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In terms of scale, shock, and disenfranchisement, the disruption to formal education arising from COVID-19 has been unprecedented. Anecdotally, responses from teachers and educators around the world range from heightened caution to being inspired by distance education as the “new normal.” Of all the challenges, face-to-face and formal teaching have been most heavily affected. Despite some education systems demonstrating resilience, a major challenge is sustaining quality and inclusiveness in formal education suddenly delivered at a distance. In probing these issues, this article profiles international perspectives on the role of open education in responding to the impact on formal school and higher education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. We proceed by highlighting and analysing practices and case studies from 13 countries representing all global regions, identifying and discussing the challenges and opportunities that have presented themselves. Reports cover the period from the beginning of 2020 until 11 March 2021, the first anniversary of the COVID-19 outbreak as declared by the World Health Organization. In our comparative study, we identify seven key aspects of which three (missing infrastructure and sharing OER, open education and access to OER, and urgent need for professional development and training for teachers) are directly related to open education at a distance. After comparing examples of existing practice, we make recommendations and offer insights into how open education strategies can lead to interventions that are effective and innovative—to improve formal education at a distance in schools and universities in the future.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a sudden shift to distance learning. For many nursing students, distance learning is a new experience and an essential requirement if they hope to complete their programs. Two challenges that nursing students could face during e-learning are the lack of social presence and low satisfaction. This study aimed to assess students’ sense of community and satisfaction during e-learning and determine their impacts on academic achievement. This cross-sectional descriptive study used convenience sampling to collect data via a student satisfaction survey and a classroom community scale. There was a positive and significant correlation between the sense of community, total satisfaction with e-learning (p < .001), and academic achievement (p < .001). Academic achievement was positively and strongly correlated with satisfaction with teaching (p < .001), assessment (p < .001), generic skills and learning experiences (p < .001), and total satisfaction with e-learning (p < .001). Students who worked collaboratively with their classmates and were more engaged in their learning were more satisfied with e-learning and had higher academic achievement (p < .01). Female participants reported a strong sense of community and satisfaction with e-learning and greater academic achievement than males. Junior students perceived higher satisfaction scores and greater academic achievement (p < .01) than senior students. The findings of this study suggest that failing to meet student expectations can lead to low levels of student involvement. Students’ engagement and satisfaction are good indicators of the quality and effectiveness of online programs.

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This cross-sectional study investigates the online education intention of undergraduate students in the largest and oldest public university in Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under convenient sampling, 843 undergraduate students with rural and urban backgrounds participated in an online self-administered questionnaire. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was employed to examine the hypothesized relationships. We found that students’ online class intention is significantly influenced by their attitude towards online classes (AOC), perceived usefulness (PU), and facilitating conditions (FC). We further identified that external antecedents have significant indirect effects on the outcome variables. Our findings provide new insights and contribute to a learners’ community on online classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study extends the technology acceptance model (TAM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to depict the factors influencing undergraduate students’ intention to attend online classes (IOC) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Higher education recently found itself in the unprecedented situation of being forced to rapidly switch to online education as a demand of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this article is to compare and contrast the experiences of university tutors who teach in two distance education universities with those who teach in a traditional university concerning their online lessons during lockdown. Forty university tutors participated in a survey to capture their teaching experiences. The survey was based on the transactional distance theory. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from both groups. Analysis of the quantitative data indicates no significant differences between the two groups in scores regarding course structure flexibility and the degree of student autonomy; however, significant difference with a high effect size was found regarding instructional dialogue, in favor of the distance tutors’ group. Thematically analyzing the qualitative data allowed the researchers to group the data into three main themes focused on how the instructional dialogue was manifested in the classes of both groups: (a) the learning design approach adopted, (b) the tutor-led interaction for student support, and (b) learner-to-learner communication and the sense of an online community. Ensuing recommendations involve adopting social-constructivist approaches that can sustain high-quality instructional dialogue in online learning settings and creating distance education faculty development programs in traditional universities that will help tutors support dialogical forms of online pedagogy.

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The purpose of this study is to develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Online Course Overload Indicator (OCOI) and the Student Mental Fatigue Survey (SMFS). The OCOI was designed to measure students’ perceptions of cognitive overload in online courses. The SMFS was used to assess students’ perceptions of mental fatigue while taking online courses. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on a sample of 378 undergraduate students from various institutions offering online courses across the United States. Results of a factor and reliability analyses confirmed that the instruments are valid and reliable measures of students’ perceived mental fatigue and overload from online course elements. The analysis supported the model that students’ perceptions of overload in online courses consist of four constructs—information relevance, information overload, course design, and facilitation—in addition to the one-factor structure of the SMFS, which consists of the student mental fatigue construct.

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Online discussion research has mainly been conducted using case methods. This article proposes a method for comparative analysis based on network metrics such as information entropy and global network efficiency as more holistic measures characterizing social learning group dynamics. We applied social learning optimization analysis of networks (SLOAN) to a data set consisting of Coursera courses from a range of disciplines. We examined the relationship of discussion forum uses and measures of network efficiency, characterized by the information flow through the network. Discussion forums vary greatly in size and in use. Courses with a greater prevalence of subject-related versus procedural talk differed significantly in seeking but not disseminating behaviors in massive open online course discussion forums. Subject-related talk was related to higher network efficiency and had higher seeking and disseminating scores overall. We discuss the value of SLOAN for social learning and argue for the experimental study of online discussion optimization using a discussion post recommendation system for maximizing social learning.

