research paper on problems faced by teachers during online classes

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The sudden transition to online learning: Teachers’ experiences of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

Contributed equally to this work with: Elham Goudarzi, Shirin Hasanvand

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Student Research Committee, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences, Khorramabad, Iran

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Social Determinants of Health Research Center, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Lorestan University of Medical Sciences, Khorramabad, Iran

Roles Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

¶ ‡ SR and MA also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Clinical Education Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

• Elham Goudarzi, 
• Shirin Hasanvand, 
• Shahin Raoufi, 
• Mitra Amini

• Published: November 16, 2023
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287520
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Introduction

The sudden transition from face-to-face teaching to virtual remote education and the need to implement it during COVID-19 initially posed specific challenges to educational institutions. Identifying and understanding teachers’ experiences pave the way for discovering and meeting educational needs. This study explored faculty members’ teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Materials and methods

The qualitative descriptive design via conventional content analysis was used. It was conducted from January 13, 2020, to May 10, 2022. In-depth interviews (online and in-person) of ten faculty members, three managers, and one staff from Lorestan University of Medical Sciences were conducted. They were purposefully selected with maximum variation. Simultaneously with data collection, analysis was performed using the approach Graneheim and Lundman proposed (2004). Lincoln and Goba’s criteria were used to obtain the study’s rigor.

Six categories emerged from the data: education in the shadow of the crisis, Challenges related to the teaching-learning process, Blurred boundaries between personal and professional lives, Positive consequences of e-learning, Trying to deal with the crisis, And dealing with the crisis.

Conclusions

Initially, teachers faced several challenges in the teaching-learning process and even in their personal life. However, with time, the actions of the teachers and the managers caused an increase in the quality of education. However, planning and foresight are needed in developing countries, including Iran, to appropriately face and optimally manage similar crises and move towards blended learning.

Citation: Goudarzi E, Hasanvand S, Raoufi S, Amini M (2023) The sudden transition to online learning: Teachers’ experiences of teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. PLoS ONE 18(11): e0287520. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287520

Editor: Muhammad Arsyad Subu, School of Health Binawan: Universitas Binawan, INDONESIA

Received: September 7, 2022; Accepted: June 7, 2023; Published: November 16, 2023

Copyright: © 2023 Goudarzi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All interview files are available from figshare, https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.23599155.v1 .

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Abbreviations: F2F, Face-to-face; ICT, Information and communications technology

In late December 2019, a new subvariant of COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan, China, spreading rapidly worldwide [ 1 ]. The transmission rate of the virus and the subsequent pandemic were so significant that in the first month of 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a state of emergency [ 2 ]. The first Iranian coronavirus case was officially announced in Qom on February 19, 2020 [ 3 ].

This global pandemic affected all areas of human life, including medical education [ 4 ], and disrupted face-to-face(F2F) learning worldwide. That is, F2F learning was suspended at medical universities, particularly in third-world countries, where the sudden change in educational planning was an inevitable consequence of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic [ 5 ]. Insufficiency of resources and poor infrastructure severely damaged low-income countries [ 6 ]. In response to the closure of education, UNESCO recommended using distance education programs and related educational platforms by educational institutes to benefit from distance education and minimize any disruption in the learning-teaching process [ 7 ].

Distance education is a planned type of education where teaching and learning occur in different environments [ 8 ]. In recent years, the development of distance education has significantly contributed to promoting learning-teaching quality and expanding educational justice [ 9 ]. Certain advantages and disadvantages can be attributed to distance education. Its benefits include the feasibility of teaching regardless of time and place, cost-effectiveness [ 10 ], non-necessity of physical attendance [ 11 ], the existence of a variety of choices [ 12 ], saving time [ 10 ], studying simultaneously with working [ 12 ], and the development of participatory and independent types of learning [ 13 ]. Moreover, high probability of lack of concentration, the need for complex technology [ 12 ], reduced social interactions [ 14 ], unstable internet connection [ 13 ], the inability to comprehend and interpret students’ facial expressions, and inability to hold practical and laboratory meetings are also among the disadvantages of distance education [ 6 ].

One important change after the campus closure was the transition from face-to-face universities to virtual universities to prevent the spread of COVID-19 [ 15 ]. In countries such as Italy, Spain, China, the USA, and even Brazil, distance learning has been widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in medical education [ 16 ]. The use of distance education commenced in Iran with the emergence of the coronavirus. Although distance education was initially presented to students irregularly using social media, Iranian universities gradually adopted a systematic version of distance education using a centralized system of learning management according to the instructions issued by educational authorities. However, this system did not turn out to be an ideal one. Students and faculty members faced challenges such as slow internet speed, limited cyberspace to upload e-content, and reduced teacher-student interactions [ 17 ].

As was indicated in a study on the challenges encountered by faculty concerning distance education, a flawed organizational culture or the lack of a culture of working with e-learning tools such as computers, and the failure to train faculty members about how to operate these tools were also among the essential barriers to efficient distance education. Furthermore, lack of equipment, slow internet speed, lack of sufficient cyberspace for uploading educational materials, being time-consuming and costly, and ignoring the intellectual property rights, such as unauthorized copying of the content and violation of copyright principles in the cyberlearning environment were other challenges raised by the participants [ 13 ]. In another study that focused on the experiences of teachers about distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic, many students expressed their concerns about losing contact with their peers, separation from academic communities, hardware and software inconveniences, lack of a quiet environment, and a separate room at home to attend virtual classes, lack of access to libraries and resources, and deprivation from clinical and laboratory activities. Faculty members complained about increased responsibility and workload and emphasized the necessity of having access to comprehensive mental health services that should be provided for both themselves and students [ 18 ]. In Marek et al. (2021) study, faculty who converted classes to remove learning during COVID-19 experienced much higher workloads and tension than in F2F classes [ 19 ].

A systematic review showed that fewer studies had been conducted in remote emergency teaching or e-learning during the Covid-19 pandemic [ 15 ]. Few studies, especially quantitative, have been conducted in Iran, and faculty members’ experiences have yet to be investigated. This issue is a significant gap because it cannot be supposed that these experiences are similar to those in different cultural and social contexts. Thus, considering the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and its adverse effects on education worldwide, the disruption of teaching-learning processes in universities and teachers, and students’ unpreparedness, it seems necessary to investigate teachers’ experiences and deal with distance education. Such an investigation can contribute to the identification of the facilitators of and impediments to distance education if the COVID-19 pandemic persists or similar crises emerge. Thus, this study explored the teachers’ teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This qualitative study used a conventional content analysis from January 13, 2020, to May 10, 2022, to describe the professor’s teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Content analysis is a study method for forming replicable and proper inferences from data to their context. It provides knowledge, new insights, a manifestation of facts, and a practical action guide. The aim is to acquire a condensed and comprehensive description of the phenomenon, and the result of the analysis is concepts or categories depicting the phenomenon. Conventional content analysis is used when there are no previous studies or research literature about the phenomenon, or it needs to be more cohesive. Researchers do not utilize predetermined categories. Rather, it lets categories and category labels flow from the data [ 20 ].

Participants and data collection

Participants included ten faculty members, three administrators, and one staff of the Department of Education affiliated with Lorestan University of Medical Sciences (Western Iran). Participants were selected by purposeful and maximum variation sampling(gender, marital status, work experience, having experience in e-learning, specialty). Inclusion criteria were willingness to participate in the study and share their experiences.

The data were gathered through unstructured in-depth F2F or electronic interviews by the first author under the supervision of the second author. Since the second author was a faculty, the first author took responsibility for the interviews. However, the second author supervised the interviews because of his experience in qualitative research.

Due to the absence of some faculty members in the university, particularly at the beginning of the study, the interviews were conducted mainly electronically using either telephone or Adobe Connect video-conferencing software and later in person under health protocols. Also, F2F interviews were conducted with the participants’ consent at their workplaces.

The interviews began with questions: "Could you please let us know about your teaching experiences since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic? What challenges did you face? How did you manage your class?" The participants were further investigated by answering probing questions such as "Could you explain more?" and "Could you please give an example?". The interviews were done individually and lasted an average of 20 to 50 minutes.

The data were recorded on a digital audio recorder. Field observations complemented the interviews. Sampling continued until data saturation when the collected data confirmed the previous data. Data saturation occurred after the 12th interview. To make sure two more interviews were conducted. Overall, 14 interviews were conducted with 14 participants. All the participants volunteered to participate in the study, and no one refused. The time and the place of the interviews (F2F) were arranged with the participants.

Data analysis

The data analysis was conducted simultaneously by collecting data using the approach proposed by Granehim and Lundman(2004) with the following phases: 1) immediate transcription of interviews, 2) listening to them to obtain a general perception, 3) identification of significant parts and initial codes(the label of a meaning unit), 4) classification of similar initial codes in broader categories (creating categories), and 5) determination of the hidden content in the data [ 21 ]. Hence, after listening to the interviews, they were transcribed and read several times. In the next phase, the significant units were identified and coded. We consider a meaning unit as words, sentences, or paragraphs containing dimensions about each other through their content and context. The condensed meaning units were abstracted and labeled by a code. Subsequently, the codes were classified using a constant comparison technique, identifying differences and similarities, and subcategories were identified. Finally, the findings were compared, and categories were determined. Data analysis was carried out using the MAXQDA 10 software.

Ethics approval and the consent to participate.

