Executive Summary
Developed by Edvise ME
In June 2020 as Jordan was emerging from a 2-month lockdown due to COVID-19. At the time, the infection rate was low and there was a general feeling that face-to-face instruction in schools will resume as planned in the next academic year.
The survey captured the insights of 3,548 students, teachers and parents who completed the survey and focused on two thematic areas: access to online learning and the quality of the online learning experience.
The survey looked to identify trends and correlations between access and quality factors and their impact on the respondents’ overall experience of online learning. The survey also asked respondents about their feelings of being connected to their school prior to and during the lockdown and how they feel about continuing with online learning.
Identifying those relationships may help provide insights and recommendations on how to improve the online learning experience.
Background
The impact of COVID-19 on education is unprecedented. At its peak, UNESCO documented 194 country-wide school closures, affecting over 1.5 billion children and youth – or 87% of the world’s student population, constituting a near-global shutdown.
According to the global education monitoring report, in the Arab world, where 13 million children and youth are already out-of-school due to conflict, these closures added the challenge of more than 100 million affected learners across the region. This disruption to the education system presented new threats impacting access and quality of learning and consequently the widening of inequality gaps.
For its part, Jordan took immediate measures to control the spread of the virus through strict lockdown measures and school closures beginning in March 2020. The Ministry of Education responded quickly by repurposing TV channels to provide learning content and activating existing online and communication platforms. Schools and parents also turned to social media platforms to communicate and share content. Concerns have been voiced on the accessibility and quality of the online learning experience in the news, through social media and in informal settings.
However, this information is anecdotal. Against this backdrop, and in order to objectively inform decision-making, Edvise ME sought to gather empirical data through the formulation of a survey targeting students, parents and teachers in formal education to better understand the overall online learning experience during the lockdown and the factors that contributed to or hindered this experience.