Teaching through Distance Learning Mode during Pandemic COVID-19 : Obstacles and Opportunities

In Pakistan, life was running normally according to the yearly routine before the outburst of the novel COVID-19. The government had announced the closure of all educational institutes of Pakistan to avoid physical interaction due to the Pandemic outbreak. The scenario has caused the running routine to be traumatized because it pushed all the teaching to happen virtually. It was quite odd because it was a new dimension in Pakistan that needs many new skills to be imparted before its launch. Therefore, this study has been carried out to explore the teaching obstacles and to contemplate the opportunities for the future. The study examined various attributes of virtual teaching in special situations like COVID-19 in terms of pandemic impact, teaching satisfaction, workload, technical problems, mental health, readiness, collaboration, digital content, COVID-implications, and new opportunities. The questionnaire was used based on the Likert Scale. The digital form was generated and was distributed online to the target audience that was teachers from all levels of the university, college, and school. This study was significant in the sense that it explored the current teaching situation of Pakistan and predicted possible opportunities.


Statement of the Problem
The rapid expansion of the pandemic created ambiguity in the field of Education from K-12 to higher education throughout Pakistan as well as globally. This was quite a new dimension in developing countries such as Pakistan because this scenario has many pre-requisite skills that need to be learned yet. Therefore, teaching during pandemic needs to be addressed. However, the post-COVID-19 scenario is also pounded in uncertainty. This study addressed some obstacles that confronted during teaching in special situations such as COVID-19 and explores new opportunities. Rationale of the Study COVID-19 has been declared as a global pandemic, in this case, the education sector had to give an emergency response by immediate transformation of teaching mode from routine teaching to remote teaching. The literature supports that this rapid transmission bears a lot of alteration and the post-COVID situations are also ambiguous. Therefore, there is a need to explore teaching obstacles that may hinder this massive change to occur in crucial circumstances such as a pandemic.

