The delivery mode of teaching has drastically changed due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic for it has mandated online teaching at all levels of education including university level education. That has brought along considerable challenges to university teachers as the ones who have not experienced online teaching before have been caught unprepared for it. In the face of the pandemic, university teachers have offered their courses through teaching a/synchronously, giving assignments and/or having students carry out projects. As well as university teachers, university students, used to receiving face-to-face teaching, have experienced difficulties in getting accustomed to online teaching.
The necessity of adapting to online education has come along with attending online lessons on the part of university students. Even if it could be alleged online lessons would lead to more student attendance due to joining them in the comfort of their rooms, it might not be the case in several contexts, one of which is that of the present study. The researcher realized that there was a low level of student attendance to the synchronous online lessons she taught, and therefore, she decided to probe the reasons behind it from the standpoint of the students who did not attend them, and that of the students who joined them regularly. The absence of research on what this research aims to investigate indicates the significance of this study and the findings to be presented could be taken into account by university teachers teaching in diverse contexts in the process of designing of their online lessons and encourage them to explore why there is low level of student attendance to synchronous online lessons and how to increase it.