Distance teaching in light of the Covid-19 pandemic - between reality and expectations

Abstract

The study aims at sheding light on the reality of distance education during the Covid-19 pandemic in Algerian universities. Researchers have used the descriptiveanalytical method by applying a questionnaire that was distributed electronically to a sample of 894 university students. In despite of all the methods and means of distance education that the ministry of higher education have provided, the results of this study showed that the remote education experiment has faced several obstacles and difficulties related to the student on a hand, and the professor on the other hand. These obstacles did not allow the goal to be totally achieved as it is the case in developed countries. In addition, the results showed that Algerian universities did not offer many options of distance teaching, such as teaching through the popular platforms (zoom and Google Meet), however they only resented the platform with no further instructions about how to use it, which according to the students ’opinions, was time-consuming; students encountered several obstacles accessing or downloading lessons. As a result the experience was summed up that online teaching in Algerian universities was ineffective, rather it was often replaced by selfeducation by many students in the end.