Title:Technology-Mediated Task-based Instruction During COVID-19: A Case
Study from Higher Education in Morocco
Volume: 2
Author(s): Abdellah El Boubekri*Marilyn Lewis
Affiliation:
- Department of English Studies, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Mohammed First University, Oujda, Morocco
Keywords:
TBL, e-learning, COVID-19, teachers-centredness, technology-mediated, online learning.
Abstract:
Background: Two interests come together in this article, both from the perspectives of
teachers and students from the Department of English Studies at Mohamed First University, Morocco.
One is the extent to which Task-Based Learning (TBL) can inform educational technology.
The other related issue is the need to capitalise on the interactive connectivity of online learning in
the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic so as to reconsider the teacher-fronted classes that have
long dominated higher education. It is noticed that the sudden shift into online learning has been
accompanied by a respective perpetuation of the lecturing style; in-class lecture notes were transferred
into PDF documents to be downloaded and memorized by students.
Methods: After reviewing the relevant literature, we carried out a curriculum observation of the
university’s e-learning platform, where professors and students of the English department undertook
all their instructional and learning activities. In parallel, two questionnaires were administered.
One questionnaire was addressed to (18) professors, and the other one targeted (155) students.
In their totality, the contents of the questionnaires aim to investigate the participants’ perceptions
of the unexpected move to e-learning, including questions of affordability, usability and
methodology of presentation and application. The resultant quantitative data were used to test the
major hypothesis that online instruction in the present context lacks a methodological framework
that organizes the process of presenting and practising the assigned contents on the university’s elearning
platform.
Results: While results come as a mixture of the encouraging, the discouraging and, occasionally,
the puzzling, teacher-centeredness is certainly the unchanged aspect of this online transitioning.
With the absence of a methodological framework that informs online instruction, both students
and teachers are found to miss the interactive prospects afforded by the existing e-learning platform.
Thus, there is an imperative to reconsider the lecturing style and teacher-centredness in
post-pandemic higher education in Morocco.
Conclusion: Technology-mediated TBL methodology is proposed as a working alternative to the
lecturing style dominant in the e-learning platform in the case under research and in similar universities
elsewhere.
