Faculty’s transformational digital teaching experiences during the pandemic

Online learning affects students, instructors, and higher education administration differently. The 24/7 access to course materials, the flexibility of attendance and schedules, increased access to up-to-date information and resources, an abundance of multimedia, availability of open educational resources, and the development of mobile technology are named as significant benefits of online education for both faculty and students (Allen & Seaman 2017; Anderson, 2004; Chute et al., 1999; Colak, 2018). With all the benefits, fewer than 50% of instructors embrace digital strategies. The valid reasons for such avoidance include the need for different set of competencies and proficiencies required for successful online teaching as well as lack of adequate preparation, lack of administrative structures and policies, pressure from the administration, perceived lack of course interactions, perceived lack of quality, the increased amount of preparation time, inability to sustain academic rigor of online courses, legal issues such as accessibility and copyright, lack of instructor compensation, among others. The ability to transition to online teaching came to the forefront in Spring 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty had to adopt digital pedagogies with minimum time and opportunities to prepare (Lee et al., 2021; Tugend, 2020). The numerous challenges and successes of COVID- 19-mandated transition to online learning will be analyzed in this phenomenological study aiming to explore one university faculty’s transformative digital teaching experiences while transitioning to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and identify essential motivational factors, knowledge, and competencies that impacted faculty’s transition. Information can be collected through interviews exploring the views, experiences, beliefs, and motivations of individuals on a specific subject to provide a deeper understanding of phenomena (Gill et al., 2008; Silverman, D, 2013). Data will be analyzed through several re-iterating coding cycles to identify the primary themes of the research. Preliminary findings will be reported