Online Learning via Microsoft TEAMS During the Covid-19 Pandemic as Perceived by Kuwaiti EFL Learners

Abstract

Covid-19 pandemic made a sudden shift of all ages to online learning and distance learning instructions. However, there is a paucity of research to address the possible impacts of the pedagogical shift integrated into new online platforms on learning, interaction, and assessment, especially in higher education settings from the vantage point of EFL students. Framed in a descriptive quantitative study, the main objective of this study includes two folds: a) to identify the possible effects of online learning via Microsoft TEAMS platform during the COVID-19 pandemic on assessment, interaction, and learning English as a foreign language from EFL students’ perception and b) to reveal the possible significant correlation between learning, interaction and online assessment via Microsoft TEAMs. Data were collected using a developed questionnaire consisting of 30 items focusing on three dimensions: interaction, learning, and assessment among 440 EFL students whose major was English at the College of Basic Education in Kuwait. At the significance level of 0.01, the results revealed the effect of online learning via Microsoft TEAMS during the COVID-19 pandemic on learning of English skills, students’ interaction and achievement assessment as perceived by the EFL students in the English Language Department in the CBE was rather high, moderate and moderate and moderate respectively. There is a strong/high statistically significant correlation between Interaction and Assessing (r = 0.538), interaction and Learning (r = 0.747). There is a statistically significant moderate correlation between Assessing and Learning (r = 0.467). This study is of some pedagogical and assessment ramifications for EFL contexts in the pandemic era.