MIMIC model of teachers and students attitudes towards online learning during Covid-19: A gender perspective

Academic institutions around the globe have shifted to online learning because of the unpredictable spread of COVID-19. The present study aimed to compare teachers' and students' attitudes towards online learning during the pandemic and to examine the effects of gender differences on their attitudes. In study 1, we adapted the Test of eLearning Related Attitudes for Pakistani students in three steps: expert review, piloting, and validation. The individual and collective expert review was performed to adapt the teacher version into the student version using the Technique for Research of Information by the Animation of a Group of Experts (TRIAGE). We tested three sets of measurement invariance models for participants' status and gender in study 2. Data were collected from 289 university teachers (men = 158, women = 131) and 444 undergraduate students (boys = 156, girls = 287). The results demonstrated that both groups had highly positive yet different attitudes towards online learning. Teachers were more satisfied than students. Model fit was poor, and the overall factor structure, factor loadings, and intercepts varied across groups. Intergroup gender invariance illustrated heterogeneity in attitudes towards online learning favoring men teachers and boy students. Study strengths and implications for the promotion of a positive experience of online learning are discussed.

A Model for Assessing the Qquality of a Distance Education Programme in an Online Environment: China's Experience

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly altered the course of the educational process around the world. The digitalisation of learning through distance learning has become the key to ensuring the quality of education. The study aims to develop a model for continuous assessment of the quality of teaching distance education programmes in an online environment. The main components of the model, two variables, 14 dimensions, and 75 indicators are identified. The validity was assessed by 22 experts from the USA, China, Chile, Portugal, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. The research is based on a bibliographic analysis of standards, models and guidelines which formulate principles and methods created by academic researchers and governments in the USA, Latin America and European countries for evaluating distance learning programmes. Experts rated the proposed measurements as clear, important and appropriate for evaluating distance education programmes. Indicators and measurement indicators were assessed by experts as relevant for evaluating distance learning programmes. The main study result is the developed quality assessment model for distance learning programmes for universities. The final model included two main variables, 14 measures, and 75 indicators. The model received content in the form of measurements and corresponding indicators. Among the main features of the proposed model is the possibility of a complete assessment of the quality of teaching within the curriculum in order to subsequently take steps to improve it. The research findings may be of interest to educational researchers, educators, university administrators, distance course coordinators and training programmes. © 2023, FACTEACHEREDUCATION. All rights reserved.

Strategies for Developing a Culturally Inclusive Online Learning Environment During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australian Universities: A Case Study

This chapter presents a qualitative case study in Australian universities on the effective strategies for creating a culturally inclusive online learning environment with the use of IT governance. While examining the online learning experiences of the university students, the researchers identified features in synchronous and asynchronous online learning platforms, such as language support and meaningful and structured online activities, are the effective strategies to cater for the learning needs of the linguistically and culturally diverse students and let their voices be heard. The findings of this study are useful for university management, teaching and learning unit, and IT resources auditing and steering committees to utilise IT resources to attain the learning goals of university students and the organisational goals of the universities in maintaining academic excellence and embracing cultural diversity. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Introduction

The spring of COVID-19 forced teachers to restructure learning materials, content delivery, and learning environment, this leading to utilizing innovative course designs, high-tech learning tools, and engaging web-based learning environments. This shift affects, on the one hand, the perceptions of teachers and learners, and on the other hand, instructional practices, resulting in learned lessons and future envisions about the feasibility of utilizing the web in the context of English language education. In this introductory chapter, we present the background of this special collection on online English language teaching and learning, provide a summary of the expanding corpus of research on online English language education, and introduce the studies published in the collection. This collection of chapters covers the perspectives, implications, challenges, and opportunities of digital transformation in English language education prompted by the increasing accessibility of technology and the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Educational Robotics: Development of computational thinking in collaborative online learning.

