Open AccessExploring the Attitudes of Students to Distance Learning during Covid-19 in Morocco: The Case of Students of English Studies at Faculty of Letters in Beni-Mellal
Author(s) -
Said Elmouhtarim
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of english as a foreign language teaching and research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2776-4524
pISSN - 2776-4184
DOI - 10.31098/jefltr.v1i2.487
Subject(s) - distance education , covid-19 , pandemic , mathematics education , orientation (vector space) , psychology , pedagogy , medicine , mathematics , geometry , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
The second semester of the academic year 2019-2020 witnessed an unprecedented practice in education worldwide due to Covid-19 pandemic. This was resorting to distance learning (DL). Morocco is no exception. Having continued our teaching practice through this new orientation during this semester, we thought that this experience is worth reflecting about. So, we decided to conduct this study which aims at exploring the attitudes of the students, to distance learning. To give orientation to this study, three research questions were put forward. The first question is about students’ attitudes towards distance learning. The second question is related to the first one and it is about the challenges facing the implementation of DL. Related to these two questions, one more question was considered and it is about the extent to which distance learning is efficient as a new practice to manage the crisis in education that started with the outbreak of Covid-19 and the accompanying pandemic. The findings we obtained from a questionnaire addressed to 160 students at the Faculty of Letters in Beni-Mellal revealed that the attitudes of students towards distance learning are generally speaking positive. Still it must be admitted that these findings also showed that there are some challenges facing a sound implementation of this new orientation in teaching, which necessitates some requirements both in terms of digital resources and digital pedagogy to reach efficiency in the future.