Experience of Online Learning from COVID-19: Preparing for the Future of Digital Transformation in Education

Abstract

COVID-19 has affected traditional instructional activities. Home-based isolation and restrictive movement measures have forced most learning activities to move from an offline to an online environment. Multiple studies have also demonstrated that teaching with virtual tools during the COVID-19 pandemic is always ineffective. This study examines the different characteristics and challenges that virtual tools brought to online education in the pre-pandemic and pandemic era, with the aim of providing experience of how virtual tools supported purely online learning during a health crisis. By searching keywords in public databases and review publications, this study tries to summarize the major topics related to the research theme. These topics are the characteristics of learning supported by technologies in pre-pandemic and pandemic era, the challenges that education systems have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study also compares the functions, advantages and limitations of typical virtual tools, which has rarely been done in previous studies. This study tries to present the features of virtual tools that support online learning and the challenges regarding real-life risk scenarios, and tries to provide educational institutions with a distinct perspective for efficient teaching and learning in future potential health crises.

Reimaging the unimaginable: Moving an on-campus health course online during COVID-19

“…According to its supporters, online learning is said to offer students exibility and convenience (Bolliger and Wasilik, 2009), making higher education more accessible. COVID-19 strengthened this discourse with many researchers exploring the value of online learning during a pandemic (Adedoyi and Soykan, 2020; Jiang et al, 2022). Whilst support for online learning may be strong within the broader higher education sector, the applicability of this method of teaching has been questioned in the health disciplines (Regmi and Jones, 2020).…”

A cross‐sectional study of online learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Student perceptions

“…10 Even though this transition was viewed as a revolution in the education system by certain countries, on the other part, this learning system emphasized the necessity of alternative teaching and learning models and methodologies, particularly in online teaching and learning resources. [11][12][13][14][15] The situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the online learning transition found both the educational staff and the students unprepared. Many of them were sceptical, while some others had negative attitudes toward online learning, whereas other students had the perception that online learning would mean low quality of education.…”

Students Satisfaction with Online Higher Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…During the COVID-19 pandemic, the processes of digitalization of education were accelerated, leading to a kind of global experiment in online education [1], and therefore the difficulties of organizing distance learning became obvious. Such factors include the lack of a comfortable place to study at home, insufficient training of teachers for online learning, the inability to teach many practical skills online, the lack of the necessary amount of time to prepare classes using digital devices, official guidelines, online textbooks, the problem of assessing the quality of knowledge and skills acquired, the formation of competencies, the problem of motivation, negative consequences of intensive online education for health, and a decrease in the social activity of students [2][3][4][5]. Similar difficulties in distance learning during the COVID-19 pandemic were indicated by Faize and Nawaz [6].…”

“…The problem of satisfaction with the online learning process is now relevant and is being actively considered by researchers [3,4,[8][9][10][11][12]. Satisfaction with distance learning is understood as an integrated concept reflecting the degree of realization of a student's social expectations from educational activities at the university, formed in the process of their socialization [13]; the subjective, emotionally colored assessment of the quality of certain objects and the conditions of educational activity, including interpersonal relationships [14]; emotional and personal attitude, which consist of motivation and subjective experiences associated with the process and result of achieving the goal [15].…”