Digital Platforms in the Emergency Remote Education: the Students’ Preferences

Abstract

One positive side of the Covid-19 pandemic is the unprecedented opportunity it has offered to the Higher Education Institutions to experience digital learning like never before. During the pandemic, Distant Learning platforms, including Learning Management Systems and Video Conferencing Platforms, have been ubiquitous, and no single institution survived without them during the pandemic. Hence, one of the critical lessons that should be learned is the students’ experiences with these platforms. This study aims to investigate the digital platform preferences of English major students in the College of Language and Translation at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia during the Emergency Remote Education due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Its significance lies in the fact that it underscores and addresses students’ needs and preferences with regard to the digital platforms to be used for language learning, a pragmatic examination of which has been carried out in the following pages. It focuses on reasons for the preferences of the two leading digital platforms used in King Saud University: Blackboard and Zoom. A Survey with open-ended and closed-ended questions was designed to answer the questions of the study: which digital platforms do students prefer to use during Emergency Remote Education, and what were the reasons behind students’ preferences? A total of 300 students from both male and female campuses at different levels of study participated in the study. The results showed that students preferred the Zoom to Blackboard. Reasons of preferences were mainly the ease of use, followed by supporting smartphones, then having an app for smartphones. The thematic analysis of the open-ended question showed that technical problems and connection latency were the main reasons behind students’ preferences of the Zoom. The findings also indicated gender differences in reasons of preferences.

Exploring Learners’ Experiences in Video-conference Classrooms through theExtended Technology Acceptance Model

“…Al Shammari (2021) examined the reasons for learners' preferences for the two leading online learning platforms in Saudi Arabia -Blackboard and Zoom -during the pandemic. He found that learners preferred Zoom to Blackboard due mainly to the ease of use, and mobility (ability to access on smartphones or mobile app).…”

“…The perceived benefits of remote learning (Cardullo et al, 2021;Lech & Johnson, 2021), and learner expectations as regards the features of videoconferencing that supports effective learning (Berges, 2021;Minhas et al, 2021) were also examined. In addition to these are an assessment of learner preference factors which influence the choice of videoconference platform (H. Al Shammari, 2021;Islam et al, 2020).…”

Language Teacher’s Experience and Preference toward Online Learning Platforms during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…This potential of reaching out to distant geographical spaces has transformed remote teaching into a highly welcome opportunity in times of crisis. Moreover, in terms of language teachers, digital platforms have been found to be easily accessible and suitably tailored to their needs [16,36,37].…”

“…According to Mishra et al [35], the effects of workload, a lack of digital competency, and a lack of knowledge of digital pedagogy on staff stress are all being studied. Although there has not been much research on online education in emergency situations, as most studies have focused on distance learning [36,37,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53], the current pandemic has demonstrated that educational settings must take a proactive approach to ensure that their students receive the best education possible.…”

“…Although the experience and preferences of students and teachers toward OLPs have received increased attention in recent years, its ecological context continues to be critiqued. Previous studies [e.g., 1,22,36,37,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51] have explored students' and teachers' uses of OLPs from around the world, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic [52][53][54][55][56]. For instance, Al Shammari [36,37] studied the experiences of devices and preferences of OLPs of English major college students in Saudi Arabia and found that laptops were their most used device and Zoom was the most preferred platform.…”