Impact on teaching strategies in Saudi Arabian universities owing to COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic emerged with an unparalleled emergency in every walk of life. In the area of education, this emergency has led to the massive termination of face-to-face activities. This affected schools and universities in more than 190 countries globally in order to prevent the spread of the virus. The Ministry of Education of Saudi Arabia issued a directive to stop holding face-to-face classes to mitigate the widespread of the novel coronavirus. This directive led to three main areas of action: (1) placement of distance learning modes via a variety of methods and technological platforms, (2) support and deployment of educational workers and communities, and (3) a great concern for the well-being and general health of students. The aim of this chapter is to highlight impacts that these actions had on educational communities. Key recommendations are offered based on student's feedback and training sessions. Students from 14 different universities were sampled including the host university, i.e., Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, to see pre-training and post-training responses with respect to their experiences and community engagement while learning via online resources. Over 400 responses were received and analyzed to gain the understanding of the current state of how Saudi universities tackled the impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The training-based research was conducted to measure the actual level of teaching strategies used at Saudi Arabian universities. © KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2022.

Students' satisfaction with e-learning in Saudi higher education during the COVID-19 outbreak

During the COVID-19 pandemic, e-learning has been used as an alternative teaching approach to cover the academic vacuum produced by the pandemic's new reality owing to countrywide school closures. The study aimed at investigating the students' satisfaction level toward e-learning implementation during the COVID-19 outbreak. A quantitative research design, where 345 university undergraduate students from the different clusters (Health, Science, and Management) were surveyed regarding their satisfaction with e-learning. A self-administered questionnaire was developed and sent to participants for data collection. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire were determined. SPSS was used to understand and interpret the results of the research. To analyze the data, multiple statistical analyses were performed, including mean, standard deviations, and ANOVA. The study's findings shows that students' satisfaction level with e-learning platforms is generally medium, but with varying degrees from one item to another. The findings revealed no statistically significant differences in the use of e-learning at the level (A = 0.05) for gender. This study demonstrates that e-learning has grown in popularity among students all over the world, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown period. However, there is a need of major reform of the curriculum in compliance with remote teaching and learning ideas. Faculty and student training toward the use of technology is also mandatory for continuous improvement for teaching best practices. © KONINKLIJKE BRILL NV, LEIDEN, 2022.