The present study was conducted under the Declaration of Helsinki. The code of ethics was also obtained from the Ethical Committee of the Vice-Chancellery for Research and Technology affiliated with Lorestan University of Medical Sciences (Code: I.R.LUMS.REC.1399.242). Providing the necessary explanations about the research objectives, we obtained written informed consent from all the participants. The subjects were allowed to record audio. The first author kept the recorded files in a locked file to ensure the security of the data.

Guba and Lincoln’s (1994) criteria, i.e., credibility, dependability, confirmability, and transferability, were used to ensure the trustworthiness of the data. Participants with experience in the studied phenomenon were selected to increase the credibility of the data. The researcher’s prolonged engagement and contact with participants (more than one year) were also considered. Moreover, more than one of the authors (the first and second authors) participated in the data analysis. Member-checking was also used. An attempt was made to improve data transferability by describing the participants’ culture, context, and characteristics. The audit trail approach and maximum variation were used to ensure transferability. People with an experience in qualitative research (Outside researchers) evaluated the data analysis process to ensure the findings were consistent.

The intercoder rater is a scale of the agreement between multiple coders about how similar data should be coded [ 22 ]. An inter-coder reliability analysis using Cohen’s Kappa statistic was conducted to determine consistency between coders. Cohen’s Kappa coefficient of agreement s was 0.871.

Fourteen participants participated in this study. Table 1 provides information about the participants.

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287520.t001

The qualitative interviews extracted 1215 initial codes, 28 subcategories, and six main categories. Table 2 presents subcategories and categories extracted from the interviews.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287520.t002

Category 1: Education in the shadow of the crisis

University closures necessitated the pursuit of distance education. Nevertheless, many faculty members and administrators thought they faced a temporary crisis. Thus, no significant measure was taken at the onset of the crisis. According to one of the participants, upon the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was maintained that the disease would disappear soon. Hence, no intense action was taken in the first month.

1.1. The idea of being temporary.

Many teachers thought the crisis was temporary, so no particular action was taken early. One of the participants said: ”The disease would disappear soon , so no special action was taken in the first month of the disease”(P1) .

1.2. Being unpredictable and uncertainty.

During this period, the teaching-learning process fluctuated, and faculty members were undecided. Moreover, some hospital wards were closed due to a lack of patients, decreased days of student internships, and a reduced variety of hospital cases. One of the participants said: "In the first months of the crisis , we underwent extremely unpleasant experiences and did not know what to do in that situation . On the one hand , we were worried about the students . On the other hand , we had to reduce , for example , the number of internship days . Furthermore , there were almost no patients in the wards because people were full of fear and panic" (P2) .

1.3. Educational confusion.

The sudden transition in education from F2F to distance education confused teaching and reduced the quality of teaching. As one of the participants mentioned: "Timely preparing all the educational content for students was another challenge for us . Inevitably , this preparation was prone to delay . I can assert that 99% of the faculty members could not provide the educational content for distance education without delay in the first semester following the COVID-19 pandemic because all the courses were offered to students within the distance education framework" (p9) .

1.4. Life insecurity.

Despite the widespread use of distance education in universities, some institutions face particular challenges. Medical students need to take internships in clinical settings. The fear of contracting the disease and the insecurity of life left many educators and administrators with moral and professional challenges. Some clinical faculty members were dealing with the threats posed by COVID-19 in hospitals. Moreover, concerns about the spread of the disease adversely affected the quality and quantity of clinical sessions. As one of the faculty members said:

" in this period , the stress and tension were caused by the COVID-19 pandemic rather than teaching . I feel stressed out every time I attend class , but this time the stress was caused by the question of death or survival . " (p8)

Another said:

"We were exposed to a death threat when we attended the hospital to teach students in this environment . " Every day there were several confirmed COVID-19 cases in the hospital . I remember I contracted the coronavirus the day after examining a confirmed COVID-19 patient (P13) .

1.5. Teachers’ concerns about the failure to learn from students.

Some faculty members expressed concerns about students’ failure to learn practical courses and the subsequent weakening of students’ fundamental and practical knowledge and skills. One of the Midwifery faculty members stated: "I was supposed to teach a 7th-semester student who has never been present in either a cesarean surgery or natural childbirth event in the hospital . This student will graduate in the following semester . I wonder if she can perform her duties as a hospital staff (p12) .

Category 2: Challenges related to the teaching-learning process

There were several challenges regarding interpersonal interactions, assessment, network connection, and educational materials development in the teaching-learning process.

2.1. Decreased quality of interpersonal interactions.

The lack of inclusive participation and direct interactions between teachers and students adversely affected the quality of education. A female faculty member said:

"Interactions , eye contact , and in any case , some emotional-psychological factors between teachers and students are eliminated in distance education" (P4) . "The main problem we had with e-Learning was that we were not in touch with students , and they did not have the opportunity to visit us " (P8) .

2.2. Authentication challenge.

Classroom management is complex in online classes due to the physical absence of teachers, particularly in large classes.

"Coordination of the class time with students was one of the problems I encountered in distance education . Normally , students are expected to attend the class on time following our announcement of the class time . However , some students failed to attend the class on time" (p5) . "It is difficult to coordinate all students in a virtual classroom" (p9) . Another faculty member stated that "it is hard to control a class with a large population" (p12) .

One of the significant concerns of faculty members was the problem of student identification and teachers’ uncertainty about the presence of students in online classes. Some faculty members could not ensure the students’ full-time presence in online classes: "I do not know if the person taking the test is the student or someone else . Thus , identity verification is a major problem . " (p1)

2.3. Assessment challenges.

One of the challenges for faculty members during this period was the limitation in preparing the test questions. They had to prepare new questions at the end of every semester due to the possibility of question leaks: "Students had the chance to take screenshots of questions , which means that the questions could not be reused , and the faculty members had to redesign the questions at the end of every semester . " (p1)

Many faculty members considered students’ copying of one anothers’ homework, cheating, and negligence of ethical principles in preparing their assignments among the disadvantages of distance education: "Concerning the disadvantages of distance education , I can safely assert that the most notable shortcoming of this type of education was the inaccurate assessment of students’ knowledge . It is unclear who is taking the test . Is it the student , a friend , or someone who has been paid to take the test ? " (p1) .

Obtaining unrealistic grades by cheating on each other and copying the answers to questions from the internet has led to a decline in the quality of education and the impossibility of distinguishing between intelligent and weak students. As one of the faculty members mentioned, "A student with the overall average of grades that ranged from 14–15 has now the overall average of 19 ! Does it mean that all of them have become geniuses ? What has happened ? They are indeed cheating ! " (p3) .

2.4. Depreciation of teachers’ equipment.

One of the requirements of distance education is to provide suitable hardware equipment. Some faculty members complained about the depreciation of equipment and personal computers due to frequent transportation to the university and their continuous use because of the lack of a proper hardware system to hold classes. "The teachers had to use their equipment . Many of us did not have access to the necessary audio-visual equipment at the university" (p2) .

2.5. Teachers’ low skills and knowledge of ICT.

Due to the critical situation, teachers were forced to use distance education, while many were unfamiliar with virtual education technologies. This issue caused confusion and confusion in their minds. One of the professors said:

“Professors have a problem with producing content , and how to upload it ? ” What exactly is this learning management system ? Many professors do not know the system either” (p3) .

One o f the managers also confirmed this issue and said:

“In the beginning , we had many problems because maybe 99% of our users were people who had not used the learning management system before this space and were not familiar with it . ” (p11)

2.6. Teachers’ resistance to a sudden change in the teaching strategy.

Some faculty members resisted this abrupt change in the teaching strategy: "At the beginning of using Navid website (our native learning management system) , initially our colleagues and then students resisted the use of this system" (p2) .

Another faculty member stated that;

"The use of distance education had already commenced before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic , but most faculty members refused to teach within the framework prepared for distance education . They did not want to trouble themselves . Since they did not use the Navid LMS before the emergence of the crisis caused by the coronavirus , they needed help to cope with it during the crisis . They do not perform their tasks adequately . Every week , they were called to be reminded of their tasks (p3) .

2.7. Network connection issues.

The preparation of adequate infrastructure and the equipment required for communication and internet connection is highly significant in the development of distance education.

"The lack of a high-speed internet connection was a significant problem adversely affecting this type of education . Another faculty member complained about the inconveniencies related to uploading the educational content , which was time-consuming that sometimes took several hours" (p7) . "Moreover , low-speed internet at the university forced us to participate in online classes at home , where we had access to high-speed internet" (p4) .

2.8. Insufficient support.

Many faculty members complained about the lack of full-time support, a fundamental task of I.T. men. Hence, technical problems that were not resolved aggravated the situation: "They did not respond to our hardware and software questions . " (p6) .

2.9. The challenges in developing e-content.

Faculty members were not skillful in ICDL. Thus, they were not familiar with content development technologies. The ultimate consequence was the production of non-standard content. Moreover, the lack of a quiet environment at home to record audio made it difficult for them to produce the content. One of the faculty members with previous experience in e-learning said: "The teachers experience problems producing and uploading the content" (p3) .

A male faculty member who had twins said: " I need a quiet room to produce the content at home , but I have twins who are almost one year old . The loud sound of their crying and playing was an obstacle to content production" (p12).

2.10. Weaknesses in the implementation of practice-oriented training.

Practical courses are highly significant in medical universities. However, due to the closure of universities, only theoretical courses were offered to students. Consequently, laboratory and clinical courses were not offered regularly. Furthermore, no standard simulators or special clinical and laboratory training tools existed. "The difficulties with distance education aggravate fields of studies with many practical units , such as nursing , medical operating room technology , laboratory sciences , and medicine . Students’ attendance in class is necessary for several of the courses of these fields , and the use of simulators cannot efficiently meet the requirements of practical courses" (P3) .

