Covid-19 pandemic and online learning: the challenges and opportunities

ABSTRACT

The World Health Organization has declared Covid-19 as a pandemic that has posed a contemporary threat to humanity. This pandemic has successfully forced global shutdown of several activities, including educational activities, and this has resulted in tremendous crisis-response migration of universities with online learning serving as the educational platform. The crisis-response migration methods of universities, faculty and students, challenges and opportunities were discussed and it is evident that online learning is different from emergency remote teaching, online learning will be more sustainable while instructional activities will become more hybrid provided the challenges experienced during this pandemic are well explored and transformed to opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19 pandemic
• online learning
• emergency remote teaching
• digital migration methods
• challenges
• opportunities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olasile Babatunde Adedoyin

Olasile Babatunde Adedoyin is currently a Ph.D. scholar in Computer Education and Instructional Technologies at Near East University. His research interests include online learning, digital competence andeducational tourism.

Emrah Soykan

Emrah Soykan was born in Nicosia in 1988. After having graduated in Science at the Lefkosa Türk High School in Nicosia in 2006, he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Education and Instructional Technologies at the Near East University in 2010. After finishing his undergraduate course, he furthered his studies and earned a Master’s degree in 2012 in Computer Education and Instructional Technologies as well. During his years at Master level, Mr Soykan undertook various courses, attended conferences and society services and worked on different projects. He finished his Ph.D. on the same subject at the Near East University in 2016.