In the previous study the work experience on organization of teaching Robotics to secondary school students at school lessons and in study groups was introduced. This study which was conducted within 2019 and 2021 covered the period of distant learning caused by COVID-19 pandemic and even post-pandemic period, when a part of school students continued learning online. The study deals with the problem of developing school students' computational thinking in online learning. We consider computational thinking as a set of cognitive skills of solving educational and cognitive problems. The research questions raised were aimed at solving the problem of the influence of Educational Robotics on developing computational thinking. During the research we have found out that due to the adaptability of robots, Educational Robotics, the development of individual learning programs, and the arrangement of collaborative online learning are instruments and a solution to the problem of developing computational thinking. The main components of computational thinking, which were studied within those 3 years, are the following: algorithmic thinking, ability to program, and efficiency in team work. The influence of the learning strategy we chose enabled us to determine the level of computational thinking and its dependence on learning Robotics. We used statistical criteria in order to summarize the results of our research. The statistics provided suggests progress in the indicator tracked. Based on the experimental data received we approximated reliability (R2) and relevant exponential equation (trend lines). The research we carried out also has led to the general conclusion that Educational Robotics helps to create synergistic learning environment for stimulating students' motivation, collaboration, self-efficacy and creativity.

Evidence-Based Practice to the Forefront: A Case Study of Engineering Team Project-Based Learning in an Online Learning Environment

Approaches such as problem and project-based learning (PBL) are the cornerstone of modern engineering curricula. With a growing need to move these student-centred active learning curricula to online and blended learning environments due to issues including increasing cohort sizes and limited budgets, it is essential that instructional designers in engineering education understand the impacts that these differing mediums may have on student collaboration. This study is the beginning of a body of work with the aim to develop effective teaching and learning strategies for team project-based learning in online and blended learning environments. This case study was carried out in an Irish university in 2021 in a first-year engineering module during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study followed an explanatory mixed methods design in which a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were utilised to collect data. The research data was gathered in two phases. Phase 1 included a questionnaire with both closed- and open-ended questions (N=94). Phase 2 was based on semi-structured interviews (N=7). This paper will focus on the qualitative datasets, including the open-ended questions and interviews. After completing a thematic analysis, we identified six themes and eighteen sub-themes that affect students' perceptions of team project-based learning (PBL) in an online environment. Each of these themes are discussed within this paper. The paper concludes with an outline of future research plans for the ongoing project. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.

Difference-in-difference estimation in combined feedback on writing skill: a quasi-experimental study

Purpose: This quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of audio-visual and written feedback (AVF + WF) on undergraduate students versus only receiving WF in the context of an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) online classroom during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown. Design/methodology/approach: The study used the estimator Difference in Difference (DID) to compare a treated and control group in a pre-and post-test under the application of six treatment sessions, plus a student's perception survey at the end of the treatment. The treated group that received the multimodal feedback showed higher improvement rates in the paragraph content between the first and final drafts than students in the control group. Findings: Results indicated that receiving a combination of AVF + WF had a statistically significant effect on mechanics (p < 0.001) and the use of transition words (p = 0.003). Practical implications: These findings will benefit educational agents, professors and stakeholders for social and economic development. Originality/value: While previous studies have only used student perceptions of the feedback, this study contributes with empirical data through quasi-experimental analysis and measures the effectiveness of feedback in online learning environments. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Students' Satisfaction with Online Learning Environments - Post COVID-19

With the outbreak of COVID-19, several countries have requested the closure of all educational institutions;many universities have shifted to online mode during this period. Previous studies showed the need for a continuous assessment of student's satisfaction with the online delivery methods to improve the teaching and learning experience. This paper is framed with the motivational needs and social presence theories to review students' perceptions of various online learning environment tools, social presence, and satisfaction with online courses. 846 students in higher education institutes from different backgrounds and cultures participated in the online survey. Results show that the learning environment has a positive, substantial, and significant relationship with social presence. Moreover, factors influencing the learning environment that was significant to student satisfaction are presented. © 2022 IEEE.

