However, this digital push for making e-contents for language classes for adult university students was not an easy task in times of coronavirus-induced lockdown. As a result, during the pandemic, inevitably, an increasing number of universities implemented a technology-based learning system for the continuation of their education (Aghakhani & Shalbafan, 2020 Sahi et al., 2020) and, as a result, constructing qualitative e-contents became the main focus for many educational institutions. This was a double burden for developing countries in terms of both e-learning infrastructure and culture, which were deeply challenged.
Overnight, educators had to learn how to develop, edit, and upload their multimedia content on the new platforms launched, as well as meeting and conducting classes over the Internet. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a diverse range of e-learning designs and platforms, as well as adjustments in teaching delivery (Rose, 2020 Karimian et al., 2021). It seems that in the situation of pandemics and lack of access to students, faculty members in terms of structural and cognitive dimensions have been able to develop satisfactory e-content in a short and intensive time, but it is necessary to be motivating, interactive, and up-to-date. In addition, the differences were significant concerning age, gender, degree, type of digital device, and the faculties. Among the dimensions of e-content quality, physical design, cognitive design, ease of use, and flexibility had a score higher than the cut-off point but the score of the affective design was less. Despite the limitations of e-content development by teachers, students had a satisfactory perception overall. Data were analyzed using SPSS 22 via one-sample t-test, Independent t-test, and ANOVA.
A self-devised questionnaire including 30 items in five main domains: physical design, affective design, cognitive design (e-content organization and multimedia principles), flexibility, and ease of use was used to achieve students’ satisfaction around the quality of the e-content developed by their teachers. The survey was conducted on 610 undergraduate students of SUMS who had an English course in the first semester which was during the same time that the pandemic started.
This study tended to evaluate the quality of e-content development related to English language courses by Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS) faculties.
Universities were under pressure to provide a variety of e-learning designs during a short time, impacting the quality of the learning. There was a sudden switch to online learning approaches because of the COVID-19 pandemic.