Educators' perceptions of students' and teachers' performance in virtual classrooms (COVID-19)

Abstract

Background: There are various models out there to describe didactic performance in higher education. More recent studies point to the idea that instructors and students lean on functionally matched talents, and abilities during those classroom moments, so they end up constructing the didactic performance inter-behavioral model. This is a substantive theoretical framework, it is tied to the graduate students’ subjective views on teaching and learning, more or less like “how it feels” from within. Objective: The goal was to test the didactic performance inter-behavioral model. It really stresses self-assessment of abilities, recognizing prior learning, using examples, promoting active participation, doing coaching-based practice monitoring, and staying open to constructive feedback. We also wanted to see whether there are sex-based differences in the criteria that students mention for perceived teacher and student performance, especially in an online postgraduate education setting. Method: A total of 310 students were recruited from a standard master programme in the Sciences of Education. They filled in two self-report questionnaires through Google Forms. These tools looked at attitudes toward online education, and also how participants perceived teacher and student performance. Then, six variables that represent teacher and student success were run through confirmatory factor analysis using LISREL 8. Finally, we checked convergent validity and divergent validity of both questionnaires, basically to see if there is empirical backing for the model. Result: Statistically significant sex differences came up for only two out of six variables. The instructor “Illustration” criterion stood out, and it leaned toward males, while the student “Application” criterion leaned toward females. For distance-education students, the two most often picked were “Explicitness of criterion” and “Illustration” as the main instructor performance things. In self-evaluation, students placed “criterion identification” at the top, then almost right behind it came “feedback-improvement”. When confirmatory analysis and validity checks were done across both questionnaires, they supported the theoretical pattern of the didactic performance inter-behavioral model. Conclusion: The didactic performance inter-behavioral model is backed by the data and works as a valid structure for describing teacher–student interaction in higher education. Overall views about performance were quite similar between sexes, with only a few limited exceptions in illustrative teaching and applied learning behaviors. Taken together, these results endorse self-assessment tools that are grounded in this model for gauging didactic performance in online higher education.