COVID-19 Emergency eLearning and Beyond: Experiences and Perspectives of University Educators

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The main objective and outline of the paper:

The paper examines the experiences and the concerns of educators in and about emergency remote distance learning in tertiary education in Singapore that was introduced due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The paper aims to reveal the positive and negative experiences and furthermore call the attention to the challenges and the pitfalls of the exclusive eLearning form of education. The paper claims that both parties in the eLearning educational process being either the student or the lecturer lacked personal interaction, gained new skills and lecturers could collect best practices to deploy in their educational process in the future. Moreover, the paper claims the necessity of the hybrid or blended learning form of education in higher education.

The research uses qualitative method, namely in-depth interviews, developed topics and themes and subthemes within to thematically analyse the interviews and summarise the findings. The visual summary of their findings well illustrates the results.

General comments:

The paper is a qualitative exploratory paper that discusses the question of the challenges and opportunities of digital distance learning based on academic staff experience during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic at the universities in Singapore. The qualitative research relies on in-depth interviews, it identifies topics, themes and subthemes and the findings are organised around the visual summary of the issues that have been raised by the academic staff about the emergency distance teaching.

The introductory literature review is relatively short, however, it supports the qualitative research.  

The conclusion well summarises the concept of the paper, draws attention to the future opportunities and gives space to further research in the field. Relatively a low number of scientific papers deal with educators’ experiences, most of the research in the field focuses on students’ experience.

The abstract of the paper well summarises the essence of the paper and includes the required components. The primary research gives added value to the research field and supports the way of achieving high quality level of teaching in tertiary education.

 

The details are as follow:

External values:

Formatting and style

The paper is formatted as required and follows academic style to deliver the subject matter. The abstract contains relevant information and gives a clear outline of the research. The paper is subdivided into chapters and subchapters.  The structure of the paper is up to the template and easy to follow.

The paper has minor English writing issues which are probably due to mistyping (line 206, 220, 221). Some sentences begin with “eLearning” which is not capitalised. Rephrasing the sentence not to start with the word “eLearning” could mean a solution.

The paper has 6 keywords. Please put the keywords in alphabetical order. Please, be consistent with the word “eLearning”

Clarity of discussion style (discussions should be clear and concise)

The paper and chapters have clear and concise exposition. It builds a visual summary of the model that is followed through the analysis of the interviews. The thematic structure of the qualitative analysis is easy to follow. The discussion style is clear, and the flow of discussion helps comprehension. The paper includes all the relevant information referring to the research questions. The authors step by step revealed extra novel research information which accumulated, and an information rich conclusion summarised the results. The intended outcomes and contributions are stated and clearly discussed. The intended outcomes and proposed contribution can mostly be inferred from the context.

Intrinsic values:

Relevance of subject matter

The paper investigates one of the most up-to-date questions of higher education during the pandemic and it does so from the educators’ point of view. The case study is of high importance and makes higher educational best practices comparable all over the world. The issues raised reveal real problems, challenges and opportunities in the future of tertiary education. The research is of high relevance.

Scientific merits

The paper focuses on the experience of the academic staff in higher education regarding emergency distance learning that was introduced during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The scientific merit of the paper is its focus on the academic staff and its qualitative research method. The transition of higher education to a fully digital one required flexibility, patience, skills and competences as well as enthusiasm from the academic staff, which the paper strove to explore. The topical and thematical visualisation could help academic staff to reflect on their experiences and find the opportunities for the future re-engineering of higher education. The research adds value scientifically to the research field and could contribute positively to the increase in the quality of higher education. A relevant but small model is built since the authors claim that the saturation point was reached after 11 interviews.

The research satisfies the need to create added value since it is a new comprehensive research study conducted during the pandemic to examine the experiences, the challenges and opportunities in Singapore. However, it must be highlighted that the research has some constraints since it was conducted at only one university in Singapore. Authors are requested to include Singapore in the title of the paper. The findings give ground to further research in the future.

