The COVID-19 pandemic is a global phenomenon that has transformed human endeavour and inadvertently accelerated and extended online education in higher educational institutions (HEI). The abrupt shift from the traditional lecture-based classrooms to the virtual environments is the “largest unplanned educational experiment ever undertaken” (Day et al., 2021, p. 1). During this precarious time, educators had to: (i) transit to online instruction (online teaching and learning or OTL, henceforth) with little or no preparation, (ii) conduct online instruction under duress situations, and (iii) endure uncertainty about the online instruction whether it is a temporary or permanent measure (Cutri et al., 2020). For some educators, it was a matter of drawing on their online experiences, and for some, it was a new learning experience as they had very little exposure to online instruction (Had and Rashid, 2019; Azizan et al., 2020; Dew et al., 2021). Hodges et al. (2020) demonstrated that adequately planned online learning experiences are not the same as online lessons’ response during a crisis. These researchers further define online teaching practices during this pandemic as emergency remote teaching (ERT) since it contrasts with the quality of the planned online learning practices.

In general, although educators experience “forced readiness” (Cutri et al., 2020, p. 533), they were optimistic and willing to revise their teaching and learning ideas to cater to the use of technology during the pandemic. We assert that the construct of optimism might be productively considered as part of the affective domains of faculty online readiness. The COVID-19 pandemic has propelled the predicted trends of HEI future directions underscored by digital technology, active-based learning models, and lifelong learning.

Online teaching practices during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic have documented several significant findings, including hurdles accounted for by educators with the Internet connection, technology equipment, time taken to develop their teaching activities, anxiety and institutional support (Giovannella and Passarelli, 2020; Tartavulea et al., 2020; Annamalai, 2021). These studies have developed an oasis of knowledge on the strengths and barriers of going online during a precarious or tragic situation. However, limited studies are available to identify the shift in teaching practices during the pandemic after a year of experience in online teaching without a traditional lecture-based classroom. We argue that attention must be given to how educators experienced online teaching after a year of the COVID-19 pandemic, i.e., Are they progressing well? If yes, how? If not, why? And what can be done in helping them to have a better experience? Understanding educators’ teaching practices would be a solid basis to understand educators’ adaptation of teaching patterns to teaching and learning, and their measures to respond to tragic situations. Such findings could clarify the research findings–amid the challenges, what experiences motivate the lecturers to continue teaching during the pandemic.

Furthermore, there are debates and much uncertainty as to whether online teaching and learning practices offered by HEIs will be implemented in the future and to what extent the virtual learning environment will be a sustainable initiative. In these circumstances, it becomes more critical to conduct a phenomenological study on educators’ lived experiences of teaching online after a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings could assist educational authorities and institutions to understand the educators’ difficulties and potentially improve the online teaching practices. This manuscript focuses on educators in Malaysia, but the lessons learned can guide them beyond its borders, particularly in developing countries.

The current study employed hermeneutic phenomenology to explore a complex phenomenon worthy of a thorough and detailed investigation. Phenomenology is considered a unique approach with its own theoretical and philosophical approach that differs from other approaches. It is the systematic study of lived experience and its inner meanings. Hermeneutic phenomenology as a research methodology was employed to uncover the distinctiveness of individuals’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and what those experiences meant to educators. To the best of our knowledge, there is no hermeneutic phenomenological study of educators’ experience after a year of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly involving Malaysian educators. The situational aspects of the interviewees were pertinent to the investigation since the understanding of a phenomenon (i.e., educator’s online teaching and learning experiences) had to be connected with a specific context in which the phenomenon was experienced (Englander, 2012). Thus, this study yields meaningful findings and conclusions that contribute to the field and extends the literature on teacher educators’ readiness during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study seeks to address the following research question: What is it like for university educators to teach online after a year of the COVID-19 pandemic?

