towards rescuing pedagogy during the coronavirus pandemic: unleashing the digital in higher education .

Abstract

The underpinning purpose of the current research is to explore the relation between digital teaching/learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and the possibility of rescuing pedagogy and the academic year from being disrupted. Within the framework of the current study, five research questions are raised: (1) Are the proportions of students and teachers who are prepared for digital learning/teaching and those who are not the same? (2) Based on students’ and teachers’ opinions, is there a pedagogical connectedness between learners, teachers, and the administration in the wake of the digital? (3) Has emergent digital teaching/learning boosted learners’ autonomy during the pandemic? (4) Is there a relationship between learners’ knowledge of digital technology use and boosting their autonomy? (5) Is there a relationship between pedagogical continuity, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the use of digital technology? A structured questionnaire is administered to students and another to teachers in-person and online to gather the needed data. The participants are 103 third year students of English at Mila University Centre and 98 university teachers of Languages (English, Arabic, and French) from different Algerian universities. The collected data are computed using the Chi-square test for Goodness of Fit and the Chi-square test for Independence in SPSS. In performing the analysis, the results revealed that ensuring pedagogical continuity, during the COVID-19 pandemic, is related to the digital only from the teachers’ perspectives. Implications and recommendations are thereby discussed.