Table 2 Challenges identified through the lens of community inquiry framework (coi) including challenges in social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence
Theoretical Framework Social Presence | ||||||
Theme | Subtheme | Representative Quotes | ||||
1 | Skills | Digital | “And one of the challenges can be you have to get updated with the technologies that are for one session, especially even for the face to face because there are new apps coming up like mentimeter etc., which you can utilize during face-to-face session to improve your social engagement with the audience” “So, the thing is, we are still very much used to paperwork and file, so I'll just start with simple thing we don't look at the emails, a lot of people a lot of faculty and students they miss their emails, the don’t know what spam folder is, what junk folders and email is even” | |||
Instructional | “So, people think teaching online easy, let me tell you it’s hard esp. designing a course that fosters effective communication.” “Missing nonverbal, visual body language cues messed with my communication” | |||||
Online Class Management Time Interpersonal | “I must give them individual feedback. So that takes more time for me because I have to keep on working even the next morning. I have to edit and upload detailed feedback. So that kind of increases my work.” “Giving timely feedback was a struggle for me ‘ “I had a difficulty to gather all the 20 to 25 students during one time because they were facing the problems of getting communicated and then getting connected with the net.” “So, in online especially unmotivated students who resist to turn on using cameras, and you call them one by one then managing such students and communicating with them is a bit of a baggage.” “Sometimes they even fake that we can’t hear you clearly.” “Students pretended they couldn't listen to us all of a sudden when they didn't know the answers to the question.” “Because you can communicate with students via resources before entering to the class via emails, WhatsApp groups, and you can talk about them, and they can also ask questions and they can play the concepts. However, the only problem is what to do when they say we have not received it they have not seen their mails, they have not checked the WhatsApp groups, urgh frustrating!” “I was comfortable with smaller groups of 5–6 students but when the strength increased to 40–45, I struggled to establish communication with them and had to come up with strategies that demanded a lot of time and effort.” “You know I’m not from around here, and I had a diverse group of students in terms of ethnicity, cultures, I, unfortunately, it was hard for me to effectively manage and communicate with them” | |||||
2 | Administrative | Resources Training | “But let's be honest my communication was disturbed because most of the time although the internet was not available, and as I said, I'm quite used to I always maintaining good internet connectivity at my home or wherever I travel, so at the institution, the internet was a problem.” “And secondly, for postgraduate education, as BLP facilitators, we need more skill training on evidence-based strategies to design and conduct BLP courses. I’d like to know more about how to engage my audience” | |||
3 | Faculty Resistance | Apprehension | “Faculty apprehension hampers communication, without a doubt, I consider it a major issue.” | |||
Theoretical Framework Teaching Presence | ||||||
Theme | Subtheme | Representative Quotes | ||||
1 | Skills | Digital | “The people who were naive to digital tools and teaching techniques, who are not very much used to technology and computing kept complaining.” “It was difficult for us to teach in online because of the new medium.” “I want to emphasize on the fact that for most of the faculty members, it was a transitional change of incorporating the online teaching and online assessment with the on-campus one, so they struggled a lot, and they were quite apprehensive as compared to somebody like me who's already familiar with these types.” “So BLP was in itself quite a challenge when we were asked to do so. Because definitely, it was something very new in a digital aspect I must say, we hadn't done this before” | |||
Instructional | “Constructing LO’s for BL program was hard, tough to design compared to face to face "When it comes to online classes, designing, teaching the content as well as engaging the students in actual learning, is quite challenging.” “I divided my course content into theoretical part and the practical part. So basically, could teach cognitive and the psychomotor domain, but the affective domains could not be touched, and it was hard for me to teach it.” “Deciding content of online video tailored to a blp needs, recording the lecture and then uploading it was difficult for me.” “No specific problems but engagement was hard” | |||||
Online Class Management Time Interpersonal | I will say that I started feeling nausea every time I was teaching Bloom's Taxonomy, because I was teaching it like redundantly, straight long every week.” “I remember there were times when I used to be up all-night designing activities and providing feedback, God it was exhausting.” “So, you have to be creative in designing BLP course and for being creative. You need to think you need to have time and a lot of resources to be used.” “Online teaching is hard; I think that requires a lot of preparation.” “You know, when I want to engage them, I have to stop my thinking and thought processes, and then call them up, I want to see them for their facial expressions, but the cameras are off and their names are there, so it gets annoying, it’s like I’m talking to a box.” “You got a screen, you don't know who you've got, a name is there, and you don't know who's the person sitting behind there? Who wants to really ask the question and who has understood it? So, I didn't find BLP very effective, it killed my teaching vibe” | |||||
2 | Administrative | Resources Training | “I think we need instructional designers in our Institute, if you want to do a proper online and blended learning systems in our universities and institutions.” “So, I think it requires support from the leadership when it comes to the design of course and learning activities that establish a good teaching presence. It requires a lot of resources, IT support personnel’ and it requires a lot of training of faculty as well.” “So, it is very important for the facilitator and for the learners, that they should be given some very good orientation regarding the online activities that you're going to deliver My faculty was not trained to conduct or design BLP” | |||
3 | Faculty Resistance | Apprehension | “If a faculty is not motivated or trained enough, any sort of blended learning or any kind of engagement just doesn't work at all” | |||
Theoretical Framework Cognitive Presence | ||||||
Theme | Subtheme | Representative Quotes | ||||
1 | Skills | Digital | “I couldn’t assess true body language facial expressions, couldn’t judge whether they were able to construct meaning “” | |||
Instructional | “The questions in the online discussions and forum were not of higher order cognitive thinking they were off lower order cognitive thinking. So, students could just simply, easily get the answers without reading or understanding what they're writing.” “Ensuring academic integrity and transparency was a challenge so we avoided all kinds of e-assessments.” “So, the challenges were that we were not able to evaluate their learning in online as good as we could during the on-campus class session” | |||||
Online Class Management Time Interpersonal | “We couldn’t handle time in the online discussions, it was cumbersome for the faculty Managing their(student) screen absence is a major challenge for me to understand whether the concept that I’ve been delivering has been grasped pr not.” “I failed to observe in larger strengths of students that everyone has contributed, or everyone has learned or if there is any uniformity in learning of each and every individual.” “One of the key issues is how to make them “focus on session, because student can get lost on the virtual session quite easily, as they can have their own work or they're sitting in front of a laptop. So, it can be difficult in that sense to assert whether the content is making sense to them or not.” “In the online session students seem that they sit back, and they're turn off cameras and don’t participate in any discussion. So, I feel that to bring things forward and clarify the concepts, discussion is vital” | |||||
2 | Administrative | Resources Training | “We faced issues in terms of absence of reflection-portfolios, video-based learning platforms, collaborative platforms, learning management systems, etc.” “Lack of proctoring apps where we could ensure academic integrity and transparency.” “To be honest, I’m not aware of any instructional strategies to enhance cognitive presence in online courses, like I guess could use some training on this” | |||
3 | Faculty Resistance | Apprehension | “I’ve seen teachers who were skeptic of BLP before even giving it a try, they just don’t like any innovation. They never involved themselves in online discussions, forums or any digitally superior activity” | |||