There is a vast difference between online teaching during the pandemic and the pre-COVID era. This is because, in the pre-COVID age, educators had sufficient time to prepare their teaching approaches, materials, and assessment. However, little time and minimum resources are available for them to teach in the virtual environment during the pandemic. Therefore, educators who lack online teaching experience are more likely to deliver their online teaching using teacher-centred approaches rather than student-centred approaches. Regarding educators’ expertise during the initial stage of online learning, Giovannella and Passarelli (2020) conducted a survey with 546 educators in a university in Italy. They reported that university educators are more negative and more pessimistic about adapting online teaching than high school teachers. Tartavulea et al. (2020) surveyed educators from 13 European countries and discovered that educators are quick and positioned in adapting to online teaching. Hjelsvold et al. (2020) conducted interviews with 22 educators in Norway who were optimistic about teaching online but reported that they lack pedagogical competence. In Turkey, Eroglu and Senol (2021) discovered that ERT was conducted using various online applications such as Zoom, YouTube, and WhatsApp. The study reported that ERT was ineffective because of the low student motivation, insufficient infrastructure, inappropriate planning and low socioeconomic status. Aladsani (2021) qualitative survey reported educators’ feelings and challenges during the transition to an online learning environment. The study reported on the effect of the local culture and the millennial generation student status on students’ engagement.

Several studies have also utilised the TPACK framework during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, Rap et al. (2020) conducted a survey to identify Chemistry teachers’ difficulties and strategies for OTL. Mohamad Nasri et al. (2020) used reflection and examined teaching experience based on the TPACK framework and suggested that students and educators need to acquire the knowledge of TPACK to ensure effective learning. A survey conducted by Rabaglietti et al. (2021) examined European teachers’ self-efficacy and reported decreased self-efficacy. The authors found that self-efficacy appeared to mediate educators’ stress and difficulties in distance learning. Another study on self-efficacy by Dolighan and Owen (2021) reported a high level of self-efficacy after the school teachers have attended additional courses for online teaching. Although these studies were related to self-efficacy, the studies were focused on high school teachers.

Generally, most of the studies reviewed above have examined studies during the initial transition to online learning. While these studies have yielded significant findings in prevalence rates, readiness, patterns of behaviours, coping strategies and causes, there is a need for more studies to provide a rich and in-depth investigation of the lived experiences of the educators. Damşa et al. (2021) indicated that studies related to educators transitioning to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic are limited. Most studies at the initial stage of online learning were focused on the quality and emergency of online learning (Hussein et al., 2020). More informed and effective online teaching is pertinent to understanding its potential.

The current study differs from previous studies related to the COVID-19 pandemic which are not designed to examine teachers’ experiences after a year. We believe that the quality of online teaching would have developed in a year, and there might be significant contributions after trial and error within a year. This gap in the literature has not gone unnoticed. Mohamad Nasri et al. (2020) have called for more in-depth qualitative studies on the TPACK framework and educators to identify why and how educators engage in specific actions and behaviours. Thus, more investigations are needed on this aspect. In recognising this, we were keen to investigate the educators’ experiences of OTL after a year of pandemic.

This study employed a hermeneutic phenomenological research design. This design is mainly used to enhance the interpretive element to elucidate assumptions and meanings in the transcribed texts of participants’ interviews where they themselves may have difficulty expressing, hence offering a rich detailed and dense description of the phenomenon under investigation (Van Manen, 2017).

In the following section, the themes that emerged are discussed. The interview excerpts are presented as original without amendments of grammar and sentence structure which is a common practice in a phenomenology to reflect the characteristics of natural data.

The themes were categorised based on the following:

This study aimed to contribute a better understanding of educators’ teaching experiences after a year of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is evident that the participants in this study have embraced the transition more thoughtfully after authentic experimental ground during the initial online practices.