Literature Review
With the advent of Coronavirus, the education field had to bear a lot of sudden and rapid transformation as the result of all closure of educational institutions throughout Pakistan from preschools to higher education as well and all this closure and at the middle of April 2020 around 1.723 billion learners were affected in terms of schools" closure due to emergency response to COVID-19 (Mustafa, 2020). Online and Distance education has now become the new norm in the field of education since the closure of all educational institutes as an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For the teachers, COVID-19 Pandemic brought a quintessential adaptive challenge to shift regular teaching to online distance education which has no pre-configured guidelines through which guidance can be sought to respond in this emergency. The situation was quite ambiguous on how to maintain a resilience response for the continuation of education and learning throughout the world and particularly for developing countries such as Pakistan. The Pakistan National Education Response and Resilience Plan for COVID-19, (2020) provided an outline of policies, plans, and interventions for Pakistan"s education system to survive with the paraphernalia of COVID-19 for K-12 education (GOP, 2020). According to UNESCO, (2020) around one billion students and youth were affected due to the COVID-19 outbreak which resulted in the schools" closure and suspension of higher education throughout the whole world. The UNESCO, (2020) suggested that remote education could mitigate the instantaneous disturbance caused by the pandemic and recommended to establish more open and flexible educational systems for the future of the whole world. According to OECD, (2020) countries of the world including Pakistan each week of educational institutes closure implied significant loss in the progress of human capital as well as imposed adverse social, economic implications on a long-term basis and on the other hand producing a robust stress pressure for the education system that compelled to thought for alternate educational opportunities, this alternate solution could be the use of online educational platforms that could be in the form of existing online distance learning platforms such as the digital formatted pre-existing video/audio or text lectures or develop new online teaching platforms such as virtual classrooms, etc. OECD, (2020) indicated some obstacles that were balanced digital with screen-free activities, more digital use also need to monitor students" emotional health, comparably more use of smartphones instead of laptops at home and managing access to IT infrastructure. All these could be mitigated but not denied, however, Governments could provide laptops, monitored access to educational resources and short length video lecturing could minimize these problems that were aligned with the findings of Onyema, et al., (2020). OECD, (2020) also suggested some opportunities which included empowering teachers to develop the best fit model through testing different learning digital advances suitable to their context, explore the different time of lecturing or communicating, exploring some secure systems for taking the exam from home involving strict identification of exam taker with no or limited access to resources for the exam period. Hamilton, Kaufman, and Diliberti, (2020) provided some suggestions as distance/online teaching/learning included online instruction, as well as the provision of hard-copy of materials such as packets of lessons, worksheets or assignments, home tasks, etc and the majority of schools, required learners to accomplish distance learning activities, but teachers reported that there was a wide disparity in curriculum coverage and styles to monitor learners" progress. The authors also ___________________________________________________________________________ 409 reported that the school administrators described several challenges further indicated needs for supplementary supports, and Hamilton, Kaufman, and Diliberti, (2020) reported that 62 percent of teachers had received at least some training on how to use virtual learning management platforms and technology in the United States. Honigsfeld and Nordmeyer, (2020) argued that collaboration can make better this rapid educational shift to online and supported that collaboration is essential to meet all educational disparities. Mustafa, (2020) also indicated that unequal access to technology as well as to educational resources were the basic problems hindering this educational transition. However, Al-Awidi and Aldhafeeri, (2017) from Kuwait concluded that the teachers were ready to implement the digital curriculum at a moderate level. Hodges, Kerch, and Fowler, (2020) suggested universityschool-family partnerships to augment digital learning resources and development of digital curriculum contents with a focus on schools while digitalizing the resources to mitigate the scarcity of educational content relevant to a specific curriculum. According to Guidance Note on Education Systems" Response to COVID19, (2020) a cyclic approach would work well to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on education that was prepared, cope, and recover.
The opportunities which were mentioned in the TUAC, (2020) that regulation in the copyright parameters for learning content, teachers were systematically provided with training for the creation of learning content, and development of policies for teachers working remotely can bridge anxiety and stress during online teaching in the course of Pandemic and working parents should have the right to take suspensions for their child-caring during exceptional circumstances or adjusting their working hours accordingly. Remote learning can be made better by providing a one-stop-shop of learning to students as well as for teachers, alignment of existing curricula with the creation of new and old available digital contents along with making this content available on a wide variety of devices, including offline solutions as a part of remote learning with audio and short lectures through TV channels and radio stations, use of multiple digital educational tools, creative uses of online technologies can make not only better in sciences but in non-core subjects (WorldBank, 2020) which was further endorsed by Daniel, (2020). According to Mustafa, (2020) massive open online courses can serve as an alternative for higher education. See, Wardle, and Collie, (2020) reported that online education has put an increased workload for teachers especially for teachers having school-age children as they were juggling online school teaching and homeschooling to their children as well as maintaining regular household works that have adverse health effects regarding stress, anxiety and perplexing situations of disturbed home and work life.

Objectives
Following were the objectives of the study: o To explore the obstacles of teaching during COVID-19. o To explore the opportunities to minimize these obstacles in the crucial period of the pandemic.

Research Questions o
What are the basic obstacles of teaching during a pandemic such as COVID-19? o What is the general impact of COVID-19 on teaching? o What are the possible opportunities to minimize the obstacles of teaching during a pandemic? o What would be the COVID-19 implications of teaching during a pandemic?

Delimitations of the Study o
This study was delimited to the teachers teaching through virtual mode in the educational institutes of Punjab, KPK, and Federal area of Pakistan.

Research Methodology Research Design
The research followed a descriptive research design and a survey method was applied.

Population
The teachers from universities, colleges, and schools were served as the population. Sample and Sampling Technique Convenient sampling was used for the study. To get a general view of the research problem, a sample of 51 teachers was selected from two provinces and the Federal area of Pakistan. All participants were either working in universities, affiliated colleges, or schools.