Perceptions of clinical year medical students on online learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic

Introduction: During the era of COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has become more prevalent as it was the most available option for higher education training which has been a challenging experience for the students and the lecturers especially in the medical and health sciences training. The study was conducted to determine the perceptions of clinical year medical students on online learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted to clinical year medical students at University Tunku Abdul Rahman. The validated Online Learning Environment Survey (OLES) was used as a tool to conduct the study. Results: Total 84 clinical year students participated in the study. Among four domains of OLES questionnaire, the domain;"Support of online learning” had the highest mean perception scores, 4.15 (0.55), followed by "Usability of online learning tools” 3.89 (0.82), and "Quality of Learning;3.80 (0.68) and the domain "Enjoyment” was the lowest mean perception scores 3.48 (1.08). Most of the students (52.4%) rated the overall satisfaction of online teaching experiences "Very good” while (13.1) % rated "Excellent”. Conclusion: In conclusion, the perceptions of clinical year medical students on online learning environments during the COVID19 pandemic were satisfactory although there were challenging online learning experiences during the pandemic. It was recommended to include qualitative method in future studies to provide more useful in-depth information regarding online learning environment. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating the dimensions of students' interaction in listening online learning environment amidst Covid-19 pandemic

The existence of the COVID-19 pandemic forces the Indonesian government to carry on online learning at all education levels, to keep the teaching and learning going on. For students, this ongoing online learning has brought about various impacts on their online learning success. One important factor determining online learning success is students' interaction. Thus, paying more attention to whether an online learning environment has promoted the students' interaction is crucial to creating successful online learning. This study aimed to investigate the dimensions of students' interaction in the online listening learning environment. Moreover, this study also tried to explore how students perceived the interaction in the online listening learning environment. There were 78 students majoring in English Education as participants in this study. A convergent mixed-method was applied in this study, in which the results of the quantitative and qualitative data analysis were brought together. A modified questionnaire of OLLES (Online Learning Environment Survey) and a close-ended interview were carried out to gather the data. The results showed that the dimensions of interaction in the online listening learning environment had a statistically significant high rating. The interaction between the lecturer and the students placed the highest among all of the dimensions. Overall, all the dimensions of interaction in online listening learning were highly perceived by the students. The implications suggested that providing well-designed authentic materials, collaborative activities, and asynchronous models were needed to support the students' online learning performance. © 2022, authors. All Rights Reserved.

An Effective Systematic Approach to Migrate a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering Degree Program to Online Modality

During the last two and half years, the Covid-19 Pandemic has made online learning environment (OLE) a necessary modality for all educational degree programs globally. However, migrating a conventional ground campus only Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering (BSCE) degree program into an online modality is a project more complicated than simply replicating what is common in an on-ground classroom into a virtual classroom. The major challenges include how to maintain instructional effectiveness in an online modality, how to enable students accessing lab equipment to conduct hands-on experiments in an OLE, how to support students expeditiously when they encounter difficulties in an asynchronous communication based OLE, and how to assess students work produced in an OLE, etc. In this paper, we share our experience on how we applied a systematic approach, guided by various learning pedagogies, migrating a ground campus only ABET accredited BSCE degree program into the online modality successfully. Our practice has demonstrated that this approach can assist us to quickly identify solutions, quite often unique to the OLE, based on the specific characteristics of online modality to effectively address various typical challenges encountered during the process of migration. © 2022 IEEE.

Analysis of Students' Emotions in an Online Learning Environment

The COVID 19 pandemic has affected several sectors of human life, including the educational system. It has led to a rapid and forced shift towards online learning. This radical change has influenced the students' behavior, emotional state as well as their ability to learn. In order to analyze this situation, we focus in this work on the automatic detection of students' emotions while exploiting the techniques and methods of sentiment analysis and machine learning. The proposed solution aims to predict students' emotions and some of the aspects related to online learning from students' reviews and then infers the attitude of students using association rules and clustering. The data-set consists of students' answers in a forum sent at the end of sessions and semesters, annotated manually, during online learning. The obtained results using precision and recall was satisfying and favorable. © 2022 IEEE.

