Journal of Education for Teaching

International research and pedagogy

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjet20

Global impact of COVID-19 on education systems:

the emergency remote teaching at Sultan Qaboos
University

Mohamed ElTahir Osman

To cite this article: Mohamed ElTahir Osman (2020): Global impact of COVID-19 on education
systems: the emergency remote teaching at Sultan Qaboos University, Journal of Education for
Teaching, DOI: 10.1080/02607476.2020.1802583

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2020.1802583

Published online: 18 Aug 2020.

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JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING
https://doi.org/10.1080/02607476.2020.1802583

Global impact of COVID-19 on education systems: the

emergency remote teaching at Sultan Qaboos University
Mohamed ElTahir Osman
Instructional and Learning Technologies, Sultan Qaboos University College of Education, Muscat, Oman

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In response to the lockdown of Sultan Qaboos University and Received 23 June 2020
closure of all schools in Oman, the college of education activated Accepted 25 July 2020
an E-learning ‘Emergency Remote Teaching’ Plan for the Spring KEYWORDS
semester, and the student teacher practicum programme. The COVID-19; remote teaching;
primary purpose of the intended paper is to highlight the impact emergency e-learning; Oman
of COVID-19 pandemic on the Sultanate of Oman in general, and
the education system in particular. The paper will also provide an
analytic description of the college experience and lessons learnt
from the impact of the pandemic on the changing teaching and
learning landscape, and the diffusion and adoption of e-learning in
teacher education.

Introduction
The global impact of Covid-19 is multifaceted and is clearly manifested in almost all
sectors, particularly the health, economic and education sectors. Since the announcement
of the virus as a pandemic in March 2020, there have been a plethora of daily reports on its
impact on the lives of millions across the world. Accordingly, every country’s primary
concern has become to diminish the spread of the virus and alleviate its effects on the
society in general, and the most vulnerable communities in particular. Compared to its
small population, the Sultanate of Oman is one of the countries that were relatively being
hit hard by COVID-19. As of 17 June 2020, Oman has reported 26,079 confirmed positive
cases, 116 deaths and 11,797 recovered cases (Times of Oman, 2020). Based on medical
research, there seems to be a global consensus among infectious disease specialists and
public health officials to limit face-to-face classes as a means of protecting the students
and the community at large from the spread of the pandemic (Murphy, 2020).
In response to a potential outbreak in the country, Royal directives were issued to
mobilise a national campaign through forming a Supreme Committee for COVID-19, and
taking increasingly stringent measures to halt the virus outbreak in the country.
Accordingly, the Supreme Committee took strict safety measures, based on which both
the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education have announced a full
lockdown of all public and private schools and higher education institutions in the
Sultanate since 15 March 2020. The primary purpose of this paper is to highlight the
impact of COVID-19 pandemic on and the education system in Oman. More specifically,

CONTACT Mohamed ElTahir Osman mosman@squ.edu.om

© 2020 International Review of Finance Ltd.
2 M. E. OSMAN

the paper provides a narrative description of the Emergency Remote Teaching at Sultan
Qaboos University, in general, and the teacher education programme at the college of
education in particular. In addition, lessons learnt and potential impact of the pandemic
on the teaching and learning landscape, and the diffusion and adoption of e-learning in
teacher education will be highlighted. The narrative in this paper is based primarily on a
descriptive analytic methodology in light of document analysis and students’ perspec­
tives. The following sections summarise the response to the impact of COVID-19 on at
education at three different levels: the national, Sultan Qaboos University and College of
Education teacher education programme levels, respectively.