It is obvious that the sudden transition during the initial stage of online learning left educators with little choice and respond purposefully to seek a solution for the immediate virtual learning (Campbell, 2020). However, the findings revealed that the educators have tried out various possibilities to overcome the challenges and contingencies with optimism. They seem to be more confident after a year of experience in online teaching. They opted for alternative solutions and managed constraints independently. Educators in this study, as suggested by Pressley et al. (2018), seem to have higher self-efficacy and are open to new teaching approaches, and are more determined to face challenges as they adapt to the online environment. With higher self-efficacy, educators have more favourable outcomes in their teaching practices because they are comfortable to scaffold and build relationships with students (Hajovsky et al., 2020). The initial research on educators’ self-efficacy during the COVID-19 pandemic suggested that many educators experienced a decrease in self efficacy due to stress (Rabaglietti et al., 2021) and burnout (Pellerone, 2021). However, the findings of the present study have provided a glimpse of positive attitudes and higher self-efficacy toward online teaching. Readiness to teach online refers to the state of preparation to teach online (Martin et al., 2019). It is for this reason that Kebritchi et al. (2017) state that sufficient time is needed to design and innovate online teaching practices and become competent and self-confident instructors (Kebritchi et al., 2017). Teachers’ positive attitude, commitment, and initiative have resulted in transforming and engaging in “pedagogical problem-solving and discovery about online teaching” (Kreber and Kanuka, 2006, p. 122).

Relating to TCK, lecturers were exposed to the realities of teaching during the pandemic. The environmental conditioning and teaching facilities can inspire their content delivery despite all the challenges. Educators were self-motivated and self-indulgent in their teaching practices during the pandemic. They have the natural tendency to shift to cloud-based storing and byte size learning. Educators’ ICT competencies are pertinent for successful online practices. Their effective use of technology tools in their teaching practices and their willingness to use online communication forms the basis of effective online teaching activities (Mukoviz et al., 2018). This implies that educators might decrease in efficacy in the new challenging demands, nevertheless, their efficacy improved over time as they learn to adapt to a new situation and take advantage of the available sources that are practical and relevant in their teaching practices (Sokal et al., 2020). Capitalising on various tools and resources (i.e., Kahoot, Google classroom, Zoom, YouTube, WhatsApp) and recognising the importance of byte size learning, the educators moved forward to the virtual environment and embraced the needs of 21st-century learning skills. Basically, the educators in this study were resourceful and utilised whatever they had to deliver their teaching. Technology tools and practices are intertwined and influence transformative potential and have the potential to initiate new practices (Damsa and Jornet, 2016). It can also be deduced that the more time the educators spend on technology tools and web resources, the higher the level of awareness of the online tools for teaching and interaction opportunities, and according to Firat and Bozkurt (2020), teachers who spend more time online are likely to have a higher level of awareness of online communication channels and interaction opportunities.

The instructors worked independently and build their confidence to think innovatively to enhance their TPK. Online Flipped classroom methods are gaining momentum during the pandemic since it provides students a lot of time and space to work on the task given before virtual face-to-face meeting. Although there is no physical proximity during the crisis, the synchronous discussion seems to be a well-studied teaching pedagogy, providing learners with pre-recorded didactic video lectures to be watched at the learner’s leisure before an in-person conference. These methods are argued to be more effective than traditional teaching methods to improve student learning performance (Hew and Lo, 2018). It is through this type of learning that educators can engage the students in interactive environments. Constructivist learning theory suggested by Vygotsky and Michael (1978) emphasised that interaction and collaboration are critical in knowledge construction. Similarly, Adedoyin and Soykan (2020) emphasised the need for education higher institutions to adapt to “constructivist, learner-centred, cooperative pedagogy” (p. 2). We conclude that the educators have attempted to create opportunities and the space for students to communicate and find solutions for problems (problem-based learning), where the learners apply new knowledge to different situations. Educators’ commitment and initiative in the domain related to TPK have emerged as a “victor ludorum amidst this chaos,” which implies that enhancing and enriching the quality of online teaching is critical during this time of crisis (Dhawan, 2020, p. 7). The effort of educators to discover available virtual resources is termed as “assemble an epistemic space” (Markauskaite and Goodyear, 2017) in which goals and needs of educators are addressed by applying and manipulating available digital resources and others expertise. The focus on TPK allowed active learning and a student-centred approach to take place. Education institutions tend to provide training in the utilisation of tools but during the pandemic, no instructors were taught on pedagogical practices or content delivery based on their disciplines (Estes, 2016). This is evident in this study as no participants mentioned training or workshops for pedagogical strategies and skills to promote students’ engagement in the virtual environment.

Technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge is also evident when asynchronous and synchronous tools were used in this study for effective teaching practices. According to Walker and Koralesky (2021), synchronous tools are more enjoyable and engaging and for participants who need encouragement. On the other hand, asynchronous tools provide more flexibility (Hodges et al., 2020). They talked about their confidence and elevated self-efficacy. Students’ peer support was evident and it acts as a change agent (Rogers, 2002) to increase professional development and to facilitate the transition to online learning.

Educators who spend more time in the online environment tend to discover online communication and interaction opportunities more effectively. Teachers who spend more time online are likely to have a higher level of awareness of online communication channels and interaction opportunities (Çınar et al., 2021). It is for this reason that Martin et al. (2019) assert that teaching online influences course design and facilitation. They need to be creative and willing to embrace changes in teaching and learning in the new normal, while discovering new possibilities and capabilities of teaching and learning (Tan et al., 2020).

The findings underscore that though technological tools are essential for online teaching practices during the pandemic, it is the non-technological factors such as pedagogical practices and content delivery that make a significant difference to engage learners. According to Mishra et al. (2020, p. 8) digital transformation is pertinent as well as developing a “curriculum that reflects the perceptible change in the content knowledge and learning experience of students as well as enables them to think critically.” The commitment and the educators’ collective agentic activities resulted in professional learning and collaboration. Adaptive teaching is considered a decisive feature of high-quality instruction (König et al., 2020). Teachers’ self-efficacy was also significant for providing task differentiation. These findings correspond with research that emphasises the importance of teacher competence in successfully attaining relevant educational goals (Kaiser and König, 2019).

Figure 1 illustrated the TPACK–self-efficacy component and the emerging themes in each domain.

What is still missing after a year of online teaching is PCK. PCK relates to teaching specific content. Educators in this study are more focused on getting their TCK, TPK, and TPACK. More effort is needed to focus on specific content (PCK). Since TCK and TPK have been established, more time and effort need to be prioritised to enhance PCK. Perhaps, educators’ teamwork on how to establish pedagogical practices in their subject matter is necessary. It is pertinent for educators to know the appropriate teaching approaches/pedagogical practices for their subject matter for effective learning to take place.

This study contributes to our understanding that when educators are given more time to experiment with their teaching practices, they are more positive and ready to teach online. In other words, the more online learning experience teachers have, the readier they are for e-learning. Therefore, opportunities for an authentic experience with online teaching is beneficial in developing online teaching pedagogical skills. The findings point to endeavours in fostering educators’ competencies when it comes to online learning and not confined to general technology skills.

This study which is framed in a particular time (i.e., after a year of the pandemic) should encourage more studies involving different perspectives and contexts to further develop knowledge on how educators respond to changes caused by pandemic. Researching an ongoing pandemic is not static. By the time the present study makes it to publication, the realities of the world will change drastically. As such, it is crucial to remember, as Austin (2020) points out, “quality research of any kind takes time” (p. 9). Last but not least, we recognise the limitation of the present study, which other researchers may want to address in future studies. A large-scale survey or a mixed-method approach from different universities in Malaysia, which may reflect the scenario of overall OTL in the Malaysian universities should be considered by future researchers.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

NA designed the study and wrote the manuscript. RA, OA-S, BY, and HS helped in editing and adding more information to enhance the quality of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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