Instrumentation
A research questionnaire was served as the instrument of the research that was distributed to the participants online. The questionnaire was created by using Google forms and the link of this questionnaire was sent to the participants via email and WhatsApp. The instrument was composed of five sections including demographic information, the general impact of COVID-19 on teaching, obstacles of teaching during COVID-19, COVID-19 implications, and opportunities for teaching during COVID-19. Overall, the questionnaire consisted of 37 statements on the Likert scale.

Data Analysis
Quantitative analysis was done for the closed-ended questions. SPSS-21 was used for the descriptive analysis of data. Table 1.  Table 1 shows that there 51 teachers participated in this survey, out of which 15 teachers were from universities, 08 teachers from colleges, and 28 teachers from schools. Table 2. Table 2 shows the demographics of teachers. There were 28 teachers from Punjab, 17 teachers from federal, and 06 teachers from KPK. Table 3. Table 3 shows that there was a very significant impact of Covid-19 on teaching with a maximum percentage of frequencies of 39.2%. It was found that 90.2% of teaching happens online because of COVID-19. However, the above table shows that 49% of the teachers get the same income from their institutes. The COVID-19 has impacted teaching in terms of internalization/experiential learning as only 29.4% of teachers say that the ongoing online teaching could provide experiential learning and most of the teachers believed that students lag in terms of internalization/experiential learning while the abrupt shift towards online teaching.  Table 4 showed that 33.3% of the teachers were satisfied with online teaching but the rest of the teachers were not satisfied. Whereas 33.3% of teachers were found comfortable with online teaching but 33.3% of teachers have no mental burden. 27.5 % of teachers were having no disturbed home and work life, but most teachers were felt disturbed home and work life during COVID-19. The above table also shows that 58% of the teachers were facing surrounding distraction while teaching online during COVID-19. Table 5. Workload while teaching during COVID-19 Table 5 shows that only 21.6% of teachers said that there was not significantly increased workload of teaching during the pandemic and most of the teachers were facing significantly increased workload. Only 23.5% of teachers were requiring no more time for grading online assignments than formal teaching and learning mode in the pandemic. The above table also shows that 37.3% of teachers had decreased productivity whereas, 31.4% of teachers were not stressed up which was an indication that most of the teachers were stressed up while teaching during COVID-19. Table 6. Technical problems while teaching during COVID-19 Table 6 shows that it was obvious from the above table that 54.9% of teachers have internet connectivity problems whereas, 96.1% of teachers had availability of different devices from which 60.8% teachers were using smartphones. As the study was conducted during summer 2020 in Pakistan, 96% of teachers were having electricity supply problems which hinder the teaching-learning process a lot. Table 7. Mental health Condition while teaching during COVID-19 Table 7 shows that 21.6% of teachers felt no anxiety while teaching online which was an indication that most of the teachers felt anxiety while teaching online during the pandemic. It was found that 15.7% of teachers felt fatigued which means that majority of the teachers were not fatigued. However, 45.1% of teachers were confused/perplexed while teaching online during COVId-19. The above table indicated that only 23.5% of teachers had no feeling of social disconnection which means that majority of the teachers were feeling social disconnection.  Table 8 reflected that 43.1% of teachers had some difficulty in teaching due to unpreparedness while 53% of teachers said that they required some time for adjusting prearrangements for teaching. It was found that 45% of teachers had no administrative support for virtual teaching and 58.7% of teachers said that they were not willing to teach online during the pandemic. Table 9. Collaboration while teaching during COVID-19 Table 9 shows that 39.3% of teachers said that there was no need to split the classes for virtual teaching during COVID-19 as they can collaborate easily while collaboration (35.3%) was done on phone calls/messages. The above table shows that (33.4%) teachers were facing problems in collaboration while uploading or downloading heavy computer files as it requires more time. The above table also indicated that online collaboration could engage students (37.2%) at a moderate level. Table 10. Digital content while teaching during COVID-19 Table 10 shows that 45.1% of teachers had access to digital content but most teachers (66.7 %) had no information about using available digital content. The above table clearly shows that most teachers (45.1%) teachers had no knowledge of digital content creation tools and also most of the teachers (55.5%) teachers are not confident at all in the development/editing of digital content.  Table 11 shows that only 29.4% of teachers were somewhat confident in taking an online assessment. It means that majority of teachers were not confident to take the online assessment.  Table 12 shows that only 23.5% of teachers can manage virtual classes with a considerable level of confidence. It means that majority of teachers were not confident in the management of online classes.  Table 13 shows that majority of teachers (35.3%) did not prefer virtual teaching out of which 27.5% of teachers said that they will prefer online teaching when necessary.  Table 15 shows that 50% of teachers suggested that awareness workshops must be provided regarding technological knowledge and tools used for assessment of student"s learning while 66.7% of teachers suggested taking an assessment with the help of technology. 41.7% of teachers suggested taking online formative assessments. However, 47.9% of teachers suggested to include interactive digital content in lectures to improve the engagement of learners. More than half of teacher"s i.e 58.3% teachers suggested using suitable content from available digital content that fits according to social norms. Similarly, 56.3% of teachers suggested that lectures should be enhanced with new emerging virtual technological blended content to grab the attention of learners. 43.8% of teachers suggested improving self-directed learning. 54.2% of teachers suggested that to minimize technical issues there must be professional training to incorporate occupational skills in the formal as well as non-formal setup. Most (79.2%) of the respondents also suggested that such workshops must be free of cost. Most (45.8%) teachers suggested taking short breaks during online teaching so that health issues can be minimized. Moreover, 52.1% of teachers suggested that a flexible timetable must be available for teaching and learning. The majority (66.7%) of teachers suggested technology integrated solutions for schools and educational institutions to improve the quality of teaching. Findings 1.