Soundness of methodology, appropriateness of theoretical framework

The proportion of the theoretical framework and the primary research in question is proportionate. The paper focuses on both the theoretical background and the primary research. The theoretical background is short but detailed and includes a thorough literature review. The relevant factors are investigated and focused on. The paper presents in detail the process, method and data collection of the qualitative research and discusses the method of coding and analysis as well. The method presented could give a valuable contribution to similar qualitative research so as to find and explore similar case studies. The literature review well support and justifies the primary research. The authors claim that after a certain number of in-depth interviews the added value concerning the topic in focus has reached its saturation. So the authors included 11 interviews.

The theoretical framework is well-written, it is a quite short, however, suitable references are integrated in the body of the article.  

Correctness of conclusions

The conclusion part well summarises the essence of the paper, however, it is relatively short compared to the discussion. The conclusions drawn are correct and can be drawn from the research done.

Suitability of Figures and Tables

The paper includes one figure and one table. The table and the figure are well formatted and clear. In case of the figure should it be edited by the authors, it has to be referenced in the paper, please add in the figure’s footnote “developed by authors”. The figure and the table support comprehension, and they are referenced as required in the body of the text.

Suitability of references

The paper includes a wide range of references, all of which are referenced in the paper. The paper uses even the most recent references and mostly from the last five years, which allows the authors to cite the results of the most recent research. The references follow consistent style, and the format follows the criteria given in the template. The references in text are well inserted.  

Recommendation:

The submitted article deals with the academic staff experiences and performance in relation with emergency distance teaching after the lockdown of universities and even cities. The paper raises the questions whether a purely eLearning form of education could serve higher education to the best quality in the future or blended, hybrid type of education should remain, and finally the authors  stand by the hybrid type of education.

The paper needs minor revision, mistyping must be corrected.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

My personal opinion is that after reading the paper, the manuscript is of potential interest to the readership of this journal, but there are significant issues that must be addressed before the article could be published:

In general:

1. Background – Expand a little more to highlight the research problem to highlight the study's need.
2. Methodology - expand a little more. Add analysis methods.
3. Contribution: It would be a good paper if it did look at the research impact on the community.
4. Findings: Should align with the study goal. 
5. Recommendations: Expand a little more.
6. Recommendation for Researchers

Introduction

A concise introduction to enable the reader's understanding of the research problem.

• Introduce the paper describing what the paper is about.  Expand to emphasize the problem leading to a clear set of research questions and objectives the research addresses.
• Give readers a one-line preview of the other sections of the paper.

Literature review

Used sub-headings to organize topics. Some critical studies are not included. The paper should relate coherently and convincingly with issues of real-world significance. This is a crucial phase contributing to research design. The theoretical framework emerging from the literature review could research questions and points of emphasis.

Suggestions

• Include a few introductory lines to indicate what the review will cover, outlining the purpose and scope.
• Consider summarising the text based on the study purpose.
• Focus more on the empirical studies' backgrounds.
• Add more information to enable readers' understanding of the authors' view.
• You are encouraged to write concisely. The text can be reduced significantly.

Methodology

This is one of the most critical parts of the paper that reviewers found lacking detail.

The methods should be adequately described to show how the research was conducted to improve clarity and transparency.

Instruments

The section must devote details to the description of the instrument.

Expand the development process of the instrument.

 Data analysis 

The quality of statistical reporting and data presentation in the paper is inadequate.

Findings and discussion

Needs clear and comprehensive explanations to assist readers' understanding.

Challenges

How were these reported in the discussion?

Conclusion

The conclusion falls short of providing sufficient information that would allow a reader to understand the contribution of this research.  What was found? I would expect the conclusion to refer back to the research questions.

Limitations – There is no mention of the limitations of this study.

Summary

 The study presented an important topic that would be of interest to the readership of this journal. Most research is needed, including the international audience. However, the research does not match what is wanted in its current form, and the surveys do not provide relevant data. It is missing a level of detail needed to understand the study result, the impact of the results, and the research contribution. Perhaps the authors are likely close to the topic they are skipping over details that they know, but the reader would not.

Overall, the paper requires more information and focus. The areas requiring attention are highlighted in the individual sections. 