2.11. Students and teachers’ misuse of distance education.

From the faculty members’ perspective, students refused to attend online classes on time, participate attentively in the classes, study the electronic content on time, and do homework under various pretexts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Students prefer to have a classmate receive educational materials from their teachers to share them with them in the groups they create on social media networks such as WhatsApp and Telegram" (p2) . "Skyroom (a Persian version of Adobe Connect) could be an efficient software for distance teaching , but most students found different pretexts to justify their absence in online classes . They would claim that the teacher’s voice is not clear , the video is frequently interrupted , our internet connection or the power has failed" (p8) .

Unfortunately, there was no reliable monitoring system to evaluate faculty members’ performance in the teaching-learning process, and this disadvantage caused several irregularities.

"Some faculty members do not take e-learning seriously . The teacher , for instance , uploads a file while there is no content in the uploaded file" (p3) . Some faculty members uploaded only three files for a two-credit course , while they were expected to prepare and upload at least 12 files (p6) .

3. Blurred boundaries between personal and professional lives

According to the faculty, e-learning was time-consuming. It increased their workloads and interfered with their professional and personal roles. The faculty members said e-content development during the COVID-19 pandemic was time-consuming.

3.1. Time-consuming distance education.

content development during the COVID-19 pandemic was time-consuming and required time and energy, especially since the professors were not skilled enough. Some problems most professors mentioned were teacher involvement during non-office hours, time-consuming voicing of files, or re-voicing content due to hoarseness during voicing. “If normally , I would check the slide a quarter of an hour before I go to class and leave , but not now ! I would have to spend several hours now، Files and audio , that one and a half or two hours of my session now took four times that time” (p2)

Another English teacher said, "To prepare the file , I had a series of problems . I had to write the whole text of the book in English or scan it and convert it into a file in PowerPointFor each lesson , for example , I prepared 20 slides , each of which I had to write six to seven English lines; the interval when I was recording the sound was very difficult , meaning that I could , for example , mispronounce the word myself" (p12)

One of the professors of epidemiology said: "For example , I used to voice the complications of Quid on the files , and because the disease was unknown , I also talked about COVID , and then when we went forward , we saw that the risk factors for this disease had changed . The rate of change has changed , then the conversations have become old , and , for example , the prevention method has changed , and now we have to do this new-sounding file again . It was not that we had to leave the same file every semester; we had to update these files every time , which was time-consuming” (p9) .

3.2. Increase workload.

With the virtualization at once, the professors’ workload increased significantly, development of standard content Increased the workload of the university’s e-learning department; responding to faculty problems was one of the issues that multiplied the workload of faculty and staff.

One of the professors in charge of developing internship programs said:

“It used to be that we had to put a program on the site from the beginning of the semester , but I can tell you that we wrote maybe 7 to 8 programs in the previous semester , and that put a lot of my work and that of my co-worker into the realm of bed and education” . (p2) " As I said , we used to see students in class , but now we have to be online 24 hours and constantly answering to students , which caused us to devote much family time to this work " (p6) .

3.3. Interference between work and nonwork roles and family restrictions.

The full-time presence of teachers at home and the introduction of virtual education led to role interference, resulting in changes in expectations and dissatisfaction among family members. Many professors confirmed this issue. This role interference was especially evident for teachers with younger children. " Now our work problems have been brought to the family , both child and spouse . My child has been arguing with me many times in the virtual classroom because I said I am the head of the virtual classroom . He does not know his childish needs , But I have to be responsible because my work environment is one with home , which has diminished our mother’s and my wife’s roles" (p6) .

On the other hand, gathering family members at home due to corona restrictions caused noise and congestion in the home environment. They led to a lack of focus and increased psychological pressure on teachers to produce content and hold online classes. This issue led to restrictions on family members, such as forcing children to remain silent. Consider deleting some family plans.

One of the teachers who had a young child said,

“I will never forgive myself . I beat my children ،Because it happened in the middle of the sound; they suddenly entered the room and argued or , for example , asked a question " (p7) “When one’s work environment becomes one with the living environment , many restrictions are created for the family . For example , I had to silence the whole family during class hours،The child should not watch the movie while the house was a space for rest , but because I had a virtual class or recorded content , for example , the noise of the environment was very annoying , and it made me put some restrictions on my family” (p6) “It was challenging , the family was distraught , that is , I had to tell the family to go to that room , and I would have the file in another room” (p12) .

4. Positive consequences of e-learning

4.1. flexibility..

Despite the difficulties experienced and explained by the majority of the teachers, a few of them mentioned the benefits of e-learning. Flexibility is one of the features of e-learning. More precisely, the implementation of distance education does not depend on time and place. Moreover, it does not require a particular physical space shared by students and the teacher. Confirming the issue of flexibility in distance education, one of the faculty members said:

"The most important advantage of distance education is that we can save time because many students who normally reside in dormitories no longer have to travel long distances to attend the campus . We can coordinate and hold classes at any time" (p5) "A remarkable advantage of e-learning is the chance peculiar to students employed in an organization . Many of our students who were employees during this period could benefit from e-learning and keep their jobs" (p7) .

Moreover, although the faculty members encountered several challenges faced by distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic, this crisis and the consequent abrupt alteration in the education system forced the teachers who were negligent of e-learning to turn to this type of education, and to some extent performs their tasks willingly. One of the teachers confirmed the positive impact of the compulsory experience of distance education: "Distance education had positive effects on us . That is , we would never be involved in distance education if the COVID-19 pandemic did not force us to carry out our tasks at home within the framework of e-learning . E-learning turned out to be highly beneficial . We learned how to use software" (p2) .

4.2. Facilitation of educational processes.

"If the COVID-19 crisis had not emerged , it might have taken ten years to reach this point , and we would have had to carry out a seven-year mission in four to five months . Thus , in this respect , the COVID-19 pandemic might have been beneficial in this respect" (p7) . "We had to learn how to use certain software , and I think it was a great chance for us" . (p4)

4.3. Cost reduction.

Faculty members’ experiences revealed that virtualization of education reduces the costs of holding workshops and conferences and provides students with accommodation and food. As one of the administrators mentioned in this regard: "University expenses have significantly decreased . No longer was any fund allocated to routine services such as transportation , dormitory maintenance , and cooking , as well as serving food for students due to the closure following the aggravation of the crisis . Only a few students were still in dormitories to pursue their internship" (p5) .

5. Trying to deal with the crisis

5.1. using social media as a learning tool..

Faculty members were unfamiliar with the university’s learning management system at the onset of the coronavirus crisis. Hence, they used social media messaging applications to continue their teaching task and prevent interruption. One educational administrator stated, "Due to the unpredictability of the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic , it was first decided that the faculty members revise their PowerPoint files for a few sessions and send them to students via social media messaging applications or emails" (p1) .

5.2. Targeted empowerment of faculty members.

After familiarizing, teachers and students with the learning management system, several workshops and short-term courses were held to empower them. One of the teachers who were not competent in producing e-content said: "Although the preparation of standard educational content by faculty members was an educational challenge , the difficulties and problems of content preparation decreased following the participation of the faculty members in the training workshops held by the Education Development Center (EDC) of the university" (p5) .

5.3. Strategies for classroom management.

Faculty members used various tricks to improve their class management following the alleviation of the COVID-19 crisis. They emphasized dividing the students in crowded classes into two groups, giving two distinct types of tests, setting periods for homework, giving appropriate and case-based questions, and using new teaching methods such as an online flipped classroom.

"I tell the students that although the Navid LMS has a forum , Skyroom classes are live . Moreover , Skyroom provides us with a forum too . The cameras are connected within the framework of Skyroom , and we can see each other and share laptop screens" (p10) . "I tried to design the questions so that they would not cheat . I would give them cases so that only those who study the sources pass the exam . I gave exams with conceptual questions" (p14) .

5.4. Strategies for assessment management.

To have a realistic and authentic assessment, some faculty members asserted that learners’ assessment should not be limited to summative assessment. Furthermore, formative assessments and various assignments during the semester should be considered. "I think student assessment should be carried out primarily during the semester and with the assignments they are given" (p1) .

6. Beyond dealing with the crisis

According to the faculty members and administrators, this crisis was beneficial in preparing higher education institutions for future crises. The COVID-19 pandemic foregrounded the significance of e-learning in educational institutions.

6.1. Readiness to respond to future crises.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic imposed tremendous pressure on all aspects of society, including public health, specific potentials were gradually utilized to alleviate the coronavirus crisis. Consequently, the crisis was turned into appropriate educational opportunities. Several advantages can be attributed to the crisis management procedure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pervasiveness of virtual education, the familiarity of teachers with various educational software, their capability to respond to future crises, and the development of specific strategies by the faculty members to guarantee the continuity of education by teachers are significant advantages. One of the teachers who were not familiar with educational software said: "Virtual education was good in this era because it introduced us to different software anyway" (p2) . "

6.2. Search and discover solutions to strengthen the continuity of virtual education.

Following the improvement in faculty members’ capabilities in e-learning, their readiness to respond to future corona-like crises was also improved. If similar problems arise and e-learning becomes necessary, they will no longer have the concerns of previous crises. They can be more prepared to deal with and manage it.

