (Walker & Koralesky, 2021).…”

“…In contrast, emergency online teaching also brought negative behavioral engagement for students who did not have a supportive learning environment and a lack of accountability (Aladsani, 2021; Walker & Koralesky, 2021). In Saudi Arabia, most female students in higher education have children and families to care for during the lockdown (Aladsani, 2021). Such a situation hindered female students from focusing on their online classroom and complete their assignments on time.…”

Revisiting the Effectiveness of Blackboard Learning Management System in Teaching English in the Era of COVID-19

“…More preparations had to be made to correctly grasp the content taught via Blackboard, which could have been productively used for other purposes. These problems were acknowledged in several studies (e.g., Aladsani, 2020;Alamer, 2020;Albakri & Abdulkhaleq, 2021;Alkhaldi & Abualkishik, 2019).…”

Student Empowerment / Preparedness: Key to Learning Effectiveness in Remote Teaching

“…Many faculty members who had no experience in remote teaching (i.e., in the basics of virtual delivery, such as audio recording of lectures, holding of video sessions, online quizzes and exams) faced challenges with the new format (Gurung, 2021). Additionally, there have been problems of lack of access to software tools to enable video editing and compilation, facilitate writing on 'white boards' and for use in writing of mathematical equations (Aladsani, 2021).…”