ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic had caused major changes in many aspects of our lives when it spread worldwide at the beginning of 2020. Hence, higher education was affected when the face-to-face classes were suspended and moved completely online. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on faculty perspectives about online teaching in general. Also, the study focused on challenges that faculty encountered during the transition and highlighted major skills that instructors learned. The mixed methodologies were developed and grounded in a transformative learning theory (TLT) framework, relying on an online questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. After analyzing data of 178 participants (N = 178, 61% response rate), and interviewing instructors, the results show that faculty have different perspectives about online teaching in general. The descriptive statistics indicated that COVID-19 had a significant impact on faculty attitudes in various areas, including familiarity with online teaching, comparison of online learning to traditional learning, and output quality. Faculty showed familiarity with online teaching and a positive attitude when comparing online environments to face-to-face learning, but negative attitude toward output quality. The data also revealed that the online synchronous strategy was used the most (n = 78, 46%), followed by the hybrid model (n = 77, 45%). Additionally, the qualitative data revealed a mash-up of themes, including obstacles and abilities. The most common problems encountered throughout the pandemic were student engagement, academic integrity and practical skills. During the pandemic, however, the top abilities were determined to be student engagement, delivering feedback, managing with classroom technologies, flexibility and confidence. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)