"The experience of e-learning during the COVID - 19 pandemic contributed to our readiness to respond to similar crises in the future . " (p7) . "I started an e-learning course to prepare myself for similar crises because I thought it would not be our last experience in the coming years , and other similar issues are likely to occur in the future . If crises like coronavirus arise , we will hold classes virtually " (P2) .

With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education suffered a great shock and, ultimately, an unexpected and unpredictable crisis worldwide, particularly in Iran. As a result, educational institutions were not ready to face this crisis, and the inevitable consequence was the emergence of education challenges.

In this study, the faculty members stated that they were initially unfamiliar with e-learning. This lack of familiarity and unpreparedness led to stress and mental confusion. Shenoy et al. (2020) and Aliyyah et al. (2020) reported similar instructors’ experiences in their studies. The instructors who participated in these studies stated that they also were exposed to mental confusion at the beginning of the virtualization of education. However, they reported their relative satisfaction over time [ 23 , 24 ].

On the other hand, the faculty members expressed concerns about the students’ learning disabilities and the challenges related to the practical course. This issue was reported in the study by Salmani (2021) in a category entitled Students’ superficial learning as a Challenge in E-learning in the COVID-19 Pandemic [ 25 ]. In another study, the low quality of virtual education compared to F2F teaching and students’ superficial learning have been dealt with [ 26 ].

Other challenges from instructors’ perspectives were raised consistent with previous studies. One of the primary challenges of e-learning based on the faculty members’ experiences was their resistance to e-learning. Some faculty members did not believe in the efficacy of e-learning, which was consistent with the findings of the study conducted by Mohi et al. (2020) [ 27 ]. One of the reasons for faculty members’ resistance to e-learning is that they are accustomed to traditional teaching. For years, they have preferred conventional teaching methods negligent of diversification or development of new methods of e-learning [ 28 ]. If the benefits of e-learning are emphasized, and faculty members become aware of this issue, as noted in the study by Mishra et al. (2021), they will be more motivated to teach [ 6 ].

The lack of high-speed internet bandwidth for preparing and uploading educational content led to faculty members’ dissatisfaction with this type of teaching. Moreover, the lack of standard infrastructure and suitable hardware and software equipment were among the challenges encountered by other faculty members in this period. Using personal equipment led to the depreciation and multiple repairs of these devices. Rezaei et al. conducted a study reporting the challenges encountered by faculty members (2020). They stated that most teachers’ cell phones were obsolete, and their laptops were primarily outdated [ 29 ]. The lack of suitable infrastructure was reported in many studies, particularly in developing countries [ 30 , 31 ]. Teachers called for the support of experienced staff and experts concerning educational technologies and e-content production. Consistent with the present study, Dawn (2019) has pointed out the significance of teachers’ familiarity with e-learning technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 32 ]. Hence, the availability of a technical support team is essential for successfully developing an e-learning system and resolving the faculty members’ problems. Investing in human resources and their training is a significant issue for the development of e-learning [ 31 ].

An essential part of the data indicated challenges related to the suspension practical and laboratory courses. In their study, Sam et al. (2020) also mentioned suspending clinical education activities to reduce disease transmission and decrease patient hospitalization [ 32 ]. This issue is fundamental. Many students may miss the opportunity to acquire communication and technical skills due to reduced internship periods, academic and laboratory activities, and the lack of standard tools for practical courses. Onyema et al. (2020) also cite the limited access to physical and laboratory facilities as an adverse effect of e-learning [ 26 ].

According to many teachers, the reduction in interpersonal interactions, the lack of F2F interactions, and the consequent delay in providing the students with feedback caused the faculty members and students not to know each other’s abilities. In a similar study, the lack of proper communication between students and faculty members and their failure to provide their students with appropriate feedback was mentioned as teaching challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 33 ]. According to De Oliveira et al. (2020), feedback difficulty in identifying students’ strengths and weaknesses is sometimes due to the lack of modern communication between teacher and student [ 34 ].

Another study referred to the lack of efficient interactions in virtual education as the main negative feature of this type of education [ 35 ]. Thus, interactions between teachers and students and timely feedback are central to the success of the educational process.

Student identification was one of the challenges stated by faculty members to be reported in the present study. Similarly, Agarwal MS et al. (2020) reported that many faculty members were uncertain about students’ presence in the virtual classroom. The lack of accurate authentication tools was an obstacle to ensuring students’ presence in virtual classrooms [ 36 ], which was consistent with the findings of this study. In the study by Lau et al. (2020), a defect in the evaluation of students by faculty members due to the lack of proper assessment tools was referred to as one of the most critical challenges of e-learning [ 37 ]. Other studies confirm that teachers can not guarantee that students are not cheating in electronic exams.

Moreover, it is impossible to ensure that the participant in the test is a student or someone else. Thus, the lack of proper assessment tools is one of the main problems of e-learning [ 28 ]. Virtualization of education also led to various kinds of abuse by some students and faculty members, consistent with the study by Agarwal et al. (2020) [ 36 ].

During this period, after overcoming the initial challenges of the COVID-19 crisis, the teachers’ experience in the field of virtual education and how to manage virtual classes increased, which led to the use of a variety of strategies for optimal classroom management and electronic assessment, including variation in teaching methods, keeping the class enjoyable to students, student participation in discussions, randomization of questions, and giving conceptual and challenging questions. These strategies contribute to motivation enhancement in students to participate in virtual classes [ 24 ]. Moreover, being satisfied with a single assessment method reduces the validity of the assessment, and it is essential to use multiple assessment methods instead of summative assessment [ 35 ].

One of the most critical points related to teachers’ experiences during this period was performing the teaching-learning task at home and blurring the boundaries between their personal and professional lives, which is consistent with Abedini et al. (2020) [ 38 ]. The home environment is not designed for academic activities. Hence, family members’ involvement at home causes overlapping roles and dissatisfaction. A similar study indicated that with the full-time presence of teachers at home, family members’ perceptions of the role of teachers changed. They expected teachers to perform the assigned functions alongside family members [ 39 ]. Teachers’ workload was increased according to teachers’ experiences, which was also confirmed in the study [ 40 , 41 ].

Despite the many disadvantages and challenges of virtual education, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, some advantages can be attributed to this educational approach, such as independence about time and place, reduced costs, the possibility of studying and working simultaneously and saving time. These advantages were reported in the study by Mukherjee et al. (2021) [ 39 ]. Alterations in the attitude of teachers toward e-learning and adaptation to it was one of the main advantages and the main factor facilitating the educational process during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taghizadeh et al. asserted that the crisis was a blessing for faculty members. The teachers who were not interested in e-learning became familiar with various educational software [ 37 ].

Furthermore, the experience gained by faculty members has enabled them to deal with similar crises in the future. Vershitskaya et al. (2020) showed that following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty members maintained that e-learning should not be ignored when the COVID-19 crisis is over. Instead, they asserted that it should be used as a supplement to F2F education [ 41 ].

Managers’ attitudes were also considered in addition to the perspectives of faculty members in the present study, which could be considered a strength. However, the lack of students’ opinions concerning e-learning was one of the limitations of this study. The researchers who conducted the present study are teachers. Thus, their assumptions might have biased their interpretations of the data. Consequently, we tried to validate the data analysis by recognizing and ignoring the irrelevant assumptions. Also, Mixed methods studies are suggested to understand e-learning problems in the post-covid era better.

These findings suggest that teachers must become trained the most proficient in e-learning and technology-enhanced learning, and this capability should continue. Special attention should be paid to open educational platforms. The use of e-learning as a response to covid has been accepted and continued. The place of learning in educational institutions should be reviewed. Support infrastructures for instructors and students should be provided. Managers and educational leaders should be encouraged and guided toward adaptive educational design.

At the beginning of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, due to many reasons, including the resistance of teachers and learners to this approach and the lack of necessary infrastructure, the design and implementation of virtual education faced challenges. The teachers had many problems, such as weakness in class management, interference of roles, and even family restrictions. However, with time, the redoubled efforts of the teachers and the management of multiple roles by them, strengthening their knowledge in distance learning and e-content creation, and more participation in e-learning caused an increase in the quality of education. However, planning and foresight are needed in developing countries, including Iran, to appropriately face and optimally manage similar crises and move towards blended learning.

Acknowledgments

This research was conducted within the framework of an MSc thesis. We want to thank all the participants.

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Teaching and learning languages online: Challenges and responses

Xuesong(andy) gao.

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Received 2022 May 11; Accepted 2022 May 12; Issue date 2022 Jul.

Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

The outbreak of COVID-19 generated an unprecedented global push towards remote online language teaching and learning. In most contexts, language teachers and learners underwent a rapid switch to online instruction with limited resources and preparation. Their experiences demonstrate resilience, perseverance, and creativity under highly challenging conditions. This collection of studies examines the challenges that language teachers and learners have experienced in teaching and learning online, explores how they have addressed these challenges, and identifies critical lessons to help language educators better respond to emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic. In this introductory article, we discuss the background of this special collection on teaching and learning languages online, provide a review of the growing body of research on online language education in the field, and introduce the studies published in the collection.