The impact of COVID-19 at the national general education level

According to UNESCO reports, more than 1.5 billion students in about 165 countries have
been affected by the lockdown of schools and campuses. As a result, schools, colleges and
universities were forced to shift in some way or another to online learning as a replace­
ment for on-site delivery. Needless to say, the Sultanate of Oman is no exception. In
response to the lockdown decision by the Supreme Committee, the Ministry announced
other alternatives for public schools (e.g. on-air lessons and some e-learning platforms) to
keep the students in touch with the schooling process and continue their education from
home. On the other hand, both the Private and International Schools were able to shift to
online schooling using various platforms such as Google Classrooms, Schoology, Seesaw,
Blackboard and Moodle. However, due to the exponential increase in societal transmis­
sion of the virus, the Supreme Committee took further safety measures and decided to
end the academic year for all students in public and private schools, on 7 May 2020, and
authorised the Ministry of Education to implement suitable assessment alternatives for
students’ transfer to higher levels from grades 1 to 12. Accordingly, the Ministry issued the
following guidelines for all public and private schools:

● Grades one to eleven in government and private schools (with exception of

international schools applying the international qualification programmes in
grades 10–12) will be promoted to higher grades based on the results of students’
performance before the lockdown (Oman News Agency, (2020). Nevertheless, low
performing students will be provided with complementary programmes at the
beginning of the next school year.
● The Ministry of Education also devised alternative assessment and statistical mea­
sures to assure fair and accurate prediction of students’ performance on the General
Education Diploma and its equivalents, based on their performance in the first
semester. The General Education Diploma or its equivalents were calculated in
accordance with an approved statistical formula developed by a team of experts in
measurement and evaluation from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of higher
Education and Sultan Qaboos University. The same formula applies to the students
who are required to do a re-sit exam for the General Education Diploma or its
equivalents. However, both Private and International schools offering other interna­
tional qualification programmes for grades 10–12 (e.g. IGCSE, IB, O-level, A-level, etc.)
will have to implement the assessment methods endorsed by their respective
accrediting institutions.
 JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 3

● In order to make up for the lost weeks in the second semester, the Ministry of
Education is currently studying options for prolonging the next school year 2020/
2021 and reducing normal holidays, in addition to allocating extra school time for
some particular subjects that are of cumulative nature or spiral curricula.

Sultan Qaboos University is the only public university in the Sultanate of Oman. It was
established in 1986 with an initial number of 500 students. It currently has over 17,500
students (52% females and 48% male students), and over 6000 staff distributed among 9
colleges, 13 research centres, 4 deanships and a teaching hospital. The university offers
around 157 academic degree programmes (64 undergraduates, and 83 postgraduate
programmes). In addition, it offers over 15,000 on campus courses, most of which are
offered in a face-to-face format, and about 40% only are offered in a blended format using
the Moodle LMS platform. However, being confined in one campus with over 24,000
individuals, it was considered to be a high-risk environment for both students and staff
during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the university took proactive measures in line with
the stringent safety measures taken by the Supreme Committee on COVID-19.
According to Bacow (2020), the extraordinary preventive measures that have been
taken in most higher education institutions to limit exposure to the pandemic will
essentially change the ordinary way that classes take place. In the same line,
Blumenstyk (2020) argues that global crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic would
prompt colleges and universities to stop distinguishing between the classroom and
online programmes. One of the main measures that the Sultan Qaboos University admin­
istration has taken was a full lockdown of all campus services from the 15 March 2020 to
the 15 April 2020. Fortunately, the students at that time were about halfway through the
Spring semester. They completed 7 weeks of normal face-face teaching. In light of the
exponentially increasing rate of the pandemic during the 4 weeks of lockdown, the
university Academic Council decided to resume the rest of the semester online.
However, given the short period of time to plan for a full-fledged e-learning, the
Council decided to adopt an Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) plan, building on the
existing blended courses on the Moodle platform. Nonetheless, the initial challenge for
the university was to provide equal access to online courses for all students who live in
rural areas where internet services may not support synchronous or live streaming remote
teaching. To overcome this challenge, the university urged the domestic telecom com­
panies, in collaboration with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to
improve network coverage in the identified rural areas. In addition, in anticipation of
system overload or any possible platform crashes, the university administration proac­
tively purchased extra servers to accommodate the potentially large number of concur­
rent online users.
For the purpose of quality assurance and consistency in implementing the ERT plan,
the Academic Council formed a Steering Committee chaired by H.E. the Vice-chancellor,
with a membership of his three deputies, all college deans, the dean of postgraduate
studies and research, and the dean of admission and registration. Further directives
were issued for all colleges to form their own ERT Supervisory Committees at both the
college and department levels. In accordance with the ERT plan, the Deanship of
Admission and Registration (A&R) revised the academic calendar for the Spring 2020
semester in order to make up for the 4 weeks that were lost from the semester during
4 M. E. OSMAN

