University Lecturers and Students’ Perceptions about Online Teaching and Learning during the Outbreak of COVID 19 in Northern Zone of Tanzania

Online education is provided by fewer universities in Africa than the western world. However, during the outbreak of COVID 19 many universities were forced to embrace online teaching and learning, even those who were against it. The outbreak of COVID 19 opened new ways of teaching and learning that most of universities had to adopt for their survival. This study was carried out to explore the beliefs of Tanzanian lecturers and students on online teaching and learning during the outbreak of COVID 19. This study is anchored on the Technology Acceptance Model by applying a concurrent triangulation design, which helped the researcher to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. The study targeted university lecturers, Deputy Vice Chancellors, academics, and students in selected full- fledged universities in the northern part of Tanzania. The findings indicate that lecturers and students were positive about the use of online teaching and learning, and there is no statistically significant difference in perceptions mean scores between lecturers and university students on the use of online learning during the outbreak of COVID 19. However, various challenges were identified that hamper the smooth running of online teaching and learning, such as lack of adequate resources, poor connectivity of internet and lack of knowledge and skills on how to use the online platforms. This study recommends that universities have to improve the availability of resources for online teaching and learning and to invest in staff capacity building to motivate the lecturers to use online teaching more effectively.