Digitalization of Higher Education Around the Globe During Covid-19

E-learning is an evolutionary concept, not a revolutionary concept since it has been introduced and practiced in previous decades as well. The current research paper contributes to educational research based on the investigation of holistic perspectives of the ongoing online teaching activities during the lockdown period. The article is built on a literature review. The methodologies are described and the results are presented. There have been research on distant learning and digitalization, but mostly in terms of potential, obstacles, and student assessments, as well as their influence on education. There are no empirical research on the worldwide trend of how employees utilize e-learning resources to determine instructors' interest in and attitudes about using them. This chasm is also regarded a new angle of empirical research that uses the Chi-square test of independence to find patterns. The present research aims to build a realistic instrument that can assess instructors' attitudes about e-learning during COVID-19 with this purpose in mind.The paper consists of two parts: a literature review and statistical analysis. The research was conducted by means of a diagnostic opinion CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interview) questionnaire and statistical analysis. This study was conducted among 342 teachers working in various universities located in the following countries: Poland, Pakistan, Iraq, USA, UK, Germany, and Austria. The questionnaire consisted of 20 questions. The researchers provided a detailed overview of e-learning practices during the pandemic and its future prospects from the teacher's point of view. The goals of this article and the research problems are to learn about the worldwide trend of how employees utilize e-learning resources, to identify teachers' interests in and attitudes towards using e-learning resources throughout the globe, and to recommend opportunities for workers to use e-learning resources around the world, which is a very important issue, especially in the era of globalization, society 5.0, and industry 4.0. The authors also proposed a Chi-square statistical analysis to check whether there exists a relationship between two variables based on which the hypotheses were formulated. The results of the study clearly show that the respondents approach to e-learning was very responsible because they realized that it was up to them to properly convey knowledge. The results of empirical research show that the digitalization of education is no longer a future trend, but today's trend or even a university standard in the education improvement direction.

Automated summary

E-learning has been introduced and practiced for decades, but there is a lack of empirical research on how employees utilize e-learning resources and instructors' attitudes towards them. This study contributes to educational research by investigating online teaching activities during the lockdown period and aims to build a realistic instrument to assess instructors' attitudes about e-learning during COVID-19.