Distance education has become a prominent part of the education system around the globe in recent years. The limitations and problems encountered during online lessons have made teachers and ...administrators overlook the many benefits that distance education can offer. In an attempt to dispel this misconception, this study shows that not only can online lessons match the efficiency of traditional face-to-face lessons, but they can actually become more efficient in teaching writing to EFL students. Sixteen undergraduate students from a state university received online EFL writing lessons for two months using Google Classroom. A questionnaire was created to investigate the benefits of using this online platform in such lessons. The results were interpreted by calculating the average means for each questionnaire section and examining participant answers to open-ended questions. Overall, the participants declared that the use of Google Classroom improved both the quality and quantity of feedback, interaction, and group work in online lessons, resulting in better learning outcomes.
The paper examines the effectiveness of special apps for online piano lessons and measures the apps' impact compared to the control group that studied without the use of additional software. The ...study involved 350 students. The effect of Skoove and Simply Piano apps on the learning of piano skills has been analyzed. First-year students from small control group A received the lowest scores, with the mean score of 72.4. Students from small groups B, who used Skoove app, received the mean score of 78.9, which is 8.2% higher compared to the control group. Students from small groups C, who used Simply Piano app, had the mean score of 78.3, which was 7.5% higher compared to the control group. Among fifth-year students, the lowest scores were also obtained by small groups A, with the mean score of 74.7. Small groups B and C performed better: 81.5, or 8.3% higher score than in the control group, and 81.4, or 8.2% higher than the control group. These data reveal the effectiveness of apps for online piano lessons. Attention should be drawn to the fact that both apps were approximately equally effective among students.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns across the globe, many English Language Teaching (ELT) practitioners swiftly switched to teaching fully online. This paper explores students’ ...perceptions of the durations and types of interactions in online synchronous lessons that focus on teaching technical oral presentation and report writing skills, as well as the benefits and challenges that students experience. The data were collected from a group of 18 Computing Engineering students who completed a post-course survey approximately 3 weeks after the course completion. The results of this study reinforce the importance of instructor, cognitive, and social presences in an online learning community. Despite the challenges that students may encounter in online lessons, students still find online education beneficial if instructors support students before, during, and after lessons, and are able to use technologies to effectively scaffold materials with adequate instructorstudent and student-student interactions to engage students in learning.
The purpose of this research was to determine whether there is a need for students to take online geography lessons during states of emergency situations when schools are temporarily closed as a ...result of unforeseen events such as pandemics, natural disasters, technological mishaps, the effects of terrorism, war, and other significant catastrophes. With this research we investigated whether the number of online geography lessons was increasing or decreasing and whether students searched for online help during school closure. Research was conducted through an online survey. Our study will contribute to the understanding of investigating how students at any school in the world are prepared for online learning. The results show that students need online assistance and tutoring when learning geography in unpredictable situations when schools are closed.
There are concerns about the association between the level of students' digital skills and the amount of stress they experience. However, evidence from both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies ...is limited. The main aim of this study was to address this gap in the literature by examining the relationship between preservice teachers' digital skills and stress. The study employed an online cross-sectional survey, which was completed by 661 pre-service teachers enrolled in colleges of education in Ghana. The findings showed that preservice teachers' low digital skills were associated with higher stress levels during the period of online teaching and learning necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The study further revealed that preservice teachers' limited access to resources was a significant cause of stress. Preservice teachers' main coping strategies for reducing stress were positive framing, such as seeking advice from friends and family, seeing something good in what is happening and learning from the experience. Recommendations include providing more training on digital technologies during the initial preparation for teachers.
The worldwide pandemic Coronavirus disease, affected every aspect of people’s lives due to being locked at their homes, therefore many difficulties began to appear, especially in education. Scholars ...were the leading group that has been affected the most due to the online lessons that began from one day to another, without any kind of previous training specifically in these types of contexts at home. According to some national diagnostical studies, most of the students could not achieve the minimum educational objectives in mathematics and language, which are the essential subjects in Chilean education. In this study, in which qualitative phenomenology analysis was used, the aim was to reveal the current state of students after a whole year of online lessons in terms of personal technological use and personal perceptions about e-learning. In this study, in which the criterion sampling was used, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 adolescents from different sorts of schools who experienced online lessons using their previous personal knowledge in Information and Communication Technologies. The data were analyzed in Nvivo node tree, which revealed six main themes that define the experience and personal perception of the participants: adaptation to the new order, learning by their own, how to use better the technology, use of social media, new ways of personal knowledge sharing, importance of classmates. It is believed that the results obtained from this study will contribute to schools’ view of learning and teaching education in the 21st century and to improve students’ experiences in online lessons.
COVID-19 forced extreme measures in cities worldwide, including school shutdowns and limited social contact. Semi-structured interviews with 14 Israeli music teachers were conducted to expose the ...challenges of teaching musical instruments and vocal during social distancing, focussing on struggles and technical challenges, teacher-student relations, and creative leveraging. The study explores solutions or advantages to online teaching offered by the participants' experience, while also stressing advantages of face-to-face lessons, which could have been taken for granted. Music educators who participated in the study reported that the pandemic forced them to accommodate teaching methods, demonstrations, and physical guidance, which required reshaping to online communication; latency and poor sound quality required compromise and adjustment. They shared perceptions of online learning, coping methods, creative approaches, attentiveness to students, temporary solutions to technical problems, and forward-looking insights. The role of the teacher as a source of empathy and human connection was highlighted, as was the need for face-to-face, intimate lessons. Findings indicate that online music lessons enable creative methods that may enrich future post-pandemic lessons, but that their positive effect on the learning process is of a short-term nature. The study's limitations include teachers' nationality, and future research could examine cultural and gender coping differences.
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