COVID-19 and online teaching in higher education: A discrete choice experiment

Abstract

The Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus outbreak significantly impacted Ghana’s educational system, driving schools to close campuses and swiftly deploy online instruction. This study evaluated e-teaching in higher education amidst the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus by using the University of Ghana as a case study. Specifically, the study investigated university instructors’ preferences for online instructional strategies to enable higher educational institutions to transit smoothly into online teaching and learning. With the help of a face-to-face questionnaire administration, this cross-sectional study used a discrete choice experiment design to capture the responses of 230-course instructors. The analysis of the survey data obtained was possible using the multinomial logit model. Our results revealed that a recorded lecture video had the highest preference among the course instructors, breakdown of teaching content for approximately 30 to 45 minutes, providing online tutorials, and online support/video tutoring from teaching assistants were the important instructional attributes to help higher educational institutions transition into online teaching and learning.