Online education: teachers’ endeavours in adaptation and optimization of digital tools and features for distance learning in Sri Lanka during COVID19 pandemic

Abstract

This research contributes to the knowledge of digital tools in the domain of online education. This is an exploratory study done to identify Teachers’ endeavours in adapting and optimising familiar digital tools and features for distance learning in Sri Lanka during the Covid19 Pandemic. Identifying and understanding teachers’ intentions of using the features and investigating whether those intentions were cohesive with the student expectations can be stated as the main objectives of the research. This study was carried out as a case study consisting of three sample cases from urban, suburban, and rural geographies. Data were collected primarily through non-participant observations where the education methods were observed, and in-depth interviews, interviewing both teachers and students within the cases. Collected data were encoded to analyse and identify themes using the thematic analysis method with an inductive approach. The analysis was done while establishing the connection between the encoded data to identify teachers’ intentions in using the features of the tool and to investigate whether the intentions were aligned with the student expectations. The study was concluded with the identification of the base intentions of the teachers in adaptation and teacher’s endeavour of mimicking the in-person classroom attributes in the online learning environment using digital tools were cohesive with the student expectations to an extent. The conclusion led towards a vital range of further studies and EdTech application development.