An Appraisal Look into Shielded Online Education in Covid Era: Resilience Revisited

Abstract

Education has been regarded as the backbone of human advancement in all areas of activities as the ultimate goal of education is to develop better citizens. Online Education has been known as the alternate approach to learning. The outbreak of Covid-19 virus has infected all nations in the world and debilitated all areas of human activities, hence, education was not an exception. The dominancy of online education in Iran experienced a breakthrough during Covid pandemic and like other activities, it witnessed a fragile stance, and, in a nutshell, reality was far from ideality. The present study aimed at depicting the adversities exerted during the implementation of Online Education in Covid pandemic era and the term Shielded Online Education could vividly justify online programs in higher education. Learners showed an astonishing accomplishment attending shielded fashion of online education in Iran in such a way that a new definition to the notion of resilience could be introduced. A resilience questionnaire before and after an online course in the second semester of the academic year 2020-2021 was conducted with 60 junior undergraduate EFL learners majoring at Translation in Islamic Azad University Tehran. The Resilience Questionnaire was collected from control group and the experimental one. The data obtained went through quantitative data analysis confirmed that shielded online courses outperformed significantly in enhancing the learners’ resiliency in Covid era and what was gained was far beyond what was expected. The education stakeholders, policymakers, teachers and syllabus designers could benefit from the findings of the present study which in turn could shed light on the ins-and-outs of the maneuverability aspects of better enactments of online courses through online education.