The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students’ Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth

As a result of emergency online teaching during the covid-19 pandemic, this study was conducted to determine faculty (n=144) and students’ (n=350) perceptions with their experience in an online teaching and learning environment as well as students’ preferred learning modality. Compared to students, faculty indicated better overall satisfaction with their commitment to teaching and their comfort level with technology prior to emergency online instruction, Wilk’s Λ= .851, F (7,428) = 10.721, p= <.001. Both, faculty and students were least satisfied with the quality of instruction during emergency online learning. The majority of students were more inclined toward in person learning (37%) followed by hybrid (33%) and online (30%) modalities. This study has uncovered additional challenges brought by the pandemic during emergency online teaching as well as opportunities expressed by participants. Future studies must explore learning modalities in greater depth (hi-flex, hybrid, fully online (synchronous/asynchronous), and in-person) to suit the diverse needs of students.


Introduction
Despite recommendations from the H1N1 pandemic to plan and implement agile preparedness in higher education to prevent disruptions (Ekmekci & Bergstrand, 2010), in early 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted education at all levels around the globe, educators and students faced challenges with the transition to remote platforms within a matter of weeks to mitigate the burden of school closures and interruption in education (Daniel, 2020;Gonzalez, et al., 2022;Lassoued, et al., 2020).Although there were some advances in remote technologies prior to the pandemic, it was in the midst of the pandemic when remote learning technology became a necessity and the method of choice to prevent further disruptions to the in progress academic year (Al-Balas, et al., 2020; Daniel, 2020).
The transition from in person to fully remote (online) teaching and learning in early march 2020 was challenging for students, educators (Almendingen, et al., 2021;Gonzalez, et al, 2022) and families (Daniel, 2020).Although most institutions worldwide adopted and adapted to the remote environment, challenges

The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth
International Journal for Innovation Education and Research Vol. 11 No. 3 (2023), pg.79 became imminent (Adnan & Anwar, 2020) as differences in teaching and learning modalities became more apparent and well defined.In some areas of education, the online modality worked well, where some of the reported benefits included time saving and flexibility at meeting the learners where they were (Al-Balas, et al., 2020) while in other areas, such as those requiring the in person interaction to develop procedural skills, the online modality proved less efficient and the challenges reported included poor instruction, poor interaction between instructor and students and student to student (Al-Balas, et al., 2020).These challenges also brought opportunities for institutions to explore teaching and learning modalities more in depth and determine leverage on how to engage learners, provide training and offer instruction based on the needs of each discipline and environment.
Prior to the covid-19 pandemic, different learning modalities of teaching and learning had been slowly emerging with some skepticism among those who were not comfortable around technology or were too comfortable with the traditional in person teaching modality (Muller, et al., 2019).The covid-19 pandemic tested the limits of the current infrastructure and preparedness of educational institutions and uncovered the lack of infrastructure, such as good internet coverage, cost of internet (Adnan & Anwar, 2020), and lack of investment in technology and remote platforms (Al-Balas, et al., 2020) as some of the challenges faced in academia.In addition, training and development of faculty and students by institutions of higher education and other sectors of academia in combination to the government mandates to shut down institutions and isolate, appear to be some additional factors of why the covid-19 pandemic had negative effects in the educational environment worldwide (Al-Balas, et al., 2020; Ali, 2020).

Theoretical Framework
The work and understanding of online learning (Keengwe & Kidd, 2010;Muller, et al., 2019) pre-covid-19 pandemic, and hybrid teaching and learning modality (Walker, et al., 2021) during and post-covid-19 pandemic provided the framework for this study.The online modality has been used in higher education for quite some time and it is a well-rounded method for delivering instruction and providing students with options to access and learn outside of the traditional face to face environment (Muller, et al., 2019).The online methodology provides the learner with opportunities to access instruction remotely and by using a wide range of technologies and applications, ranging from web-based training, web-enhanced courses, e-simulations, and virtual learning are just some examples (Keengwe & Kidd, 2010).
The hybrid modality, also referred to as blended learning, combines the face to face or in person learning with online learning (Keengwe & Kidd, 2010).The hybrid modality picked up momentum during and after the peak of the covid-19 pandemic, which affected millions of students and teachers worldwide.This modality allows for flexibility in delivering instruction using remote learning technologies while also providing the in person component desired and or needed in some disciplines (Walker, et al., 2021).In person instruction is considered the traditional teaching and learning method where the student and instructor are physically present in the classroom setting (Keengwe & Kidd, 2010).In light of the disruption experienced at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic, this study was conducted to determine faculty and students' perceptions with their experience in an online teaching and learning environment.To better understand the