Impact of COVID-19
COVID-19 has a very significant impact on the teaching and learning process as it impelled the abrupt shift towards the online mode of teaching and learning. 2.
COVID-19 has no significant impact on the income of teachers from the government sector, but private-sector teachers were significantly impacted while teaching online.

3.
Due to COVID-19, most of the teaching had been shifted to online mode and caused a lack of internalized/experiential learning.

4.
Most of the teachers were not satisfied while teaching online during the pandemic. 5.
Teachers were facing surrounding distractions while teaching online in COVID-19. 6.
Most of the teachers were felt disturbed at home and work life while teaching online due to COVID-19. 8.
Teaching online during the Pandemic has caused a significantly increased workload of teachers. 9.
It was found that teachers require more time to grade the assignments of students in online teaching mode than in an informal setting. 10.
Most of the teachers were stressed up while teaching during the pandemic. 11.
It was found that teachers were facing technical issues in terms of electric supply and internet connectivity problems while teaching online during COVID-19. 12.
It was also found that maximum teachers were using smartphones for teaching online. 13.
Teachers were confused while teaching during the pandemic. 14.
It was found that most of the teachers were felt social disconnection while teaching online during the pandemic. 15.
Most teachers face difficulty in teaching online during the pandemic due to unpreparedness. 16.
It was found that teachers required some time to adjust pre-arrangements necessary for online teaching such as mic, headset/microphone, etc. 17.
It was found that most of the teachers had no administrative support for online teaching. 18.
The majority of the teachers were not willing to teach online, and they only preferred to teach online when necessary.

19.
Most of the teachers could easily collaborate when there was no split-up of classes. 20.
The online collaboration had caused engaged most of the teachers in receiving phone calls/messages from the students or their parents. 21.
It was found that most teachers had no information about using digital content and no knowledge about digital content creation tools.