the initial lockdown. Moreover, with the approval of the Steering Committee, the
Deanship of A&R amended the academic regulations to accommodate the require­
ments for the implementation of the ERT plan. The following are some examples of the
new amendments and guidelines that were circulated to all colleges and concerned
centres:

Amendments to the academic system

● ’In the event that the student has dropped a course with a grade of (W) either
before or after the eighth week, it will not be counted from the number of
droppings with a grade of (W) determined by the academic system which are
four times. However, the student is not allowed to re-register the course again
during the current semester.
● If the student dropped a course with a grade of (W) in the eighth week or after, He/
she is allowed to continue studying the remaining courses during the semester even
if the academic load becomes less than 9 hours.
● A student who received a grade of (FW) before the eighth week, it is considered valid,
unless the attendance is proven by an email from the lecturer to the Deanship.
● A student who has postponed this semester, whether before or after the eighth
week, will not be counted from the number of postponements that the academic
system has determined, which are two times. Note that the last day to postpone the
spring 2020 is 4 June 2020’ (the Deanship of Admission and Registration. Internal
circular, 8 April 2020).

Remote teaching for students with special needs

Sultan Qaboos University adopts an inclusion policy for students with special needs in
various areas of specialisation. Prior to the implementation of the ERT plan, the university
paid special attention to this most vulnerable group of students. The Department of
students with Disabilities provides these students with various types of assistive technol­
ogies such as Nvda screen reader, Index Everest v5, Natiq Reader, Braille display, OCR
software for PDF reading, Text to speech software, etc. In addition, the Department
announced required instructional adjustments to be made in any online courses offered
for visually impaired students. For example, course instructors were asked to consider the
following design guidelines when transferring their courses to the online platform:

● Upload only PDF files that were exported from a word document, and avoid using
PDF files that have been prepared by scanning a printed document.
● Provide a textual description. For any uploaded graphics.
● When using videos that present text on the screen try to overlay captioning or
speech.
● Read aloud if you need to present written text in a recorded lecture.
● Try to avoid using tables for designing the layout of your document, only use tables
for structuring some sections that require a tabular presentation.
● Meeting or Video software used by the course instructor should be accessible with
Voice over on apple and NVDA on Microsoft Windows.
 JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 5

Although the vast majority of courses in all colleges were taught in asynchronous mode,
the instructors teaching students with special needs were able to offer synchronous
sessions with their students. It is worth mentioning that one of the students with special
needs (a blind student) ranked in the top 2% of his classes.

The ERT implementation in the teacher education programme

The college of Education at Sultan Qaboos University was established in 1986. It is the only
government university college in the Sultanate that prepares teachers to work for the
ministry of education. The college has eight departments, and three supporting units
(Academic Accreditation and Quality Assurance, Assessment and Technical Support and
the Practicum and Field Experience Unit). It has a student population of 1500 under­
graduate students distributed among 10 different Bachelor degree programmes, and over
400 postgraduate students distributed among 18 Masters and 8 Doctoral degree pro­
grammes. In 2016, the college received an International Accreditation Certificate from
CAEP, a US-based accreditation agency, previously known as NCATE.
In response to the University’s decision to resume the Spring semester through online
teaching mode, the College Board formed Supervisory committees and technical support
groups at both the college and department levels. The primary mandates for these
committees were to:

● Oversee the implementation of the college’s emergency e-learning plan.

● Ensure that all courses and instructional materials are redesigned to fit with the
requirements of online environments.
● Review and endorse alternative assessment methods for all online courses (e.g.
student screencast presentations, take-home exams, e-portfolios, research reports,
online quizzes, etc.).
● Provide instructional design and technical support for all faculty members and
students.
● Provide progress reports based on the data collected weekly from individual instruc­
tors via google form highlighting the type and format of course materials uploaded
on the platform, interactive learning activities, assessment rubrics and percentages
of students’ interaction and online participation.
● Monitor the regular data collection process for the academic accreditation through
Moodle-based rubrics for all required Key assessment instruments.

In order to efficiently accomplish the above list of mandates, the college supervisory
committee held weekly online meetings using various synchronous tools for communica­
tion and collaborative group work (e.g. Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Team, etc.). In
addition, the committee developed a shared drive and comprehensive e-portfolio for easy
access to all relevant official documents, ERT plan, updated calendars, databases, reports,
training materials. Figure 1 illustrates the structure and repositories of the e-portfolio.
Given the short time for faculty members to plan for shifting from their comfort zone of
a face-face teaching environment to a relatively new remote teaching experience, it was
anticipated that the level of awareness, readiness and acceptance would certainly vary.
Accordingly, the Instructional and Technical Support Team offered a series of short online
6 M. E. OSMAN

Figure 1. E-portfolio for the college ERT Supervisory Committee Repository.

training workshops and weekly Webinars, on a number of relevant topics (e.g. online
course design, Moodle applications, interactive teaching, online quizzes, screencast
recording, live-stream teaching, e-form design, alternative assessment tools, etc.). In
addition, the students were also provided with initial online training and a 24/7 hotline
for WhatsApp communication with the technical support team for any technical assis­
tance that they might need. The support team also developed an e-platform (https://sites.
google.com/squ.edu.om/coe2020it), where all online training workshops are categorised
in terms of users’ level of readiness (beginners, medium and advance users), and are made
available to all faculty members.

Teaching practicum
Currently, the college has around 233 teacher candidates enrolled in the teaching
practicum programme. Based on CAEP accreditation requirements, the candidates will
have to be exposed to a minimum of 600 hours of field experience and teaching
practicum, including spending a 14-week semester in the schools under direct supervision
from a cooperative school teacher, and a supervisor from the college. It is worth noting
that the college enjoys a distinguished partnership with the Ministry of Education, where
the whole teaching practicum is done in government schools, with a joint supervision
from the college of education and school administration. Fortunately, the students
 JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 7

completed 6 weeks of face-to-face teaching practicum in their assigned government

schools before the lockdown on the 15 March 2020. Nonetheless, the minimum accred­
itation requirements need to be met. Thus, the Field Training Unit at the college devised a
detailed teaching practicum plan to assure that the students receive the required level of
practical training, and at the same time get exposed to the emergency e-learning
experience in their respective schools.
Building on their experience in the first 6 weeks of the programme, the students were
asked to adapt to the new teaching and learning environments in the partners’ schools. As
a result, the students designed and developed their lessons in an individualised instruc­
tion format using various types of open source platforms such as Schoology, Google
Classroom, Seesaw, Moodle, etc. This seems to add an important new dimension to the
teaching practicum where the candidates can be better prepared to work in both face-to-
face and e-learning environments, and at the same time sharpen their instructional
design, and technical skills by getting involved in videotaping and broadcasting their
lessons. The student performance in the teaching practicum was, therefore, being
assessed based on the initial observations and reports from the first sixweeks of face-to-
face teaching, as well as on the quality of their online developed and delivered lessons. It
is imperative, therefore, that the teacher education programme, in general, and the
teaching practicum in particular be revised accordingly to accommodate the required
online teaching skills as well. The following section highlights the success story of the
college ERT experience on the adoption of e-learning in teacher education.