The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth
International Journal for Innovation Education and Research Vol. 11 No. 3 (2023), pg.80 individuals' responses regarding their perception and preferred learning modality, it was important to also understand what experience faculty and students had in an online teaching and learning environment or using remote learning technologies prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.This study focuses on the ways in which faculty and students responded to satisfaction towards technology accessibility, experience in an online teaching and learning environment prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, and students' preferred learning modality at six months from the initial phase of transitioning to fully online in late March 2020.

Methods
The

Research Setting and Participants
This study was conducted using a mixed-methods survey design.Faculty and students from Doña Ana Community College, a multi-campus college, in Las Cruces, New Mexico participated in the study.The survey was created and deployed to faculty and students via e-mail using SurveyMonkey.The response rate was calculated based on number of emails sent to faculty (447) and students (4,331) and completion rate was calculated by the number of faculty (216) and students (783) who opened the survey and divided by the number of faculty (144) and students (350) who completed them (Table 1).Sample size for this study is being determined by those who completed the survey.

Data Analysis
IBM SPSS for windows, version 21 was used to conduct statistical analyses.The quantitative pieces were analyzed using a combination of multivariate analysis (MANOVA) and descriptive statistics.The qualitative pieces were analyzed by grouping items into themes and providing a descriptive analysis.

Demographics
Faculty and students' sociodemographic information included gender, race/ethnicity, age and income per year of all faculty and students who completed the sociodemographic questions (Table 2).

Faculty experience teaching online prior to Covid-19
Faculty teaching experience ranged from no experience to six years or more (

Students' experience in online classes prior to Covid-19
The results show that the majority of students (49.3%) reported having at least 1-2 years of experience in online learning, followed by no experience in online learning (40.6%) prior to Covid-19 (

Students' preferred learning modality as a result of emergency online instruction
The majority of the students preferred in person instruction (37%) followed by hybrid (33%) and online (30%) instruction (Fig. 1).When gender was considered as part of students' preferred learning modality, (Fig. 2), the majority had a predilection for in person learning, followed by hybrid and online learning.There was statistical significance, p= <.001 between males and females who responded to preferred learning modalities.

Experience with online teaching and learning prior to the Covid-19 pandemic
The online teaching and learning literature dates back to pre-pandemic and as far back as the 70s (Keengwe & Kidd, 2010;Muller, et al., 2019).The current study asked faculty and student respondents for their experience teaching and learning online respectively to determine the level of experience in the online environment prior to the covid-19 pandemic.Faculty reported the bulk of teaching experience in an online environment between one and three years (38%) and six or more years (34%).Students on the other hand, reported their experience in an online environment prior to the covid-19 pandemic as no experience (41%) or one to two years of experience (49%).In this study, the majority of students were under the age of 24 (52.4%) and out of those, 44% were under the age of 21 which is similar to those reported by (Nambiar, 2020).This is important because the majority of students who were enrolled at the time of the pandemic and when emergency online instruction took place, reported no experience with online instruction.One assumption made by the author was that although there is a belief that students under the age of 24 are tech savvy, those skills were not translating to the use of technology in an online academic environment or that there was a lack of technology available to students in the academic environment prior to entering college.Other authors (Gilbert, Morton, & Rowley, 2007) have also explored the student experience with online learning and found that students' elearning [pre-pandemic] may have not been as well defined and studied, thus, concluding that students expectations of the online learning environment were not well documented and the use of online resources was dependent on each students' expectations individually (Gilbert, Morton, & Rowley, 2007).

