Abstract-E-learning is nowadaysan essential teaching and learning setting to both faculty members and students in a digital and connected 21 st Century. Despite the attempts and the claims that many higher education institutes make in regards to e-learning, a number of barriers retard many faculty members to progress from the state of appreciating and acknowledging e-learning to the state of actually adopting and implementing it. Saudi higher education institutes and Saudi faculty members are no exception in facing such barriers. This paper investigated the challenges to adopting e-learning in higher education by focusing on one of the recently established Saudi universities as a case study. Quantitative data were collected through 214 questionnaires. Findings from quantitative data analysis revealed a number of barriers which challenge the effective implementation of e-learning at the targeted Saudi university. This paper found that barriers towards e-learning are gender-related. In addition, this paper reports that the most cited barriers were external sources barriers which suggests that strategic policies need to be in place to overcome such resources barriers. Once external sources barriers are overcome, focus can shift on the pedagogical opportunities that e-learning creates and makes possible. As e-learning is a developing field of interest in Saudi higher education institutes, this paper adds to the little literature conducted so far in a Saudi context. In addition, findings from this paper contribute to the global literature on e-learning in a globalised and connected world.Index Terms-E-learning, Saudi Arabia, faculty members, and perceived barriers.
Abstract-Teacher immediacy (verbal and non-verbal)remains an important factor towards prompting efficient pedagogical approaches. Whilst teacher immediacy in a classroom setting is important, there is growing awareness about the importance of the construct in a virtual setting as education shifts from explicit conventional face-to-face teaching and learning to a blended environment which includes distance education. This paper attempts to generate some understandings about the correlation between teacher immediacy, both verbal and non-verbal, and students' active participation and satisfaction in a distance education learning environment. This paper considers, in a preliminary research framework, a Saudi university which offers a range of distance education courses as an initial cohort from which to generate such understandings. Students' opinions, perceptions, and reported satisfaction were captured through utilising a structured questionnaire completed by 413 participants, enrolled in a variety of distance education courses offered by the aforementioned university. This study found that there was significant correlation between the overall adopted teacher immediacy (verbal and non-verbal) and students' overall online participation and satisfaction in the investigated distance education courses. In terms of gender differences, male participants have higher willingness to participate than female participants within the perceived immediacy behaviours. On the other hand, female participants were more satisfied in terms of communication than male participants within the perceived "e-immediacy" behaviours. These results serve as a prompt for further research on teacher immediacy in the rapidly developing and increasing virtual education domain in a global and connected world.Index Terms-Distance education, teacher immediacy, e-immediacy, verbal immediacy, non-verbal immediacy, students' satisfaction, students' online participation, students' communication satisfaction.
I. INTRODUCTIONTeacher immediacy has been a topic of research and interest in conventional (face-to-face) classroom settings. Teacher immediacy-both verbal and non-verbal-focuses mainly on creating a close collaborative communicative environment, where immediacy as a term is defined as ‗the relationship between the speaker and the objects he or she communicates about' [1]. A number of scholars perceived teacher immediacy as the reduction of psychological or [5]. Recent research reported that university lecturers who employ immediacy -including lecturers' warmth and approachability-in their teaching and learning practice experience an increased level of students' participation and enjoy a greater ‗breadth' of such participation [5] In a digital and internationalised 21 st century, universities strive to reposition themselves into offering distance education [6]. In a virtual learning environment, physical separation is one of the characteristics of distance education. Regardless of the advantages physical separation might bring about (flexibility, sav...
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.