Keywords: Online language teaching, Online language learning, Language teachers, Language learners, COVID-19

1. Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed our lives and professional practice. In a time when educational institutions across the world were forced to close, language teachers and learners were compelled to teach and learn languages online on a global scale. Although technology has been increasingly integrated into language education in recent years and has seen widespread application in well-resourced contexts, thousands of language teachers and learners were suddenly forced to use the internet as their only medium for teaching and learning – for the first time and without adequate preparation ( Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust, & Bond, 2020 ). Not only were many ill-prepared for the challenge of teaching and learning languages online, they were also, in many cases, poorly supported by their local infrastructure (e.g., internet availability) and resources. Furthermore, there is concern that this sudden, widespread, and large-scale increase in the use of online learning may have exacerbated the impact of inequitable access to infrastructure and resources.

Albert Einstein once said, “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity” ( Riker & Fraser, 2018 , p. 1881). The COVID-19 crisis, despite its associated hardships, did generate ample opportunities for language educators to experiment with online learning technologies and gain valuable experience for their future integration in language education. It is, therefore, important for researchers to document the valuable lessons of this historically unprecedented drive to use technology in language teaching. This special issue of the System Journal exists to capture and share these lessons through submissions examining critical issues related to the learning and teaching of languages online.

The aim of this special collection is to document the challenges that language teachers and learners have faced in teaching and learning online, explore how they have addressed these challenges, and identify possible solutions that could enable language teachers and learners to overcome current and future challenges in a range of educational, national, and sociocultural contexts. COVID-19 is a truly global phenomenon which has forced the teaching and learning of languages to move online, meaning that many language teachers and learners have had to rely on technology with limited resources. This special collection is thus particularly interested in studies that engage with pedagogical issues that are relevant to readers in diverse contexts, including under-resourced ones and those that have been severely affected by the pandemic.

2. Research on online language teaching and learning

The COVID-19 crisis has prompted a plethora of research on online language education. A systematic review of the lessons of this crisis in relation to online language education is needed, but we here limit our efforts to giving readers a glimpse of this growing body of research, referencing Martin et al.’s (2020) framework, which categorizes relevant studies according to whether they focus on learners, educators, or educational institutions. Consequently, in the following sections, we discuss a selection of studies on language learners and learning, language teachers and teaching, and institutional efforts in facilitating online language education. When we highlight studies on institutional efforts, we also discuss relevant studies on the development of technology for language learning and teaching, as technological resources are often part of institutional efforts to support online education.

2.1. Learners learning languages online

This group of studies focuses on language learners' online learning experiences through the lens of their emotions, perceptions, practices, and readiness for online learning. It is noteworthy that language learners’ emotions have emerged as a popular topic within research on the sudden switch from face-to-face to remote learning.

Research on the emotional experiences of learners learning languages in the emergency remote learning context has found a variety of emotions associated with online learning, of which boredom seems to be the most examined in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Studies analyse sources of boredom and language learners' coping strategies ( Pawlak, Derakhshan, Mehdizadeh, & Kruk, in press ) or track the causal mechanisms of boredom and its impact on language learners over time ( Yazdanmehr, Shirvan, & Saghafi, 2021 ). Pawlak et al., ’s (in press) survey of Iranian university students and teachers reveals that both groups consider online classes more boring than offline classes, and that students found content-based courses more boredom-inducing than skills-based courses. Students report having limited strategies to cope with boredom in online learning, with some simply resorting to debilitative strategies such as skipping classes. Yazdanmehr et al.’s (2021) study uses a process-tracing approach to analyse a semester-long account of one L3 learner's experiences. The analysis reveals changing levels of boredom across the semester, with the peak occurring in the initial stage. The researchers further note that the L3 learner's boredom may be primarily explained by under-stimulation, low perceived control over tasks, insufficient attention, and user-unfriendly technology. This study helps us understand what makes online language learning boring, and thus invites us to explore how language learners can overcome boredom.

Despite their potential to induce boredom, online classes were also shown to benefit learners' emotional states by reducing the negative emotions common in offline classrooms, such as foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA). A survey of 510 European language learners indicates that they experienced more language learning enjoyment and lower anxiety in online classes ( Resnik & Dewaele, in press ). Moreover, those who enjoy language classes, regardless of the learning modality, are more likely to be learners with higher levels of learner autonomy and emotional intelligence. Adding pride to the frequently examined emotions of enjoyment and anxiety, Fraschini and Tao's (in press) survey among Korean beginning learners indicates higher levels of enjoyment and pride than anxiety in online classes. They further reveal that those who enjoy or take pride in language class are more likely to achieve better academic outcomes. These emotions may be related to learner and teacher variables, such as teacher friendliness and learners' previous L2 learning experience.

Other studies of online language learning experiences have focused on their perceptions and practices, especially in the context of online pedagogical innovations such as task-based design or authentic language learning. Although learners perceive online language classes as less effective, Lee (2021) concludes that purposefully designing online courses can enhance learner satisfaction, and that students particularly appreciate prompt feedback from instructors, peer interaction, and effective task design. Meanwhile, Lian, Chai, Zheng, and Liang (2021) observe that the experience of authentic language learning opportunities in online classes has a positive impact on students' self-efficacy, particularly through collaborative task design. In another study, students doing a group presentation and project were found to have created and sustained a virtual communicative space in which they could articulate and negotiate meanings ( Junn, in press ). In other words, online spaces can enable language learners to demonstrate their L2 communicative competence. Chen (2021) indicates that the use of embedded scaffolding materials is effective in enhancing L2 learner autonomy to develop language skills, but less effective in promoting the learning of culture, for which learners prefer teachers’ presence and assistance. In each of these studies, learner satisfaction was an important benchmark to measure the effectiveness of online instruction.

According to our knowledge, only one study has reported on language learners’ readiness for online learning and its correlation with motivation, engagement, learner attitude, and support ( Jiang, Meng, & Zhou, in press ). The authors reveal that language learners show high levels of readiness for online learning, and the predictive power of learner readiness for motivation and engagement highlights the importance for language teachers to promote positive learning attitudes and provide appropriate environmental support to language learners for online learning.

2.2. Teachers teaching languages online

While the above-mentioned studies document efforts to understand and enhance students' online learning experiences, we should be aware that improvements in students’ online learning experiences comes at a price for language teachers. For example, Lee (2021) discusses the experience of an instructor with significant experience in technology-mediated teaching who spent three extra hours per day in online teaching to improve student satisfaction. For the majority of language teachers, who have limited knowledge of educational technology, the work necessary to achieve the same improvement for learners would be even greater. That may explain why a large number of studies on language teachers focus on their first-time online teaching experiences, their wellbeing (including emotions, identity, agency, and retention), and their pedagogical efforts to enhance teaching effectiveness.

Given that teaching fully online is new to the majority of language teachers, research has investigated language teachers' use of technology as a crucial component of their first-time online teaching experiences. Studies in this area often start with general questions regarding language teachers' perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of online teaching ( Tarrayo, Paz, & Gepila, in press ). The most frequently highlighted disadvantages include limited student engagement, uncertainty about students' understanding of the learning content, technical problems, and a lack of technological skills. Cheung's (in press) case study of a secondary ESL teacher in Hong Kong reveals that language teachers' use of technology is mediated not only by their technological competence but also by their pedagogical beliefs (i.e., form-focused and exam-oriented). Xu, Jin, Deifell, and Angus’s (2022) large-scale survey of Chinese as foreign language (CFL) teachers in the United States explores the important role of self-confidence and the perceived value of online teaching in language teachers' use of technology. While teachers take primary responsibility for adapting to online instruction, external support is crucial and thus studies such as these argue for the need to provide hands-on and language-specific professional support through language teachers' professional communities.

Relevant research has also documented language teachers' first attempts at online teaching in synchronous and asynchronous settings. Moorhouse and Beaumont (2020) elaborate on how one elementary teacher prepared and delivered real-time live lessons in a metropolitan school; their study presents encouraging findings and demonstrates that successful teaching of synchronous classes is possible with sufficient preparation. Yi and Jang's (2020) study, meanwhile, explores two elementary teachers' video-based asynchronous teaching in a small rural school. Their findings suggest that remote teaching generates opportunities for translingual practices and pedagogy, as well as for collaborative teaching.

Research has noted that online teaching has a significant impact on language teachers' emotional experience, identity change, and pedagogical competence. For example, when language teachers do not find their imagined identity (e.g., an entertaining, interesting, and uplifting teacher) to be feasible in the virtual space, they necessarily take on a pragmatic identity, shifting attention to examinations and course quality ( Yuan & Liu, in press ). In a similar vein, Gao & Cui, (in press) argue that teachers’ pedagogical beliefs about teacher roles (i.e. a coach, a guide, or a caring example) have a long-lasting impact on their agentive adoption of online teaching activities, which is sustained in offline class when they resume. While language teachers feel obliged to facilitate student engagement and channel positive emotions through building teacher-student connections, the newly built connections may oblige language teachers to take on unwanted emotional labour and prompt them to seek collegial support in the negotiation of emotional rules ( Liu, Yuan, & Wang, in press ). Even with this support, class interaction emerges as a highly demanding task that requires language teachers to enhance their pedagogical competence in multiple aspects, including technological competencies, online environment management competencies, and online teacher interactional competencies ( Moorhouse, Li, & Walsh, 2021 ).

