Investigation of higher education instructors’ perspectives towards emergency remote teaching

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sudden transition to emergency remote teaching (ERT) caused a chaotic situation for not only those institutions with no or insufficient prior experience but also experienced ones all around the world. Experts expressed their concerns about inappropriateness of assessing remote teaching during especially the first stages of the global pandemic and urged to conduct scientific studies to develop a better insight about what was happening. This qualitative study intended to develop an understanding about the instructors’ perspectives towards the ERT. However, apart from similar early studies, it also proposed to test the employment of the socio-ecological model (SEM) as a theoretical or conceptual base for describing those perspectives. The results have shown that the SEM might be an effective framework to describe the perspectives of the different stakeholders on the ERT. Also, the study has shown that the instructors did see the ERT as a temporary situation that will be over soon, and they will go back to face-to-face classrooms, same as described in the definition of ERT.