Abstract
BACKGROUND: While online education is by no means a new concept, it was recently thrust into the spotlight after school campuses all over the world were forced to close because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sudden need to shift revealed emerging challenges to online teaching, both logistic and personal. One important challenge is the ability to assess the readiness of educators for online teaching, so that appropriate and specific feedback/training can be offered to those in need. This study aims at developing, validating, and implementing a tool to measure the teachers' readiness for online teaching in three medical schools from three different countries. METHODS: This was a multi-center, cross-sectional study that involved developing a survey through review of literature and previous studies, item development and revision, and pilot testing. The survey was then distributed electronically to a convenient sample of 217 teaching faculty members of different academic ranks from three medical schools in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability study were performed. Descriptive statistics were applied, and the statistical significance level was set at 0.05. RESULTS: Factor analysis produced the following five factors: "Online Teaching and Course Design Skills", "Digital Communication", "Basic Computer Skills", "Advanced Computer Skills" and "Using Learning Management Systems". The tool showed high reliability (alpha = 0.94). Survey results showed highest mean scores for Basic Computer Skills with lower scores for Online Teaching and Course Design Skills and Using Learning Management Systems. ANOVA revealed statistically significant differences between the three studied schools regarding Digital Communication (F=5.13; p=0.007) and Basic Computer Skills (F=4.47; p=0.012) factors. CONCLUSION: The tool proved to be reliable and valid. Results indicated an overall acceptable readiness in the three involved schools, with a need for improvement in "Online Teaching and Course Design" and Using Learning Management Systems.