Given the fact that online teaching creates an additional workload for language teachers, a few studies have examined language teacher retention, exploring why language teachers have left or stayed in the profession after experiencing the emergence of online teaching during the pandemic. For example, Moser & Wei, (in press) profile three types of teachers – stayers, leavers, and conditional stayers – characterizing each group in terms of their differing levels of human, social, structural, and psychological capital. Language teachers “felt untrained, marginalized, and emotionally overworked” (p. 26) in their online teaching during the pandemic; thus, it is necessary to include online teaching pedagogy in language teacher education and build professional networks to support language teachers’ ongoing professional development. Another study ( Gregersen, Mercer, & MacIntyre, 2021 ) identifies teachers' perceptions of the factors that have made online teaching more or less stressful during the crisis, including health, freedom, work/life balance, job security, and uncertainty about the future. The findings suggest that language teachers should not only address student wellbeing, especially their socio-emotional needs, but should also attend to their own wellbeing strategically to remain resilient for online teaching. It is noteworthy that these studies move beyond the scope of online teaching and take a whole-person view of language teachers.

Another major line of research has focused on the design and implementation of pedagogical activities to facilitate peer interaction and/or teacher-student communication in online teaching. These studies discuss the value of telecollaboration among students through the building of virtual literature circles ( Ferdiansyah, Ridho, Sembilan, Sembilan, & Zahro, 2020 ) and the creation of intercultural projects ( Porto, Golubeva, & Byram, in press ). The notion of telecollaboration-oriented pedagogy has also been integrated into pre-service language teacher education for pedagogical task design ( Ekin, Balaman & Bademkorkmaz, in press ). Telecollaboration also manifests in language teachers’ design of materials to promote flexible learning, contributing to a more inclusive classroom for learners with differing technology access ( Tarrayo & Anudin, in press ) or with differing English proficiency levels ( Glas, Catalán, Donner, & Donoso, in press ). Transnational language teachers work to extend teacher-student interaction beyond the class by using additional communication channels or strategies such as informational communication via WeChat and additional forum activities ( Busteed, in press ). The above-mentioned studies also discuss issues such as differentiated instruction, either in language program design ( Sun, in press ) or in language teacher education ( Glas et al., in press ).

Finally, we also acknowledge research-informed efforts to provide a theoretical rationale for online class design. These efforts mainly draw on findings from second language acquisition research to guide the design of online teaching activities, through practices such as implementing models of language task engagement ( Egbert, 2020 ), crafting different digital spaces for the technology-mediated remote learning of pragmatics ( Taguchi, 2020 ), establishing virtual language communities ( Lomicka, 2020 ), designing collaborative technology-mediated tasks ( González-Lloret, 2020 ), and sequencing language production activities ( Payne, 2020 ). These studies generate important insights for language educators to make informed pedagogical decisions in designing and refining online instruction, leading to enhanced teaching and better student learning.

2.3. Institutional and administrative issues (including software)

A third group of studies examine institutional efforts to support online learning and teaching. It must be noted that high-quality online instruction is only possible with continuous support from the community, universities and schools, and technology specialists.

At the level of the community, Sayer and Braun (2020) investigate the impact of the broader social context on English learners' remote learning, as English learners in K-12 schools in the United States faced greater challenges in the sudden transition to online education than their native-English-speaking peers in the US. While language educators worked hard to reach out to the families to maximize students’ readiness for online learning, the study reveals that building teacher-parent connections helps both parties gain greater insights into student learning which is critical for supporting language learners. However, teacher-parent connections may require investing additional resources, such as involving family liaison professionals and community partners when working with minority language-speaking families.

Studies of frontline practitioners have highlighted the practices adopted by language programmes at Michigan State University ( Gacs, Goertler, & Spasova, 2020 ) and Harvard University ( Ross & DiSalvo, 2020 ). Acknowledging the distinction between planned and crisis-prompted online language teaching, Gacs et al. (2020) provide a roadmap for language educators to prepare, design, implement, and evaluate online education. Since each of these four steps may take several years under planned online learning conditions, educational managers and policymakers should consider and act to mitigate the challenges that the emergency switch to online teaching has created, such as providing release time and professional development for instructors, organizing joint curricular planning, and adapting teacher evaluation criteria. Ross and DiSalvo (2020) highlight that language educators cannot do all the labour required for a successful transition to online teaching, and that institutions should mobilize all the resources at their disposal to support teachers and students. For example, to ensure high-quality online learning programs, the Language Center at Harvard University provided web-based resources for faculty and students, sought support from undergraduate and graduate student helpers, and offered students more opportunities to have one-to-one language exchanges with native speakers.

Institutions must also work to design and implement relevant professional development activities for language teachers. Paesani (2020) recounts the development of a research-informed professional development program for online teaching at the University of Minnesota. The program not only assists language teachers in teaching online effectively but also cultivates adaptive expertise among language teachers, which is closely linked to teacher identity, agency, and critical reflection. Similar efforts have also been made to establish professional networks online for world language educators at the University of Oregon ( Knight, 2020 ), in which online community leaders played a crucial role in supporting meaningful communities. These studies foreground collaboration as a key feature of language teachers’ professional development in online instruction.

Alongside this institutional investment of effort and resources, technology specialists have worked arduously to develop or update technical tools for online teaching during the pandemic. Bonner, Garvey, Miner, Godin, & Reinders, (in press) reported on the piloting of Classmoto, a new online application to collect real-time analytics of learners' social, affective, and cognitive engagement. While teachers and students had generally positive experiences using the software, they also had mixed views of its functions and applications. For example, many participants felt that the online tool placed an extra burden on language teachers and learners. Kohnke (in press) discusses the development and implementation of a chatbot which can be trained to accommodate individual language learners' needs and enable language teachers to provide differentiated instruction. The results of the experimental use of this software indicate that it can also support and motivate learners' out-of-class language learning to supplement in-class input. Kohnke and Moorhouse's (in press) comprehensive review of the features of widely-used videoconferencing application Zoom argues that it enables language teachers to achieve interactive synchronous classes. Studies such as these, whether they introduce new technology or review existing software, generate important findings to help language teachers use technology effectively to improve the quality of online language classes.

3. The special collection

As mentioned earlier, we invited contributors to address issues related to the learning and teaching of languages online globally, including (but not limited to):

Enhancing and sustaining language learners' online learning

Motivating language learners for effective learning

Designing effective and engaging online learning activities

Developing online communities for language learners and teachers

Assessing language learners' progress

Preparing language teachers for teaching online

Language teachers' experiences of teaching online

The responses we received from our colleagues were overwhelming. While articles published in this special collection largely address the topics we initially planned to include, they also echo the broader themes discussed in our above review of the emergency switch to online teaching as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We continue to use Martin et al.’s (2020) classification in introducing the special collection of articles.

Language teachers and emergency-prompted online teaching (12 articles)

Twelve of the 26 articles in this collection address how language teachers responded to the emergency switch to remote teaching. The specific topics explored include teachers' changing perceptions and practices, digital and pedagogical competencies, and intentions to use digital tools. Three articles also use teacher agency or emotion as a lens to understand language teachers’ first experiences of online teaching.

Two articles explore the impact of the shifting of contexts on language teachers. MacIntyre, Gregersen, and Sercer (2020) surveyed 600 language teachers concerning their stress and coping strategies. The respondents reported high levels of stress and a range of approaches to dealing with stress, which the authors divide into approach coping and avoidance coping. The survey results suggest that language teachers' approach coping was correlated with positive psychological outcomes (e.g., wellbeing), while their avoidance coping was only correlated with negative psychological outcomes (e.g., further increases in stress). The fact that avoidance coping may have resulted in more stress highlights the necessity of educating language teachers about how to employ healthier coping strategies. Moser, Wei, and Brenner (2021) conducted a national survey in US to investigate world language teachers' changing perceptions and practices as related to classroom settings (pre-K12 vs. postsecondary) and prior online teaching experience. The survey data indicated that teachers’ perceptions of course design or adjustment were not affected by having prior experiences of online teaching, regardless of the classroom settings. Compared with postsecondary teachers, pre-K12 teachers were less confident and felt that they had less control over course design and learning outcomes, and thus needed more support and training in digital instruction.

Two articles take a technology acceptance perspective to analyse language teachers' online teaching intentions. Xu, Jin, Deifell, and Angus (2021) surveyed Chinese language instructors working in postsecondary institutions about their perceived values and self-confidence in online teaching of Chinese characters. The participating instructors showed ambiguous attitudes towards online teaching, and their self-confidence in using online tools was affected by their prior experiences of using technology. The researchers further confirmed that language instructors' intention to use online tools was determined by their perceptions of the tools' value and of students' readiness. Building on the technology acceptance model, Huang, Teo, and Guo (2021) validate new dimensions (i.e., facilitating conditions, technology complexity, and perceived anxiety) to explain teachers’ online teaching intention. A survey of 158 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers indicated that their behavioural intentions were significantly correlated to their attitudes and perceived usefulness of digital tools in teaching. Their perceptions of the usefulness of online tools may be associated with the tools' ease of use and the teachers' attitudes towards technology. Facilitating conditions may in turn account for variations in perceived ease of use. The authors call for educational administrators to provide more support for teachers to cope with the transition.

Other researchers have directed their attention to language teachers' digital or pedagogical competence in the online teaching context. For example, Wong and Moorhouse (2021) draw on the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DCE) and examine how primary and secondary language teachers demonstrate digital competence through digital resources, teaching and learning, assessment, and empowering learners. The findings indicate that teachers effectively leveraged synchronous and asynchronous platforms to address students' educational and linguistic needs and fostered digital relationships with students, but lacked digital competence in the use of assessment. This study demonstrated the DCE framework's value as a potential tool to enable researchers to have a deeper understanding of teachers' digital competence. Le et al. (2022) focuses on how Vietnamese EFL teachers adjusted their online pedagogical practices to facilitate multiple forms of interaction. They were found to organize teaching activities for teacher-student interaction and student-content interaction but not for student-student interaction. These teachers had faced a series of challenges in facilitating online interaction, including the lack of online teaching training, an unsupportive school policy, and the poor quality internet connections. The study suggests that many language teachers need training on remote teaching and clear guidelines for online instruction.

