Adoption of online teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a systematic analysis of changes in university teaching activity

Abstract

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Spring 2020, universities around the world have quickly adopted online teaching as an emergency measure. Informed by activity theory, the present qualitative case study aims to better understand the nature of the rapid institutional transition and its impact on academics' pedagogical experiences during this period. A multiple set of qualitative data was collected in a national university in South Korea that rapidly made the online transition, following government directives in February 2020. This article provides useful accounts of the changes that occurred in interconnected teaching activity systems at the university while adopting online teaching, highlighting the complex factors underpinning individual academics' experiences. The sudden shift in institutional teaching activities and conditions created a range of contradictions that were experienced as dilemmas by academics, the main subject of the activity systems. The results demonstrate that two groups of university faculty, separately identified as novice online teachers and expert online teachers, faced different dilemmas and challenges. An essential lesson learned from this analysis is the need for a more holistic, realistic, and sensitive approach to emergency teaching scenarios that may enable educational institutions to better respond to such emergencies in the future.

Experience of the Egyptian Physical Therapy Educators on the Online Teaching During COVID-19 Outbreak 2021

“…On the other hand, it is to be noted that in other countries where the resources are not a problem, the PT educators reported challenges in applying OT for PT programs as challenges in making authentic connections with students, adapting to technological interruptions, and assessment of the students [ 3 ]. A systematic analysis of the changes in the universities’ teaching activities for adaptation of OT during the COVID-19 agreed with the current study challenges in terms of the lack of educators’ basic skills for OT, which make the creation of an online course a major challenge that caused frustration feelings to the interviewed educators [ 37 ].…”

Online exam proctoring technologies: Educational innovation or deterioration?

“…As universities and teachers were under massive pressure to keep their ‘business as usual’ but online, they may not have paid sufficient attention to assessment practices during the first part of the pandemic (Lee, Fanguy, Bligh, et al, 2021). Subsequently, the unprepared administration of online exams, using the same tool implemented for live lectures, led to an increased number of student cheating behaviours.…”

Analyzing Post-Covid-19 Teaching Methods in Higher Education: A Quality and Experience Based Decision-Making Study

“…This result is consistent with the findings of recent researches. For example, Lee et al (2021) argued that teachers believed that they begin to lose direct contact with their students in an online teaching environment. Bhagat and Kim (2020) stated that compared with face-to-face teaching, it is difficult to maintain a similar level of student attendance and attention in online teaching.…”

“…Although existing literature is fairly limited, recent articles on the effects of Covid-19 in the education sector (El Masri & Sabzalieva, 2020;Yang, 2020;Agasisti & Soncin, 2021;Chan et al, 2021;Kavaric et al, 2021;Lee et al, 2021;Said-Hung et al, 2021) mentioned the challenges of transition from the classical face-to-face teaching to online teaching. It is quite natural that any change in an existing system will include some difficulties and users of the system might resist change.…”

“…It is quite natural that any change in an existing system will include some difficulties and users of the system might resist change. This abrupt change from face-to-face teaching to online teaching, due to the Covid-19 pandemic have also encountered some difficulties such as insufficiency of online teaching infrastructures and the inexperience of teachers (Yang, 2020), not equipped with online teaching experience (Lee et al, 2021) and the lack of readiness including the uncertainty of the transition environment (Cutri et al, 2020). It can be stated that such types of difficulties in transition from face-to-face to online teaching and the need for direct contact between lecturers and students for an effective teaching environment has led to this conclusion.…”