Teaching in the time of COVID-19: the challenges faced by teachers in initiating online class sessions

Abstract

The severity of COVID-19 has called the education world to transition into cyberspace education to support the continuity of teaching and learning. The stages of Movement Control Order (MCO), Conditional MCO, and Restricted MCO have resulted in prolonged closure of schools within affected areas. In the Guidelines of Teaching and Learning (T&L) during MCO,’ the Ministry of Education, Malaysia (MoE) has come up with several initiatives for the continuation of education, which include adopting the synchronous and asynchronous modes of online T&L. Nevertheless, they will not be successful if there are any barriers in the process of implementation. As teachers are the key players in preparing online classes, this research looks into the challenges that arose before they conducted the sessions. One hundred ninety-two public secondary school teachers responded to this research through open-ended questions. Teachers were asked what the challenges are that they face in preparing, planning, and designing the online lessons. Eight themes emerged in this research; namely, time, environment, technological access, interest, knowledge, technological skills, course design, and communication self-efficacy. This study proposes problems that can be further researched for better online T&L processes.