Since the relevant scholarship has attached greater importance to the development of online pedagogy, the special collection also includes two articles on pre-service language teachers' perceptions and practices in the process of learning to teach digitally. Taghizadeh and Amirkhani (2022) developed two instruments to explore pre-service EFL teachers' online class management, including their classroom management skills and approaches to managing challenging online situations. The results reveal that the most popular strategies for online classroom management include time management, course organization, positive reinforcement, and building a positive atmosphere. In response to the challenges of online classes, teachers emphasized the use of collaborative tasks and learner-centred strategies in facilitating student engagement, as well as the creation of online learning communities to boost students’ sense of belonging. Using co-constructed autoethnographic narratives, another article presents a detailed portrait of five student teachers teaching world languages during the sudden transition to remote teaching ( Back et al., 2021 ). The student teachers reported an overall feeling of disconnection from classroom practices and district communication, as well as lowered expectations of student learning, particularly in the subject of world languages. The transition to online learning also reduced the role student teachers played in classes, limiting their opportunities to learn. Based on these accounts, the authors present implications for student teaching in the digital age.

Online language teaching is challenging for both pre-service teachers and experienced teachers. Yan and Wang (2022) , following three experienced EFL teachers, conceptualize remote teaching as a boundary-crossing practice to understand teachers' learning mechanisms and the factors affecting their transition to teaching online. They divide the transition process into three stages, namely preparing, adapting, and stabilizing, in which four learning mechanisms (i.e., identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation) occur with varying levels of prominence. These teachers also found that their emergency online teaching was influenced by the synergetic effects of dispositional traits and external support, which helped them overcome various challenges in the boundary-crossing process.

Two articles adopt teacher agency as a theoretical lens to explore language teachers’ online teaching practices within the contextual affordances and constraints of the virtual space. Chen (2022) treats L2 online teaching as an ecology and explores the relationship between teacher agency and digital affordances. Based on a semester-long study of two Chinese language teachers, the study reveals that teacher agency was enacted using digital tools in relation to teacher beliefs (i.e., the learner-centred approach) and social contexts (i.e., the pandemic). Their study demonstrates the value of taking an ecological view to reflect the link between classroom dynamics and the social context. Tracking four language teachers for six months, Ashton (2022) examines teacher agency in relation to digital affordance as well as constraints. The findings reconfirm teachers' exercise of agency in line with their professional identities, in which social structural factors play a significant role. Ashton also clarifies the practical-evaluative dimension of teacher agency, highlighting the need to educate future teachers about teaching in diverse conditions.

The last article in this category focuses on teacher emotion in online settings. Song (2022) , using autoethnography, explores the author's own emotional experience in the emergency move to remote teaching. Drawing on the notion of vulnerability, this study reveals experiences of increased marginalization in the online context, which accentuated this teacher's non-native speaker identity and deepened her emotional struggle. This self-reflection also serves as the foundation for professional growth, in that the author developed sensitivity to students' emotions and made pedagogical choices to enhance their emotional experience and class participation. The study emphasizes the importance of emotional reflexivity in facilitating personal growth and professional transformation.

Language learners learning online (13 articles)

The special collection includes 13 articles on language learners learning online. The most commonly addressed topic within this group is L2 learner emotion and student interaction. Researchers also explored the impact of online learning tasks on L2 development and student satisfaction.

Four articles examine language learner emotions in online classes. Two of these focus on learner emotion to measure the effectiveness of specific language learning activities. Zhang, Liu, and Lee (2021) explore language learners' enjoyment and emotion regulation during self-organized collaborative tasks conducted via a social media app. While language learners' level of enjoyment fluctuated at the individual and group levels, they generally experienced an enjoyable atmosphere. They adopted multiple types of regulation (including self-, co-, and socially shared regulation) to achieve group-level enjoyment; that is, they mostly engaged in shared regulation processes, and also realized emotional regulation through the combined use of emojis and words. This study supports the integration of collaborative activities in online instruction. Payant and Zuniga (2022) explore language learners’ experience of flow in an individual peer revision task followed by a shared feedback session in a Zoom-based French writing course. The study reveals that the two types of peer revision activity were both flow-generating, but learners experienced a significantly higher level of flow in the exchange of feedback or when having greater familiarity with the task and technology. These findings shed light on peer review design in an online environment.

Another two studies focus on the L2 learners' emotional trajectories and also the potential factors behind emotions like boredom or stress in online learning. Derakhshan et al.’s (2021) survey of 208 undergraduate English majors focused on experiences of boredom in online classes, including antecedents of and solutions to boredom. The learners reported experiencing boredom throughout the semester, and the level of boredom reached a peak toward the end of the course. The survey data also reveals that boredom was mainly caused by excessive teacher talk, limited student involvement, technical problems, and repetitive or overloaded tasks. These findings may inform teachers and teacher educators on how to reduce boredom so as to improve learners' online learning experience. Similarly tracking learner experiences longitudinally, Ruiz-Alonso-Bartol, Querrien, Dykstra, Fernández-Mira, and Sánchez-Gutiérrez (2022) focused on stress levels among Spanish learners in online classes. They found that learners' stress decreased from the beginning to the end of the semester, although there was variation between individuals. The learners' high levels of stress may be attributed to reduced peer-to-peer connection, a lack of familiarity with online learning, and the belief that online settings produce less learning than face-to-face settings. In contrast, the teachers believed that online classes enable more student talk as well as improved relationships between teachers and students.

Ji, Park, and Shin (2022) investigate L2 learners’ satisfaction in a synchronous online learning environment, which was found to be associated with different factors at the beginning and end of the semester. Based on two waves of data collection, the study reveals that greater satisfaction among language learners was predicted by higher readiness early on, but more associated with learner engagement at the end of the academic term. Moreover, the L2 learners reported using multiple learning strategies, including notetaking, recording, and searching for additional materials, which contributed to their engagement as well as its predictive relationship with satisfaction.

Three articles tested the effectiveness of specific online learning tasks on learners' acquisition of the target language. Loewen, Buttiler, Kessler, and Trego (2022) measured the impact of synchronous video computer-mediated communication (SVCMC) activities, in which L2 Spanish students were required to transcribe and reflect upon their own conversations. Using a cognitive-interactionist approach, the study found that the task prompted the L2 learners to focus on form, particularly through either self-correction or recasting, and to target vocabulary the most. The activity also provided chances for L2 learners to communicate in the target language, which helped them to develop fluency. He and Loewen (2022) explored how goal-setting with feedback improved language learners’ engagement and motivation in the context of app-based vocabulary self-study. They identified that goal-setting-and-checking activities and the use of feedback tools motivated learners to be more engaged in vocabulary learning. Salomonsson (2020) examine the impact of modified output on L2 acquisition in an online German language class. The analysis of peer-to-peer conversations reveals the prevalence of learners modifying their output. The learners’ modified output mostly results from self-initiated self-repairs, rarely from other-initiated self-repairs, and never from self-initiated other-repairs. Moreover, the modified output mostly targets syntax or morphology rather than lexis. These studies generates critical insights on how online classes or activities can be designed to facilitate L2 learning.

Five articles address the issue of interaction, which is key to language learning, in the remote-learning context. Cheung's (2021) study of an online primary class examines the multi-modal exchanges between a veteran EFL teacher and his students. The 80 recordings of online sessions reveal many verbal and non-verbal responses from students in whole-class sessions, and show that non-verbal responses often stimulate follow-up verbal elaborations. When participating in small-group sessions, more able learners demonstrated remarkable interactional competence using prompting and repairs. The study provides evidence for multimodal exchange in the online environment, which may redefine classroom interactional competence. Similarly highlighting the phenomenon of multimodal interaction, Chen, Zhang, and Huang (2022) take a translanguaging perspective and explore the association between translanguaging and learner agency in a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) course. Their analysis of a social media chat log between teachers and students indicates that trans-semiotizing between linguistic and non-linguistic resources is associated with fluctuations in learner agency. In particular, learner agency becomes more achievable when learners trans-semiotize between texts and pictures to explore learning opportunities. Learner agency also becomes more visible through the practices of trans-semiotizing to emojis. Hence, the study argues that language teachers should enhance their trans-semiotic competence to understand students' trans-semiotic practices and to deploy multi-semiotic resources to interact with students.

The other two articles draw on the community of inquiry framework to understand student interaction through the concept of social presence. Carbajal-Carrera (2021) analyses five episodes of activism interactional practices to illustrate the application of hand signals, emotional attunement check-ins, pass-the-ball, digital collages, and spectrum lines in video-conferencing-based L2 learning. They found that these practices facilitate the teaching, social, and cognitive dimensions of presence. The study not only calls for a multidimensional approach to presence but also generates practical strategies to enhance presence in online settings. Alger and Eyckmans (2022) complement the concept of social presence (SP) with a qualitative interpersonal pragmatics approach to examine L2 learners’ interpersonal interactions and relationships. Among all SP indicators, teacher acknowledgement was recorded as the most commonly used, followed by paralanguage, student acknowledgement, and self-disclosure. They all potentially boosted affective and cohesive effects. The study further reveals that students appreciate in-class opportunities to express their frustration and teacher-initiated off-task talk, which promote relationship building and feelings of belongingness.

