Parents' perceptions towards the blended e-learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic at the schools of Gaza Governorates

Abstract

The study aimed to reveal parents’ perceptions towards the blended e-learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. The researcher adopted the descriptive approach and prepared a questionnaire, which was applied to (220) parents among the Gaza governorates. The study concluded that the level of parents’ knowledge of the content of the educational materials provided for their children achieved (77.87%), and the level of their knowledge’s contribution to guiding and educating their children achieved (79.52%), and their knowledge of the content of educational materials contributed to facilitating their children’s education and proficiency at a level of (77.39%). Further, (61.4%)  of the parents agreed that the schools followed a specific timetable in teaching learners, where the level of appropriateness of the schedule was (59.42%), and it was found that the level of teachers' commitment to the timetable for organizing the learning process is (61.45%). Parents also agreed with a percentage of (92.27%) that the schools had used communication tools, as the communication tools were safe by (72.08%), and the level of teachers' commitment to using them amounted to (70.92%), with a diversity level of (66.28%). Also, the study asserted that the schools used specific and clear assessment tools to verify learners' learning by (66.38%), and parents believed that the assessment process was appropriate and related to educational materials with a rate of (64.83%). In addition, the schools provided an answer key to verify the children's answers and identify their educational challenges by (64.06%). The most prominent challenges that parents faced in blended e-learning were the technical challenges in the first rank with relative weight (36.57%), then the academic challenges with relative weight (30.74%), followed by the hardware challenges with relative weight (13.27%), then challenges related to teachers with relative weight (11.97%).  At last, other challenges with relative weight (7.44%). It was also found that there were no statistically significant differences at the significance level (α ≥ 0.05) between the average estimates of the study sample members towards the blended e-learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic in Palestine due to the variables of (gender, parent’s educational level, educational district, type of school). In light of the previous results, the researcher presented a set of recommendations and suggestions.