22.
Most of the teachers were not confident in the development/editing of digital content.

Discussion
Since during Pandemic there exists a lot of abrupt changes in almost all domains. Based on the above findings COVID-19 has a significant impact on teaching and learning as most of the education was forced to online resources that were in line with the findings of Onyema, et al., (2020) and Guidance Note on Education Systems" Response to COVID-19, (2020) this may be because of the closure of ___________________________________________________________________________ 415 educational institutions have globally. Onyema, et al., (2020) gather data from various countries to confirm the impact of the pandemic in education and found that the online education trend was prevailed due to the closure of educational institutes in most countries of the world.
The study also indicated that there exists a need to train our teachers to effectively utilize digital tools to develop course content and disseminate among the focused audience that was learners which were also indicated by (WorldBank, 2020) because most of the education abruptly goes online in emergency response of Pandemic. In this scenario WorldBank, (2020) presented 21 professional development resources for teachers to support education. It was also endorsed by Daniel, (2020) that there was a need for staff preparation and training of teachers. The online assessment was emerged as an opportunity but can be problematic without prior training as Daniel, (2020) suggested diverse methods for variant learners.
The readiness of teachers to continue the process of teaching and learning during emergencies such as COVID-19 was also measured and it was found that teachers were not immediately prepared for this massive change in the domain of education as teachers also face unequal access to technological tools, digital resources, internet connectivity issues, distractions, and most of the teachers were lacking in the digital skill necessary for online education which was quite in line with the findings of Mustafa, (2020). The findings of this research indicated that online teaching and learning was now emerged as "pandemic pedagogy" and most of the teachers have device issues, connectivity problems and unaware to use digital resources efficiently which was in line with the findings of Callo and Yazon, (2020) and difficulty to manage online teaching at home as it disturbs their home and work life but the findings were contrary to Al-Awidi and Aldhafeeri, (2017) which may be because that digital resources such as curriculum, accessibility and other associated factors made available for implementation in schools. However, technology alone can not guarantee accelerated education but can serve as a medium for the improved and harmonized resource to respond during "new normal".
The findings showed that teachers were experiencing increased workload while teaching during the Pandemic situation in terms of preparing, planning to deliver lessons online, and grading assignments of the students. Teachers" workload has been increased due to many phone calls, or messages from the parents" side to communicate regarding child"s education which was in line with the findings of See, Wardle, and Collie, (2020) that reported teachers" juggling with online school teaching as well as other household works.
The study indicated a lack of administrative support to continue online education in terms of devices, the infrastructure needed for online education such as strong internet connectivity, and affordable internet connections which were in line with the findings of Basilaia & Kvavadze, (2020) which also concluded that pandemic has forced to devise new methods and implementation procedures, adjustments in regulations, new platforms and dragged the attention towards finding new solutions for successful education during and after emergencies.
Another important factor indicated in the study was the scarcity of digital content according to our context and it was also found that the majority of the teachers do not know how to create, edit or modify the available digital content according to the national curriculum. These findings were in line with Hodges, Kerch, and Fowler, (2020) and Konig, Jager-Biela, and Glutsch, (2020) as the authors focused on the availability, development of digital educational resources for schools and introduced a solution to overcome this problem was the university-school digital partnership and empowering teachers technological pedagogical content knowledge to plan, develop and select appropriate digital content according to a specific curriculum. Conclusion COVID-19 had significantly affected the teaching and learning process as most of the teaching and learning shifted to online mode. In this pandemic, the income of most of the teachers is also affected. Most of the teachers were not satisfied with online teaching and learning as they faced surrounding distractions while teaching online. Moreover, teachers were mentally burdened up while teaching during COVID-19 and they felt disturbances in home chores and work life. Furthermore, online teaching and learning had an increased workload of teachers as teachers require more time to grade the assignments of students in online teaching mode than in an informal setting. It also caused anxiety among teachers. There were also technical issues in terms of electric supply and internet connectivity while teaching online during COVID-19. Most teachers were using smartphones for teaching online.

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Teachers also felt social disconnection while teaching online during the pandemic. Teachers faced difficulty in teaching online and required some time to adjust pre-arrangements necessary for online teaching such as mic, headset/microphone, etc. Most of the teachers had no administrative support for online teaching. That is why most of the teachers were not willing to teach online and they only preferred to teach online when necessary. Most of the teachers believed that they could easily collaborate when there was no split-up of classes. The engagement of teachers had been increased for collaborating with students and parents. Teachers must be provided awareness about digital content and training about the creation of digital content tools, assessment tools, and other utility software so that they can feel confident to teach online teaching.