Abstract:

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a contemporary threat to humanity which has been happened in March 2020. Many countries in the world have been lockdown and the restrictions have been imposed including the closure of shops and restaurants, the curfew and home-working for most people. The mankind activities have been suspended globally, such as the business, travelling, and education activities, etc. COVID-19 also caused schools, colleges and universities across the globe to shut down their campuses for keeping the social distancing measures among the students and staffs. For the sake of resuming the schooling in the pandemic situation, the education institutions have to alter the conventional face-to-face teaching into the online mode.

It is not a brand new topic for using online learning and teaching in tertiary education. Most tertiary institutions are incorporating in their learning modes a number of forms of mobile technology likes management learning systems (MLS) and this information and communication technology (ICT) has improved collaboration between students and lecturers. In Hong Kong, this was not the first time for suspending the conventional education activities. In 2003, the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) negatively impacted the schooling, resulting students could not attend the classes for over 50 days. After SARS, the Hong Kong government has been actively developed ICT so as to enhance the online learning and teaching. As a result, the teachers in Hong Kong are familiar with the online learning mode and which seems to be effective in digitally advanced cities like Hong Kong.

Nevertheless, even though the ICT has been assisted the teaching and learning for more than a decade, the fully online learning mode has never been implemented before COVID-19. As online learning is the use of internet and other important technologies to develop materials for educational purposes, instructional delivery and management of program, it brings the new experience and challenges to the students and lecturers in the crisis-response migration, in particular those programmes heavily weighing on practicum and face-to-face skill training like tourism and hospitality and engineering. The administrative units of these programmes have not perceived online education to be a strategic initiative and pedagogy, nor is there an indication that future academic plans include online learning projects. It reflects that the obstacles or misconceptions on the online learning in practicum-based programmes have long been existed.

This paper focuses on investigating the experience of online learning and teaching from students and lecturers’ perspectives. Both questionnaire survey and semi-structure interviews were employed to reflect the myths, obstacles and challenges they faced and the crisis-response migration methods of higher institutions of learning, students and lecturers into online learning with respect to COVID-19 were discussed too. Hopefully, the paper gives the insight of rethinking the pedagogy in the practicum-based programmes.

Keywords:

Online learning, teaching, challenges, practicum-based education, COVID-19.