PERCEPTIONS OF ENGLISH COMMUNICATION SKILLS FACULTY AT THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT OF ONLINE LEARNING DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of faculty preparedness in distance learning, which has become the main method of learning and teaching and a catalyst for providing students with an educational experience close to face-to-face learning. This study explores the perceptions of the faculty of the English Communication Skills Program (CSP) at the American University of Beirut (AUB) of online teaching competencies and their perceptions of self-efficacy in the mandated teaching online in the COVID-19 environment. For this purpose, the study used the Faculty Readiness to Teach Online (FRTO) survey developed by Martin, Budhrani, and Wang (2017, as cited in Vang, 2018) to explore faculty attitudes and perceptions of self-efficacy. Nineteen participants were asked to rate the importance of competencies that fall under four categories: course design, course communication, time management, and technical competence. Additionally, a faculty demographic characteristics survey (gender, age, years of teaching, experience of teaching online, level of students the participants are teaching, primary online teaching methodology, and support and training received) was distributed to study which demographic factors have the most effect on the perceptions of faculty competencies and self-efficacy. Results revealed that CSP faculty’s needs that will prepare them to teach students online English courses and serve the intended learning outcomes are mainly design course, communication course and technical know-how. English CSP’s faculty perceptions on the significance of online teaching competencies, includes the three categories, except for the creation of online quizzes and tests from the course design category. English CSP’s faculty members do believe in themselves as able to handle all of the three categories and having the online teaching competencies, and there is no relationship between demographics factors and importance of online teaching competencies nor self-efficacy of online teaching competencies.