The Webinar Experiences of Higher Education Instructors in the Time of Emergency Remote Education

Abstract

The global health threat caused by Covid-19 has resulted for schools, colleges, and universities to temporarily shutting down physical operations. The Philippine education sector, in particular, shifted from face-to-face interactions to emergency remote education. However, the question relies on the context that the majority of educators are trained and products of traditional teaching and learning environment. And since there is an urgency to adapt to emergency remote education and implementation of face-to-face in-service trainings, seminars, and workshops are prohibited, the idea of shifting to webinars has been seen as a way for educators to still engage in continuous professional development even at a distance. It cannot be denied that there is also a paucity of research about educators’ webinar experiences during this time of uncertainty. Hence, using qualitative case study research, this study investigates the experiences of higher education instructors with regard to in-service training webinars and how this addresses and helps them to adapt to the sudden change of educational context. More importantly, there were three themes that emerged in this study: flexibility in engaging in lifelong learning practices, openness to alternative delivery of in-service training programs, and thirst for digital literacy skills improvement. The paper concludes with the overall findings and its implication to emergency remote education.The global health threat caused by Covid-19 has resulted for schools, colleges, and universities to temporarily shutting down physical operations. The Philippine education sector, in particular, shifted from face-to-face interactions to emergency remote education. However, the question relies on the context that the majority of educators are trained and products of traditional teaching and learning environment. And since there is an urgency to adapt to emergency remote education and implementation of face-to-face in-service trainings, seminars, and workshops are prohibited, the idea of shifting to webinars has been seen as a way for educators to still engage in continuous professional development even at a distance. It cannot be denied that there is also a paucity of research about educators’ webinar experiences during this time of uncertainty. Hence, using qualitative case study research, this study investigates the experiences of higher education instructors with regard to in-service training webinars and how this addresses and helps them to adapt to the sudden change of educational context. More importantly, there were three themes that emerged in this study: flexibility in engaging in lifelong learning practices, openness to alternative delivery of in-service training programs, and thirst for digital literacy skills improvement. The paper concludes with the overall findings and its implication to emergency remote education.