Attitudes and ICT Skills as Predictors in the Perspectives of Online Learning among Teaching Faculty during Pandemic-COVID

The attitudes of teacher play a great role in helping the students to get motivated and take care of the well-being of the students. The teachers’ passion, inventiveness and inclination to transfer knowledge to the students comprise their attitudes. They have direct impact on their overall teaching performance. During pandemic-COVID, the mode of education leaned on technologies which moved from the traditional classroom setting. Even before the pandemic the communication technological innovation was used in education but it got maximized during pandemic and post pandemic. Multiple challenges popped up to continue the online teaching methods. The available technologies and the new add technologies have to be utilized effectively by the teaching faculty. These depend on their attitudes, skills in ICT and perception and practice towards online teaching. The authors have studied the attitudes and the ICT skills of the teaching faculty influencing their perspectives as e-instructors and online teaching. It is assumed that the teachers’ attitudes and ICT skills have enabled the education sector to continue education and complete the academic year. The authors have used the following standardized tools for the study-Attitude Scale, ICT Skills Scale, and Perceptions and Practices of E-instructors toward Online Instruction Questionnaire (PPEOIQ). 52 teaching faculty from various institutions participated in the study. The data were collected from teaching faculty by using online Google form. Descriptive and inferential statistics-multiple regressions were used for analyzing the data. The results show that high mean at 3.16 in cognitive attitudes and behavioral attitudes at 3.08; use of ICT for teaching at 3.14 in ICT skills, and instructional design, facilitating learning, learning assessment, content expertise was above 3.00 in the perspectives. The teacher attitudes and the ICT skills are the predictors of all the dimensions of the perspectives and practices of E- learning. Moreover, the cognitive attitude, the behavioral attitude and the usage of ICT for teaching are significant in overall perspectives.