The last article in this category addresses interaction from a combined perspective of teachers and students ( Harsch, Müller-Karabil, & Buchminskaia, 2021 ). This study takes a mixed method approach, involving 35 teachers and 898 students from over 200 language courses in 14 languages. The data analysis reveals that creating learner-conducive interaction is a major problem in online language classes, which may be attributed to the unclear roles of teachers and students, an insufficient social presence, and improper communication channels. Based on this, the study argues that teachers and students should make a joint effort and create the interactional space cooperatively.

Institutions or others in online language education (1 article)

The special collection does not include research on institutional effort at the policy level, possibly due to the journal's mission to publish articles with significant pedagogical implications. Apart from the above research on language teachers and learners, one article directed its attention to the parents of young learners, who play an indispensable role in supporting language learning ( Tao & Xu, 2022 ). Based on interviews with 30 parents of students in Grade 1–5 at a Chinese primary school, the study reported a range of supportive practices. Monitoring of learning was the most common among these, followed by affective, academic, and technology support. The use of these types of supportive practices was mostly mediated by the students' grade level and parents' socioeconomic status. It is also worth noting that parents played a bridging role in facilitating teacher-student communication, particularly beyond the class, to solve academic problems and boost learning motivation. Thus, the study proposes a tripartite model of parental support involving interaction between parents, young learners, and teachers to support young learners' L2 learning online.

4. Concluding remarks

The outbreak of COVID-19 has made online teaching and learning a global phenomenon in the history of language education. This collection of articles documents local efforts in a range of settings at various educational levels, in both underdeveloped and developed regions, where synchronous or asynchronous online instruction was adopted as a response to the pandemic. The wide range of educational, socioeconomic, and digital settings represented in these articles reflects the variety of challenges confronting language teachers and learners and the responses they have developed to overcome them. While technical issues have been prevalent, these studies highlight the significant cognitive and affective aspects of human experience of learning and teaching languages online. The evidence from this collection of studies confirms the importance of building online communities among language learners, between teachers and students, and even with parents, to combine multiple stakeholders’ efforts to overcome challenges. Given that online teaching may remain part of the teaching landscape in the post-pandemic era, the research efforts documented in this special collection have important implications for language teachers, language teacher educators, and educational administrators to maximize digital affordances and enhance learning and teaching in future online education.

Acknowledgement

The first author (Jian Tao) would like to acknowledge that her work was supported by National Social Science Foundation of China (18CYY025). The second author (Xuesong Gao) would like to acknowledge that his work was supported by a collaborative research grant (RG203724) from School of Foreign Studies, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

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• Published: 25 January 2021

Online education in the post-COVID era

• Barbara B. Lockee 1  

Nature Electronics volume  4 ,  pages 5–6 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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The coronavirus pandemic has forced students and educators across all levels of education to rapidly adapt to online learning. The impact of this — and the developments required to make it work — could permanently change how education is delivered.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to engage in the ubiquitous use of virtual learning. And while online and distance learning has been used before to maintain continuity in education, such as in the aftermath of earthquakes 1 , the scale of the current crisis is unprecedented. Speculation has now also begun about what the lasting effects of this will be and what education may look like in the post-COVID era. For some, an immediate retreat to the traditions of the physical classroom is required. But for others, the forced shift to online education is a moment of change and a time to reimagine how education could be delivered 2 .

Looking back

Online education has traditionally been viewed as an alternative pathway, one that is particularly well suited to adult learners seeking higher education opportunities. However, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has required educators and students across all levels of education to adapt quickly to virtual courses. (The term ‘emergency remote teaching’ was coined in the early stages of the pandemic to describe the temporary nature of this transition 3 .) In some cases, instruction shifted online, then returned to the physical classroom, and then shifted back online due to further surges in the rate of infection. In other cases, instruction was offered using a combination of remote delivery and face-to-face: that is, students can attend online or in person (referred to as the HyFlex model 4 ). In either case, instructors just had to figure out how to make it work, considering the affordances and constraints of the specific learning environment to create learning experiences that were feasible and effective.

The use of varied delivery modes does, in fact, have a long history in education. Mechanical (and then later electronic) teaching machines have provided individualized learning programmes since the 1950s and the work of B. F. Skinner 5 , who proposed using technology to walk individual learners through carefully designed sequences of instruction with immediate feedback indicating the accuracy of their response. Skinner’s notions formed the first formalized representations of programmed learning, or ‘designed’ learning experiences. Then, in the 1960s, Fred Keller developed a personalized system of instruction 6 , in which students first read assigned course materials on their own, followed by one-on-one assessment sessions with a tutor, gaining permission to move ahead only after demonstrating mastery of the instructional material. Occasional class meetings were held to discuss concepts, answer questions and provide opportunities for social interaction. A personalized system of instruction was designed on the premise that initial engagement with content could be done independently, then discussed and applied in the social context of a classroom.

These predecessors to contemporary online education leveraged key principles of instructional design — the systematic process of applying psychological principles of human learning to the creation of effective instructional solutions — to consider which methods (and their corresponding learning environments) would effectively engage students to attain the targeted learning outcomes. In other words, they considered what choices about the planning and implementation of the learning experience can lead to student success. Such early educational innovations laid the groundwork for contemporary virtual learning, which itself incorporates a variety of instructional approaches and combinations of delivery modes.

Online learning and the pandemic

Fast forward to 2020, and various further educational innovations have occurred to make the universal adoption of remote learning a possibility. One key challenge is access. Here, extensive problems remain, including the lack of Internet connectivity in some locations, especially rural ones, and the competing needs among family members for the use of home technology. However, creative solutions have emerged to provide students and families with the facilities and resources needed to engage in and successfully complete coursework 7 . For example, school buses have been used to provide mobile hotspots, and class packets have been sent by mail and instructional presentations aired on local public broadcasting stations. The year 2020 has also seen increased availability and adoption of electronic resources and activities that can now be integrated into online learning experiences. Synchronous online conferencing systems, such as Zoom and Google Meet, have allowed experts from anywhere in the world to join online classrooms 8 and have allowed presentations to be recorded for individual learners to watch at a time most convenient for them. Furthermore, the importance of hands-on, experiential learning has led to innovations such as virtual field trips and virtual labs 9 . A capacity to serve learners of all ages has thus now been effectively established, and the next generation of online education can move from an enterprise that largely serves adult learners and higher education to one that increasingly serves younger learners, in primary and secondary education and from ages 5 to 18.

The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to have a lasting effect on lesson design. The constraints of the pandemic provided an opportunity for educators to consider new strategies to teach targeted concepts. Though rethinking of instructional approaches was forced and hurried, the experience has served as a rare chance to reconsider strategies that best facilitate learning within the affordances and constraints of the online context. In particular, greater variance in teaching and learning activities will continue to question the importance of ‘seat time’ as the standard on which educational credits are based 10 — lengthy Zoom sessions are seldom instructionally necessary and are not aligned with the psychological principles of how humans learn. Interaction is important for learning but forced interactions among students for the sake of interaction is neither motivating nor beneficial.

While the blurring of the lines between traditional and distance education has been noted for several decades 11 , the pandemic has quickly advanced the erasure of these boundaries. Less single mode, more multi-mode (and thus more educator choices) is becoming the norm due to enhanced infrastructure and developed skill sets that allow people to move across different delivery systems 12 . The well-established best practices of hybrid or blended teaching and learning 13 have served as a guide for new combinations of instructional delivery that have developed in response to the shift to virtual learning. The use of multiple delivery modes is likely to remain, and will be a feature employed with learners of all ages 14 , 15 . Future iterations of online education will no longer be bound to the traditions of single teaching modes, as educators can support pedagogical approaches from a menu of instructional delivery options, a mix that has been supported by previous generations of online educators 16 .

Also significant are the changes to how learning outcomes are determined in online settings. Many educators have altered the ways in which student achievement is measured, eliminating assignments and changing assessment strategies altogether 17 . Such alterations include determining learning through strategies that leverage the online delivery mode, such as interactive discussions, student-led teaching and the use of games to increase motivation and attention. Specific changes that are likely to continue include flexible or extended deadlines for assignment completion 18 , more student choice regarding measures of learning, and more authentic experiences that involve the meaningful application of newly learned skills and knowledge 19 , for example, team-based projects that involve multiple creative and social media tools in support of collaborative problem solving.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, technological and administrative systems for implementing online learning, and the infrastructure that supports its access and delivery, had to adapt quickly. While access remains a significant issue for many, extensive resources have been allocated and processes developed to connect learners with course activities and materials, to facilitate communication between instructors and students, and to manage the administration of online learning. Paths for greater access and opportunities to online education have now been forged, and there is a clear route for the next generation of adopters of online education.

Before the pandemic, the primary purpose of distance and online education was providing access to instruction for those otherwise unable to participate in a traditional, place-based academic programme. As its purpose has shifted to supporting continuity of instruction, its audience, as well as the wider learning ecosystem, has changed. It will be interesting to see which aspects of emergency remote teaching remain in the next generation of education, when the threat of COVID-19 is no longer a factor. But online education will undoubtedly find new audiences. And the flexibility and learning possibilities that have emerged from necessity are likely to shift the expectations of students and educators, diminishing further the line between classroom-based instruction and virtual learning.

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Lockee, B.B. Online education in the post-COVID era. Nat Electron 4 , 5–6 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-00534-0

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Published : 25 January 2021

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-00534-0

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