Analysing lecturers’ perceptions on traditional vs. distance learning: A conceptual study of emergency transferring to distance learning during COVID-19 pandemic

In recent years, and also due to the COVID-19 pandemic, education institutions worldwide have changed their education paradigm from a traditional to an online system. These institutions have rapidly accomplished their educational programs and activities by supporting various web applications, allowing the completion of the education process remotely. This motivated us to investigate the general perceptions of the faculty members who are teaching different courses for undergraduate students using the distance education system. The proposed technique is based on the use of advanced analysis methods to test the hypothesis of instructors’ perceptions of online teaching effectiveness, compared with traditional teaching, will not be affected by the following eight factors, including gender, academic major, age, academic degree, country of teaching, teaching experience in traditional classes, teaching experience in virtual classes (VCs), and whether or not the department/faculty provided e-learning courses before the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 187 lecturers from 71 departments in 24 educational institutions located in 11 countries participated in this research. Results indicate that the perceptions of instructors regarding the online teaching system generally do not change based on the studied factors. Furthermore, the quantitative analyses illustrate that no significant differences exist in all dimension scales in terms of gender, major specification, age, country of teaching, and virtual experience. Significant differences are found in the dimension scale of distance education effectiveness in terms of academic degree and the educator status in terms of supporting VCs and traditional experience dimension scales. Additionally, the study provides various recommendations, including that the departments should encourage instructors to positively adapt with online teaching by developing the required skills and knowledge. Moreover, departments and institutions should support the teaching staff with specialized education tools. In addition, instructors should strive to decrease the communication and interaction gap between distance education and traditional in-class teaching.