EVALUATING THE MADRASATI PLATFORM FOR THE VIRTUAL CLASSROOM IN SAUDI ARABIAN EDUCATION DURING THE TIME OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The platforms are the pinnacle of technology and digital development in the 21st century. However, until the global COVID-19 pandemic, most schools did not employ these platforms as new teaching and learning methods. The Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia established the Madrasati Platform as the new gateway to distance-teaching and learning for all Saudi' education levels from 1st to 12th grade in the new academic year 2020-2021. This platform is one of the most essential programmes in Saudi Arabia, and is related to many supplemental educational tools. The data involved in this study was collected from three teachers. This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the Madrasati Platform in relation to Saudi teachers' perceptions of its use as the primary distance learning platform, and its advantages and disadvantages. The main findings are firstly that teachers should possess technical knowledge about how to use this platform, which highlighted the need for intense training courses for both teachers and students in order to create and foster a successful educational environment. The Madrasati Platform is an integrated platform designed to meet the needs of all of the parties involved. However, students typically neglect to attend the asynchronous virtual classroom on the platform (iEN channels and other uploaded videos) and focus only on the synchronously virtual (live) classroom on Teams. Therefore, this paper presents some recommendations to the Saudi Arabian education stakeholders for improved platform development, and also proposes paths for future research. Article visualizations: