Abstract:

When started, the Covid-19 pandemic brought along a major challenge for all the education systems around the world, as it imposed the online teaching. This choice represented at the time a solution, but also a problem in itself, because of the diversity perceptions that educators had about distance learning, but also because of the technical issues it involved. Some universities and their staff were more prepared to face this sudden change, while others, due to a certain reluctance, to the lack of means or to their teachers’ insufficient knowledge upon the topic, found it more difficult to manage distance teaching. The concept of “distance learning” in itself has been differently understood along the time; our study is mainly based on Saykılı’s (2018:5) definition which describes it as a “form of education which brings together the physically-distant learner(s) and the facilitator(s) of the learning activity around planned and structured learning experiences via various two or multi-way mediated media channels that allow interactions between/among learners, facilitators as well as between learners and educational resources.” Distance learning enables bringing together the two actors involved, the student and the teacher, who approach the educational process from different perspectives, each side having different psychological, social and knowledge backgrounds. That is why, a better understanding of the process is possible only through an analysis of this two-sided perception. The educator clearly influences the student success, both in traditional and in distance learning (Rice, 2006). It has only become clearer during the pandemic that teaching through “mediated channels” requires more and different psychology, pedagogy and scientific skills and approaches than face-to-face teaching (Stone, Springer, 2019). Moreover, remote teaching meant changing establishment regulations, required institutional technical effort and support, being more focused on students’ motivation, finding new ways of teaching and assessment. The issues generated by distance learning have been lately debated on by researchers (Stone, Springer, 2019; Artacho et al., 2020) and some studies argue that most of the teachers had never taught online before (Trust and Whalen, 2020). Under these circumstances, it is important to analyse the teachers’ perception upon teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our paper is based on quantitative and qualitative data collected from university teaching staff and aims at analyzing the teachers’ perception on distance teaching during the pandemic time by using a questionnaire. The questionnaire is a mixed one, containing both open-ended and closed questions, applied to 50 teachers within the University of Pitesti, with no selection of gender. The main aims of this research tool are to establish whether higher institutions provided the necessary (technical or/and training) support for online teaching, the advantages and the drawbacks of the tools teachers use during their online classes, as well as the difficulties they may encounter when teaching online and the challenges they are confronted with when choosing certain teaching methods. The results may help teachers better cope with the newly appeared challenges, the institutions in order to identify the areas which can be improved in order to provide the students the best learning opportunities in order to become successful and to obtain all the necessary skills when graduating.

Keywords:

Distance learning, remote teaching, perceptions, motivation, improvement, technical skills, pedagogy.