Digitising a Learning Activity: Challenges and Opportunities

As the world faces the new landcape in teaching and learning due to COVID-19, the pandemic, the strategies and approaches use for teaching and learning must ensure all students have access to digital resources. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities faced by the researcher and her students when a learning activity previously implemented in face-to-face sessions was transferred into an online learning environment. The learning activity, known as Work-the-Walk (WTW), is a transformative learning activity designed by the researcher, and the researcher owns the copyright of WTW. The objectives of this paper are to identify the challenges and opportunities raised by transferring WTW to a digital format, and ultimately to suggest the best ways to make the transition from a physical learning activity to a digital format effectively. Qualitative approach to research was used to obtain data for analysis and discussion. Preliminary findings suggest that the Digital WTW (D-WTW) present two main challenges and two main opportunities for both the researcher and students. Given this, the education providers must be willing to encourage the educators to provide various approaches to teaching and learning, as well as to promote experiments with various existing learning strategies used in face-to-face sessions, and to transfer them to be used in an online learning environment.

Emergency Remote Learning: Developing an Understanding about Online Learning Features and Students' Feelings

In mid spring 2020, an unprecedented Covid-19 induced switch of learning mode, from face-to-face instruction to online learning, disrupted not only teachers, but also students, both cognitively and emotionally. This study seeks to understand how students felt about their capabilities to succeed in the online learning environment (OLE) and which online learning features (OLF), offered to them by their instructors, positively, negatively, or neutrally impacted their learning. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What online learning features did students perceive as contributing positively, negatively, or neutrally to their learning and how were these perceived contributions related to students' demographics?;(2) How did students feel about their capabilities to succeed in the OLE?;and (3) How did students' feelings change during their online learning experiences and how did these changes relate to students' gender, academic performance, and prior online experience? An online survey was designed and face-validated to solicit information about students' perceptions about online learning features and feelings about their capabilities to succeed in the OLE. The 13-item survey consisted of 10 multiple-choice/multiple-answer and 3 open-ended questions. One thousand two hundred and thirty-seven (N = 1237) students taking 27 different courses, from 6 different institutions participated in the study. Presentation of the qualitative analyses of open-ended survey responses is outside the scope of this paper. Findings suggest that the three most frequent OLFs provided to students were electronic homework submission, recorded video lectures, and electronic exams. While video lectures, homework electronics submission, and downloadable documents or files were reported to be the top three OLFs that contributed positively to students' learning, poor internet performance, online exams, and projects were the top three OLFs that were reported to have contributed negatively to student learning. Changes in students' feelings during the online learning experience were also reported.

Key Success Factors in an Online English Learning Environment From Tertiary Learners' Perspectives

During the COVID-19 crisis, universities worldwide were forced to shift from face-to-face instruction to online instruction. This shift exposes learners to challenges they have never encountered, and numerous studies have revealed a variety of barriers preventing learners from achieving learning goals in an online learning environment. Accordingly, there is an increasing need to understand the factors that contribute to learner success. This study therefore analyzed the key success factors that could assist learners in learning more efficiently in an online learning environment. The participants of this study were 105 Thai learners who were in their second year of an undergraduate degree. To reach the objective of this study, two distinct data collection procedures were used: a questionnaire for learners to identify the factors effecting learners' success in an online course and a focus group interview. The result indicated that teacher support, interaction during learning, and technological support are all critical for the success in online learning.

Classification of Student Success in Online Courses Using Feature Selection and Convolutional Neural Network

During the Covid 19 pandemic, the number of online learning environments that were previously used but not widespread has increased. Machine learning methods and estimation and classification studies of student success on learning analytics data in these environments have gained importance in recent years. In this study, a method based on OHE (one-hot encoding) representation of course activities, feature selection, and convolutional neural network is proposed for the classification of student success. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, comparative evaluations were presented with incoming machine learning algorithms (RF, MLP, k-NN) and literature. Experiments on the UK Open University online learning dataset, which is available to researchers, show that the proposed method improves current study success in the literature. © 2022 IEEE.