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The COVID-19 pandemic induced a digital transformation of education and inspired both instructors and learners to adopt and leverage technology for learning. This led to online learning becoming an important component of the new normal, with home-based virtual learning an essential aspect for learners on various levels. This, in turn, has caused learners of varying levels to interact more frequently with virtual resources to supplement their learning. Even though virtual learning environments provide basic resources to help monitor the learners’ online behaviour, there is room for more insights to be derived concerning individual learner performance. In this study, we propose a framework for visualising learners’ online behaviour and use the data obtained to predict whether the learners would clear a course. We explored a variety of binary classifiers from which we achieved an overall accuracy of 80%–85%, thereby indicating the effectiveness of our approach and that learners’ online behaviour had a significant effect on their academic performance. Further analysis showed that common patterns of behaviour among learners and/or anomalies in online behaviour could cause incorrect interpretations of a learner’s performance, which gave us a better understanding of how our approach could be modified in the future.

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This study assessed students’ level of satisfaction with the quality of student support services provided by an open distance e-learning (ODeL) university in Ethiopia. The target population was doctoral students who had been registered at the ODeL university for more than a year. To conduct a quantitative investigation, data were collected by means of a 34-item six-dimensional standardized questionnaire. Data analysis methods included linear as well as stepwise regressions. Using the gaps model as the theoretical framework, findings showed that the doctoral students were dissatisfied with four aspects of the student support services, namely supervision support, infrastructure, administrative support, and academic facilitation. In contrast, students were satisfied with the corporate image (reputation) of the ODeL university. For this ODeL university to play an effective role that coheres with the country’s socio-economic development plan, more attention should be given to the provision of supervision support, as there was strong dissatisfaction with this. The university could also build on or leverage aspects of their corporate image, for which there was strong satisfaction. Doing so will help the university make ongoing contributions and strengthen its commitment to the field of higher education and human capacity development in Ethiopia.

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Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have emerged as an affordable way to distribute knowledge and democratize education. The examination of online courses calls for theoretical models and instruments that contemplate its particularities. The community of inquiry (CoI) framework has been used in several studies to analyze the effectiveness of online education and hybrid education, including MOOCs. This study aimed to translate and validate the Community of Inquiry Survey instrument (Arbaugh et al., 2008) into Brazilian Portuguese, and used a two-stage methodological design for translating and validating a questionnaire. In the first stage, we carried out translation, back-translation, and cross-cultural adaptation. We translated the 34 items while maintaining the survey’s original format. In the expert evaluation phase, all items were considered understandable and essential for inclusion in the Brazilian Portuguese version of the CoI instrument. In the second stage, a prospective cross-sectional study was conducted to validate the questionnaire, and data was collected from participants completing the Nursing Assessment MOOC available on the Lúmina platform. A total of 690 responses were gathered. The resulting instrument produced excellent results, and the three presences achieved high reliability indexes, clearly indicating their adequacy. Furthermore, this study proved the validation of the CoI instrument, maintaining the three-factor structure previously reported in the literature corresponding to the three presences: teaching, social, and cognitive presence. We recommend further studies to evaluate the need for excluding or altering cognitive presence items.

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MOOCs (massive open online courses) have attracted considerable attention from researchers. Fueled by constant change and developments in educational technology, the trends of MOOCs have varied greatly over the years. To detect and visualize the developments and changes in MOOC research, 4,652 articles published between 2009 and 2021 were retrieved from Web of Science and Scopus with the aid of CiteSpace. This study sought to explore the number of publications, co-citation network, cluster analysis, timeline analysis, burstness analysis, and dual-map overlays based on co-citation relationships. The first finding was that the number of publications on MOOCs had increased consistently, and grew especially quickly between 2013 and 2015. Second, the main topic of the top 10 co-cited studies revolved around the problem of learner continuance. Third, blended programs, task-technology fit, and comparative analysis have emerged as popular subjects. Fourth, the development of MOOC research has followed distinct phases, with 2009 to 2012 the starting phase, 2013 to 2015 the high growth phase, 2016 to 2018 the plateau phase, and 2019 to 2021 another peak phase. Lastly, both cluster analysis and dual-map overlays provided empirical evidence of cross-disciplinary research. Our findings provided an in-depth and dynamic understanding of the development and evolution of MOOC research and also proposed novel ideas for future studies.

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Recent research in the field of virtual reality (VR) education is dominated by the application, experience, and effectiveness of high-immersive environments. However, high-immersive VR may not be accessible to all learners, with online distance learning students in particular unable to fully engage without being supplied with appropriate accessories. These field notes shed light on the role of low-immersive VR as a desktop tool for online distance learning students, exploring student experience of using 360° virtual spaces to undertake a summative assessment. Primary data collection in the form of an anonymous online survey was employed to gather feedback from postgraduate environmental management students who used low-immersive VR to undertake an environmental management system audit of a university campus. Quantitative results were analysed using descriptive statistics and qualitative responses using thematic analysis. Findings indicated that with guidance from the academic teaching staff and practice using the software, the majority of students felt both prepared and happy to undertake a summative assessment using VR spaces. Skills development and an appreciation of the effectiveness of the assessment approach were also highlighted as positive outcomes reinforcing findings from literature on the value of VR to improve learning outcomes particularly with practical tasks. Limitations of the assessment content and software were however noted by students, but both could be resolved with adaptations to the tool. It is hoped this research will be valuable to online education providers to demonstrate the value of using low-immersive VR within their programmes.