The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth
International

Students' preferred learning modality
This study has uncovered students' preferred learning modality at the time of emergency online instruction.Interestingly, students expressed that they preferred face to face instruction, followed by hybrid, and online.Nambiar, 2020 also reported students' better satisfaction with in person instruction when compared to online learning.The results on learning modality preference, i.e., face to face first, may reflect student's hesitation or the struggles faced with the immediate switch to online instruction when most students reported very limited experience with online instruction.
The majority of faculty also reported limited online teaching experience which made it difficult for students and faculty to readily accept the online transition.In some disciplines, such as the health sciences and

Perceived opportunities as a result of emergency online instruction
This study, like many other studies (Adnan & Anwar, 2020; Al-Balas, et al., 2020; Ali, 2020; Daniel, 2020; Nambiar, 2020) have explored and identified the challenges with emergency online instruction and online learning during the covid-19 pandemic.However, this study also provides a perspective on the possible opportunities as a result of the emergency online teaching and learning (Table 5 and 6).Other studies have not reported faculty and students' perceptions and the perceived benefits brought forth by the covid-19 pandemic, specifically, the emergency online teaching period.Both faculty and students felt that better preparedness and understanding of the online and hybrid environment would be a benefit past the emergency period.

2. 3 Questionnaire
The 15 questions included in this study were a mix of 4 point Likert scale, multiple choice and open ended.Faculty and Students were asked five questions to inquire about their overall satisfaction and comfort level with online teaching and learning and the overall support with the use of technology.In addition, faculty were asked the number of years they had been teaching and years teaching online.Students, were asked the years of experience they had taking online classes and to select the learning modality (online, face to face,The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growthhybrid) they preferred for learning.Additionally, two open ended questions were asked of each group to determine what challenges they encountered during emergency online learning and what opportunities they foresee coming out of the emergency online learning experience.

3. 5 Figure 3 Figure 2 .
Figure3below, shows the reported satisfaction levels of students and faculty with online instruction and the support received during and after the transition to online learning as a result of the covid-19 pandemic.A MANOVA was conducted to determine differences in level of satisfaction.Statistical differences were found between faculty and students Wilk's Λ= .851,F (7,428) = 10.721,p= <.001.