In summary, the paper needs

• a re-write of the abstract to give a good summary of the paper and mention the key concepts.
• Expanding the introduction by clearly stating the research problem to suitably inform the reader.
• A synthesised and structured critique of the literature.
• clarifying the research procedures with an adequate explanation of the methods.
• Improving the survey instrument – construction of the questionnaire and the validity tests.
• Expanding the discussion to allow writing a well-developed conclusion summarising the entire paper. The outcomes should be discussed in relation to the existing research.
• emphasizing the significance of the research - a clear showing of how the findings contribute to new knowledge.
• Using results to support the claims in conclusion adequately, and how the results of the research can be used for future research

In general, the English in the present manuscript is of publication quality and requires minor improvement. Please carefully proof-read spell check to eliminate grammatical errors

Plagiarism check results:

/* Similarity check with iThenticate revealed a similarity index of 3%, which is considered appropriate. A maximum of around 60 quoted words is accepted per paper. There are no papers with over 60 words. No previously copyrighted material was used.  See the attached file for more details.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper studies university educators’ eLearning perspectives, practices and future adoption intentions in the era of Covid-19. This is achieved by conducting in-depth interviews with 14 educators from a large university in Singapore. The theme of the study is suitable for publication in the Education Science Journal.

The structure of the paper is on the most part expected. Section 1 gradually introduces the problem addressed by the study. The manuscript includes no literature review section which I believe is a major weakness for the study. Section 2 includes the methodology of the study. The results are presented in the following section which is organized in many sub-sections each including a different area of the interview. Section 5 includes a detailed discussion of the results of the interviews. The last section of the paper is the Conclusions (which is quite limited in size). This section could also include future extensions of the work.

Overall concept of the paper is quite interesting, the data collection and the analysis is adequate, but the lack of literature review should be addressed. This absence is also evident by the relatively limited amount of scientific references the paper includes. Also, the study does not justify the selection of the specific angles of the topic it is focused on. It is not based on existing theory or seems to employ some past study as a starting point. Thus, a concise and focused literature review is needed to be developed, which in conjunction with the formulation of the topic under investigation, will lead to the articulation of specific research questions that will be answered thought the interviews. Those research questions, although they are not actually stated in the paper, are implied to a certain degree in the manuscript.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The text fits in with current e-learning challenges. The challenges presented are global and not only in Singapore. Many teachers, even from countries with a high rate of development of information society services, have been surprised by the situation related to crisis e-learning. For example, in my country, only 15% of teachers had experience with e-learning before the COVID pandemic crisis. Reading the text from Asia, I see many analogies to conditions in Central and Eastern Europe. However, given the importance of the subject, I have a few remarks which may improve the readability of the text:

• In the introduction, it is worth defining the criteria for Emergency eLearning. Perhaps the scheme will be useful here. Everyone understands this concept in a different way;
• Also, in the introduction, it is worth mentioning data related to the level of computerisation in Singapore. This is an important background for our deliberations;
• It also seems interesting to present in the introductory part of the previous (other) studies on the digital competence of academic teachers in Singapore and their experience with e-learning;
• The methodology section should start with a presentation of the research problem. The research problem must be clearly marked in the study;
• The sampling procedure does not allow for generalization to the whole population of teachers in Singapore, because the interviews were conducted within one department;
• Given the qualitative nature of the research, the question arises - have the variables been adequately saturated?
• We need a diagram showing the analysis of the data in the methodology section;
• The results section is clear to me - I have no comment here;
  In the discussion, it is worth referring to studies previously carried out in Singapore and in countries with a similar level of computerisation. The discussion should be a little more developed in relation to the scheme on page 4;
• I propose that we create a chapter on limits in this research. It is worth explaining the sampling in this section.

In general, I think that the text is positive. Several changes and additions should be made. This is not an innovative study, because similar studies on small groups are now being carried out globally. The text has a methodological weakness in relation to the selection of the research group, but it is not a completely disqualifying element. I will be very happy to read the study after the amendments have been made. I keep my fingers crossed for making amendments.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

After revision, I feel that the paper is accepted for publication.

Reviewer 3 Report

The author(s) have addressed the issues I have reported.

Reviewer 4 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to read the text again. The authors have taken into account the comments made in the first review. Of course, this is more a short study than a full study, mandating generalisation. However, such studies are also needed. The text as it stands can be accepted.