ABSTRACT
The majority of the academic institutions across the globe transitioned education delivery to alternate methods, irrespective of specializations, in response to the pandemic. However, very little is explored regarding how architecture educators perceive the Online Learning Environment (OLE) transition impacts based on gender differences. The need for such a study emerges as the literature indicates that women are more impacted than males during natural disasters, which might include a pandemic. The unit of analysis for the study was architecture educators in India. India was purposely selected as it is one of the top three countries globally from the perspective of enrolled university students. The study explored the impacts of the OLE transition among architecture educators as per gender in India. An online survey method was used to allow adequate data collection during a pandemic. The developed online instrument was hosted on Qualtrics. The developed online instrument was pilot tested by education experts in India. The instrument was emailed to the deans of more than 450 architecture colleges in India for dissemination among the educators affiliated with the institutions. In addition, the research team used interpersonal channels such as Whatsapp for instrument distribution. Two follow-up emails were sent to increase the response rate. The survey instrument was disseminated in March and April 2021, one year after the pandemic had impacted globally, also the timeframe when the pandemic started to severely impact India. The study used 165 complete responses from architecture educators. Approximately 59% of the respondents identified themselves as females. Further, most of the respondents had a Master's degree as a terminal degree. The study identified perception differences of COVID-19 impact on architecture educators. The study found that female educators had less experience with OLE and were less aware of the resources available at the University and institute levels before the impact of COVID-19. At the same time, a higher number of male educators indicated a negative productivity impact than their female counterparts. Finally, agreement among genders could be observed in the areas of administration monitoring online teaching, factors impacting the productivity of the architecture educators, and concerns about working from home. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
ABSTRACT
The paper examines students' perspectives that impact the student learning activities' transition due to COVID-19. The study seeks to determine how face-to-face or in-person teaching to nontraditional or online methods has affected the student, particularly in the construction program. Additionally, as construction courses typically include labs and capstone projects, it is essential to determine how these courses were delivered as the programs transitioned to the online mediums. The research study compares content delivery before and during COVID-19. The survey questions are used to determine the challenges students face in accessing the course management system, familiarizing themselves, and being satisfied with the course management system, and student's satisfaction with the instructors' delivery of the course content. Online survey instruments were created to circulate among construction students to a) evaluate the student learning experience during COVID-19 and b) identify student adaptation of content delivery during COVID-19. The students' perspectives are analyzed with the challenges faced by the students. The survey results will be used to assist faculty in identifying construction curriculum requirements based on the student's perceived ability to learn for any future move to online learning, either due to weather or illness. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021