Rate adoption of e-learning in teacher education

Sultan Qaboos University has a well-established infrastructure for e-learning environ­
ments. It offers a campus-wide landline internet and free Wi-Fi services in all teaching
and students’ service areas. It also provides faculty members with a continuous technical
and instructional support services through the Centre of Information Technology, and the
Centre of Education Technology, respectively. Nonetheless, just until recently before the
lockdown, only about 41% of the College of Education courses were partially online. It is
important to note that it took over 17 years for this small proportion of courses (151
courses and sections) to be taught in a blended format. This demonstrates the levels of
readiness, acceptance, and consequently, the slow rate of adoption of e-learning among
faculty members. On the other hand, perhaps due to COVID-19, in only one week the
number of courses that have been transferred to e-learning environments has increased
significantly from 41% to a 100% of all courses offered during this Spring semester (371
courses and sections). Students’ engagement and active interaction with their instructors
and learning material have also been monitored through weekly reports from the e-
platform. Figure 2 illustrates the number of students enrolled in the online course, and the
number of actively engagement students in online learning activities during the 6 weeks
(week 8 – week 13) of the Emergency Remote Teaching plan.
The university is currently conducting a comprehensive assessment of its experience in
implementing the ERT plan during the Spring semester. Initial analysis of the students’
satisfaction survey in three online classes with a sample of 83 students indicates that 77%
of the students were satisfied with the type and level of online interaction with their
instructors. Also, about 84% of the students were satisfied with the quality and clarity of the
8 M. E. OSMAN

Number of actively enrolled students

7000
6800
6600
6400
6200
6000
5800
5600
5400
8 9 10 11 12 13
Number of Active Students 5950 6247 6396 6594 6471 6290
Number of Enrolled
6871 6871 6871 6869 6865 6815
Students

Figure 2. Number of actively enrolled students in online courses during the second half of the
semester (Week 8 -Week 13).

recorded lectures, teaching methods, and e-learning materials. In general, more than two-
third of the sample was pleased with their online experience and achievement of course
objectives. Based on the initial reports of the college ERT supervisory committee, it is apparent
that COVID-19 has a significant impact on the rate of adoption of e-learning in teacher
education. However, the specific contributing factors for this high rate of adoption (e.g.
awareness, readiness, training, enforced policies, etc.) would need to be further investigated.

Conclusion
Obviously, COVID-19 has been a real test for higher education institutions around the
globe in terms of their level of readiness, flexibility and adaptability in responding to
similar global crises. Nevertheless, on a bright side, it serves as an effective ‘change agent’
for promoting rapid adoption of e-learning in such classically change-resisting institu­
tions. According to Lederman (2020), forthcoming normalisation of the current emer­
gency e-Learning does not necessarily mean extending the limitations placed upon face-
to-face schooling, but rather, it refers to strategies that frame the prevalent adoption of
online learning under COVID-19 as a pathway to a new conventional rather than an
emergency response. Thus, it can be argued that, although Emergency Remote Teaching
has been initially introduced as a safety and security measure to protect the community, it
will eventually change the learning landscape in both schools and higher education
institutions. It is important, therefore, to reflect on the lessons learned from the current
experience so that higher education institutions will be better prepared for a possible
extension of the emergency e-learning through the upcoming Fall semester. Examples of
these learned lessons include, but not limited to:

● Students’ equal access to e-learning environments should not be taken for granted.
It is essential that students’ needs and technical profiles be carefully assessed in
advance.
 JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR TEACHING 9

● It is still early to assume that e-learning is the only viable alternative to replace face-
to-face teaching. Live interactions among students and teachers would still need to
be catered for in online environments.
● The assessment of students’ performance in online environments remains to be a
challenge to both instructors and students, particularly the assessment of practical
skills, technical competencies and teaching practicum. It is important, therefore, to
incorporate various types of alternative assessment methods and relevant online
rubrics.
● Although digital literacy skills appeared to be a crucial prerequisite for instructors to
teach online classes, the need for faculty training in instructional design is becoming
an increasingly critical training need. In order to reduce the burden from faculty
members, this can be provided in a form of embedded electronic support systems in
a form of readymade templates.
● As expected, this emergency e-learning experience showed that the students digital
skills seem to be far exceeding most of their instructor’ proficiencies. However,
student’s readiness to e-learning requires a mastery level of motivation and self-
regulation skills.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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