Using Technology to Empower Online and Hybrid Education During the COVID-19 Era: University Faculty Perspectives in the UAE

To not fall behind on curriculums due to the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing restrictions on face-to-face personal contact, many educational institutions around the world resorted to some form of distance education, whether by making classes entirely online or a combination of online and physical classes. To better understand the consequences of this rapid adoption of online education, instructors at a private university in the UAE were surveyed about their experiences with online learning tools and technologies and their increased reliance on them. The findings indicate that while the majority of respondents are satisfied with the technology, and some have even reported improvements in some areas, such as grades, the lack of physical face-to-face interaction can make online education fertile ground for student misconduct and can weaken the robustness of the teaching and student evaluation processes. Some of the suggested remedies to these issues include improving student monitoring to ensure a fair learning and examination environment, reducing classroom sizes to ease the burden on instructors of digitally monitoring many students at once, and reevaluating various aspects of curriculums, such as grading schemes and the pedagogical approaches employed.