COVID-19 Impacts on Architecture Educators in India- A review of gender perceptions

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.

Academic Integrity during the COVID-19 Pandemic

An online learning environment can be effective but presents additional challenges with regard to academic integrity compared to in-person education. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic forced many institutions to an online learning environment with less than two weeks' notice. Even before migrating to the online learning environment, violations of academic integrity have been shown to be alarmingly prevalent in United States institutions. In an online environment where students have unfettered access to online resources, “availability” would be expected to be a substantial factor making cheating easier and, thus, more prevalent. The goal of this research is to analyze student perceptions of adherence to academic integrity rules before and after the initial COVID-19 response in Spring 2020, where classes were forced to an online learning environment. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our university made a sudden shift from fully in-person instruction to entirely remote online learning with less than two weeks' notice to both students and faculty. This sudden shift left faculty scrambling to convert in-person lectures, which relied heavily on chalkboards and document cameras as the interface to communicate to students in the classroom, to an entirely online format using only computers from home. The faculty decided to survey the students to obtain their perspective to determine if students felt that they and their peers would adhere to academic integrity rules during this change to an online learning environment. Student surveys were administered during the first and last week of the change from in-person to online instruction for 12 engineering classes at an undergraduate institution, including civil, mechanical, electrical, and general engineering classes. Paired t-tests were performed to determine if students initially felt others would, and afterward did, adhere to academic integrity rules. Results indicate that while students had a positive perception of themselves adhering to academic integrity rules they did not feel that their peers would - with a statistically significant difference. These results are concerning since students may be more predisposed to cheat if they feel they are at a disadvantage because others are cheating. Also, grades are not an adequate assessment of learning objectives being met if students are not adhering to academic integrity requirements. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

Lessons learned from designing an effective online course with Community of Inquiry framework

All of the courses at a large southwest state university have been provided online since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020. What most of the instructors did in the left part of the 2020 Spring semester was “teaching online” instead of “providing an online course”. Difference between the two terms is that an online course is carefully designed for the online learning environment with a lot of specific practices to cope with the unique online teaching/learning environment. Teaching online, however, is just changing from the face-to-face lecture to online stream lecture. Beginning in the summer of 2020, many instructors designed the online versions of their courses by changing the course structures, embracing new teaching techniques, and adding new teaching practices. This paper presents the structure of an online course with the application of one online learning framework: the Community of Inquiry theoretical framework. The course was provided face-to-face on campus before COVID-19, and was moved online since 2020 Fall semester. This paper includes changes that the instructor made to cope with the online learning environment. This paper also introduces the practices applied in the online course to improve the cognitive presence, teaching presence, and social presence. The effects of the practices are analyzed based on student's feedback and survey results. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.

Investigating Characteristics of Learning Environments During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review

Dramatic change in learning environments during the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the significance of virtual learning and led to more interactive learning environments. Quick adoption of online and social interactive learning in many universities around the world raised challenges and emphasized the importance of investigating different learning environments. This paper investigates the accelerated transition in education from traditional learning environments through online learning environments to social innovative learning environments, and the latest trends of this change. The stages of transition were divided into three parts: before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which was the reason for this accelerated change. Features and characteristics of each stage of transition were analyzed and discussed, based on the following factors: edu-space and classrooms, the learning and teaching process, curricular choices, information and communication technology applications, students’ and educators’ perceptions, edu-approaches, and knowledge transformation. A systematic review approach was used to investigate learning environments based on the literature reviews of previous publications. Analysis of these features revealed the main characteristics and differences in each stage. New trends in online learning environments and social innovative learning environments were identified including cloud platforms, massive open online courses, digital learning management systems, open educational resources, open educational practices, m-learning, and social network applications. Finally, this study makes two recommendations: 1) the adoption of online learning environments and social innovative learning environment applications to continue the e-learning process during the pandemic, and 2) the enhanced usage of online learning environments and social innovative learning environment applications in the future by educational institutions and governments. © 2022, Canadian Network for Innovation in Education. All rights reserved.