Emergency Remote Teaching of Technical Drawing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Introduction

The education sector has been severely affected by the lockdowns during the pandemic period. As Asare et al. (2021) stated, the disruption on education systems around the world during Covid-19 highlighted the need for developing policies and measures in educational systems for unexpected circumstances. This paper aims to introduce and present the observations and analysis of the teaching effectiveness of the Hybrid Teaching of Drawing (HTD) framework developed and employed in a freshman Technical Drawing course during the COVID-19 pandemic period. In order to ensure the sustainability of education, all educational institutions and teachers had to employ and adapt to remote teaching methods and techniques in a very short period of time. The unexpected shift from traditional face-to-face education to online teaching during the changing circumstances of the pandemic (Mishraa et al. 2020) increased the complexity of teaching and raised various problems in students’ adaptation to new methods of teaching and learning. Therefore, instructors are in search of effective, sustainable and innovative ways of course planning, course delivery and communication with students to improve teaching effectiveness and help students’ adaptation to unexpected and unstable circumstances in education in the future.

Karakaya (2020) and Hadges et al. (2020) defined the sudden shift to alternative course delivery modes due to the changing circumstances in education as Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT). In order to cope with this sudden shift, each institution and instructor preferred to follow a different path to design an effective teaching experience that will achieve the learning outcomes of their courses. Some preferred to adapt an online teaching program within the ERT approach. Others preferred to combine online teaching with limited and controlled face-to-face teaching. The later approach is called “hybrid teaching” where physical interactions among students and instructors are decreased by integrating online communication and learning methods in the teaching process. The hybrid teaching approach has long been used in higher education in many disciplines with the rapid development in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) (Trentin and Bocconi, 2014; and Martinucci et al., 2015). It was also widely preferred in higher education in many disciplines during the pandemic period to cover the gaps faced in remote online teaching, especially in courses where implementation, experimentation, and practice are core activities in course delivery such as design and drawing studios or laboratory courses (Tang et al., 2021; Mu et al., 2021; Bustamante et al., 2022; and Al Maani et al., 2021). As the research conducted by Bamoallem and Altarteer (2022) revealed, the theoretical and lecturing part can be effective, providing flexibility to students and instructors in time and place, but the tutorials and feedback are usually preferred as being more effective in face-to-face classes in practice-based courses.

The ongoing unexpected circumstances require an update on course planning, focusing on innovative teaching methods, course content, learning outcomes, learning activities and assessment methods. System quality, course design, learner-learner interaction, learner-content interaction, and self-discipline are important in course design to motivate students and instructors to achieve learning outcomes (Suo and Guo, 2021). Instructors’ support is necessary especially for first year students to motivate and encourage them for learning and participation (Stevanovic et al., 2021). The course planning of a hybrid teaching approach needs to involve increased flexibility, accessibility and increased support for students, both in their in-class and individual learning process, according to their needs and changing circumstances. In this framework, the main activities are Studiowork (SW) in in-class learning processes and Homework (HW) in individual learning processes, where students “learn by doing” and “learn by receiving feedback” to improve their drawing skills.