4 . 3
other career technical professions, hybrid instruction was pertinent and better accepted because it allowed students to receive online didactic instruction and in-person hands on instruction to satisfy the course completion requirement and degree plans.These findings are also supported in other studies (Al-Balas, et al., 2020;Mukhatar, et al., 2020) that reported advantages of using hybrid instruction in areas where online instruction alone was not able to adequately replace the hands on learning and procedural skills.The continuation of online instruction during the Covid-19 pandemic has shown to be less effective in countries that lack the infrastructure to sustain online teaching and effective students' interactions in an online environment(Yuhanna, et al., 2020;Irawan Andi Wahyu & Lestari, 2020;Mukhatar, et al., 2020).Prior to the covid-19 pandemic, there was a robust body of research that indicated the need for better infrastructure and preparedness(Ekmekci & Bergstrand, 2010) to support online learning and other types of teaching modalities(Keengwe & Kidd, 2010).The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth Faculty and students' perceptions/satisfaction towards the use of technology as a result of emergency online teaching and learning during the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic.The study provided insight to faculty and students' level of satisfaction while both groups were managing the transitions to online teaching and learning during first 6 months of the pandemic (Al-Balas, et al., 2020; Ali, 2020; Daniel, 2020).Although the study was conducted in a U.S. community college, it does echo the challenges institutions worldwide faced when moving to online instruction as an emergency mitigation strategy to curve the spread of covid-19 and ensure the continuation of instruction (Ali, 2020;(Gonzalez, et al., 2022;Lassoued, et al., 2020).Faculty in the present study, reported better overall satisfaction levels in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and assistance they received as compared to students.Both, faculty and students also reported higher comfort levels with the use of technology prior to the covid-19 pandemic.Furthermore, faculty and students' lowest mean satisfaction was reported on the perceived quality of instruction received as a result of the emergency online teaching and learning, which aligns with the perceived level of support they received during this period of online teaching and learning and the overall satisfaction with the use of technology available.Other studies show similar findings that have uncovered faculty(Hassan, et al., 2020;Nambiar, 2020) and students' dissatisfaction with the lack of available technology, for example, poor internet connections, cost of internet, lack of remote learning platforms, and the lack of infrastructure available to support teaching and learning in an online environment (Adnan & Anwar, 2020; Al-Balas, et al., 2020; Ali, 2020; Almendingen, et al., 2021; Hassan, et al., 2020; Lassoued, et al., 2020; Mukhatar,et al., 2020).These findings also support the idea that although institutions in countries like The United States of America may have better access to technology in comparison to developing countries, the covid-19 pandemic uncovered the lack of preparedness among educational institutions worldwide, despite previous recommendations from the H1N1 pandemic to be agile and ready for the next pandemic to come (Ekmekci & Bergstrand, 2010).
Similar to findings reported in a pre-pandemic study, faculty felt that the amount of work required to prepare an online or hybrid course requires more work and responsibility than the traditional (face to face) learning modality (Keengwe & Kidd, 2010).Another theme seen in both the faculty and student samples was the need to embrace and incorporate current and new technologies to improve teaching and learning and reach students regardless of their ability to attend classes in person or online; better training for faculty and students (Keengwe & Kidd, 2010) and a better understanding that "technology alone does nothing to enhance online pedagogy" (Keengwe The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth

19998 2.1 Research Questions
study was reviewed and approved by the New Mexico State University IRB, which oversees research protocols for Doña Ana Community College.Approval #

Table 1 .
Faculty and Students' Survey Response and Completion Rates

The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth
International Journal for Innovation Education and Research Vol. 11 No. 3 (2023), pg.82

Table 3 )
. Multivariate analysis showed between subjects' statistical significance between age and years teaching, Wilk's Λ= .849,F (10,328) = 2.774, p= .003.When faculty years teaching and age were compared, statistical significance was shown, p=<.001 between those in the age group 25-43 and 35-49; 25-34 and 50 and over, and p=.050 for those 35-49 and 50 and over.Teaching online and age were significant p= .017 in the age group 25-43 and 35-49 and p=.008 for those 25-34 and 50 and over.

The Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth
International Journal for Innovation Education and Research Vol. 11 No. 3 (2023), pg.84

Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth
International Journal for Innovation Education and Research Vol. 11 No. 3 (2023), pg.85 3.

Table 5
below represents a summary of the most commonly identified faculty themes to two open ended questions comparing the challenges experienced during emergency online instruction and opportunities they foresee coming out of the emergency online instruction.Table6represents the students' themes to the same open ended questions asked of faculty on Table5.
instructionLack of computers for students to access school Better understanding on how to successfullyThe Perils

of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth
International Journal for Innovation Education and Research Vol. 11 No. 3 (2023), pg.86

Q1. What major challenges have you encountered with emergency online learning? Q2. What opportunities do you foresee coming out of the emergency online learning?
Lack of help from professorsAbility to take classes online and care for children at the same time Finding the right place at home to join zoom Stronger time management skills The

Perils of Emergency Online Instruction, Students' Preferred Learning Modality & Opportunities for Growth
International Journal for Innovation Education and Research Vol. 11 No. 3 (2023), pg.87 Alexander, et al., 2009;Almendingen, et al.,focusing on faculty and students' perceptions with their experience in the online environment have uncovered that the main struggle with online learning at present times is the lack of infrastructure to support teaching and learning and the lack of preparation to transition courses from in person to online delivery (Al-Balas, et al., 2020;Alexander, et al., 2009;Almendingen, et al., Journal for Innovation Education and Research Vol. 11 No. 3 (2023), pg.88