Saudi education postgraduates’ (Trainee teachers’) perspectives on distance education

Abstract

The purpose of this exploratory study undertaken in Saudi Arabia is to understand how in-service and new teachers perceive distance education. The study involved nineteen male and female postgraduates who were pursuing an education master’s degree during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a qualitative research asking participants to provide a 300-word response to the open-ended question: “How will you implement what you have learnt in your studies so that distance education can be effectively provided and convince others of the merit of this approach?” The task was presented in Arabic and the complete assignments were returned electronically. The 11,181-word corpus underwent content and thematic analyses yielding eight themes. Participants addressed issues pertinent to teaching and learning, equity in technological access and digital literacy. To make DE in Saudi Arabia successful, thorough preparation of involved parties, including educators and learners, and their digital teaching and learning skills should be mastered.
 Keywords: Distance education, e-learning, education postgraduates, Saudi Arabia, “Vision 2030”

Exploring the Experiences of Postgraduate Students in the Field of Special Education with Remote Online Teaching Amid COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed Methods Study

“…Another benefit included the opportunity to view recorded lectures later (Oyedotun, 2020). Alghamdi and Dossary (2021) also found that students reported that the experience of distance learning enhanced their skills of self-reflection, self-motivation, and self-evaluation, a finding similar to this study.…”

“…This review also examines the research surrounding the experiences of higher education institutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) during the pandemic. The majority of the identified studies were surveys (Alqabbani et al, 2020;Balhareth et al, 2020;Hoq, 2020;Mukhtar & Mukhtar, 2020), with fewer qualitative studies (Alghamdi & Dossary, 2021;Khalil et al, 2020). Some studies focused on the experiences of the instructors in these institutions (Alqabbani et al, 2020;Hoq, 2020), while others focused on students' perspectives (Alghamdi & Dossary, 2021;Balhareth et al, 2020).…”

“…The majority of the identified studies were surveys (Alqabbani et al, 2020;Balhareth et al, 2020;Hoq, 2020;Mukhtar & Mukhtar, 2020), with fewer qualitative studies (Alghamdi & Dossary, 2021;Khalil et al, 2020). Some studies focused on the experiences of the instructors in these institutions (Alqabbani et al, 2020;Hoq, 2020), while others focused on students' perspectives (Alghamdi & Dossary, 2021;Balhareth et al, 2020). Alqabbani et al (2020) found a high level of readiness and satisfaction with online learning among instructors.…”

Problems of children who need special education and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic process

“…Planning for routines such as closing schools and nurseries, social distancing or confinement to the home can be a real challenge for children with physical and mental disabilities (Barlett et al, 2020). As opposed to internalising the level of anxiety that children experience with more typical painful, sad or anxious responses, acting can also occur in coercive expression behaviours such as discussion or reflection (Alghamdi & Al Dossary, 2021;Dalton et al, 2020).…”