E-Learning: An Implication of Covid-19 Pandemic for the Teaching and Learning of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun State’s Tertiary Institutions

The covid-19 pandemic has significantly brought a lot of challenges and innovations to the educational sector. This study, therefore, examined the level of adoption of e-learning as an implication of the Covid-19 pandemic for teaching and learning of Arabic (ARA) and Islamic Studies (ISS) in Ogun State's tertiary institutions that offer either one or the two twin courses using descriptive survey research design. The population comprised all thirty-four (34) lecturers of the twin disciplines in the five (5) Ogun State’s tertiary institutions where the courses are offered. All the lecturers constituted the study sample using total enumeration sampling techniques. Findings from the study revealed relatively high knowledge of e-learning tools among the lecturers of ISS and ARA (A.W.M. = 2.91 > Criterion Mean of 2.50). However, this study also indicated that their levels of utilization were abysmally low (A.W.M. = 2.20 < Criterion Mean of 2.50). It was also found out that several challenges such as poor ICT knowledge of lecturers and students, lack of gadgets and poor network among others are barriers (A.W.M. = 3.06 > Criterion Mean of 2.50). This study concluded that to be more effective and efficient, Arabic and Islamic Study lecturers should further develop and improve their competency in using ICT resources for e-learning during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. It is recommended that Arabic and Islamic studies lecturers be proactive in acquiring sound functional digital knowledge to remain relevant in the profession.


Introduction
Coronavirus (Covid-19) is a disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome Corona Virus 2 (SAS COV-2). It is said to be a common thing in certain birds and animals, such as, bats and cattle which can be transmitted to human beings. It is believed by some experts in health that the current type of coronaviruses likely originated in bats or pangolins (Agbele & Oyelade, 2020). The first case of coronavirus emanated from Wuhan, China in December 2019 from where it sporadically spread across the world. While the first case in African continent was reported in Egypt on the 14th of February 2020, the first index case in Nigeria was reported by Nigerian Ministry of Health on the 27th of February, 2020. An Italian man who works in Nigeria and came back from Milan, Italy to Lagos, Nigeria on the 25th of February, 2020, was the first person who brought the virus to the country (Maclean & Dahir, 2020).
The increase in the number of infected people worldwide was announced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare the virus as a global pandemic challenge. Pandemic is a disease that penetrates all regions and continents (Agbele & Oyelade, 2020). To contain the spread of Covid-19, severe measures were taken by the various governments in the world. These include shutting down educational institutions and airports, maintaining physical/social distance, wearing nose cover/face guards, frequent washing of hands with soaps, and applying hand sanitizer.
Almost all sectors of the globe, such as political, economic, financial, religious, educational institutions, felt and are still feeling the impact of lockdown occasioned by the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic (Owusu-Fordjour, Koomson & Hanson, 2020). The effects of the pandemic on educational institutions cannot be overemphasized in the world, particularly in underdeveloped and developing nations. The fact that cannot be denied is that numerous existing academic challenges had not been addressed before Covid-19 Pandemic (UNICEF, 2020). The number of children out of school was more than 250 million while almost more than 700 million adults were also illiterates (UNESCO, 2020). More so, no less than 386 million or 56 percent of primary school age children in the world were said to have a deficiency in reading skills. In the early 2020 that the financial gap to achieve one of the Sustainable Development Goals (i.e. quality education) in underdeveloped and developing countries was a staggering of not less than $147 billion annually (UNESCO, 2020).
Owing to the negative effect of Covid-19 pandemic, the budget of education sectors was cut down, international education has been reduced, local and international conferences were canceled, exams were suspended, teaching and learning activities were disrupted; institutions of learning were under lock and key for almost seven months and many workforces in educational institutions and others were lost (Jacob, Abigeal & Lydian, 2020). The period has caused an unprecedented largest disruption of education in human history while having a nearly universal impact on learners and teachers worldwide from pre-primary through tertiary. By mid-April 2020, ninety four present (94%) of learners were globally affected by COVID-19 pandemic, representing 1.58 billion children and youth, from pre-primary to higher education, in two hundred (200) countries in the world (UNESCO, 2020).
The negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the African continent, particularly on the economy and education, cannot be overemphasized. In fact, the pandemic period was a typical example of times when conventional teaching paradigms could not be effective due to a measure of social/physical distancing which could not allow students and teachers to interact physically (UNESCO, 2020). Even though before the lockdown, a myriad of barriers had been inhibiting the effectiveness of Nigeria's educational sector ranging from inadequate and irregular training of teachers, lack of infrastructure, among others, the nation still had to effect lockdown while clamoring for social/ physical distancing to contain the spread of the virus.
Consequently, all educational administrators in Nigeria, especially in higher institutions of learning, such as, colleges of education, polytechnics, and universities, were directed to adopt Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools (such as Google classroom, Zoom, Telegram, etc.) for online teaching and learning to resist educational stagnancy (Nlebem, 2020). This, therefore, implies that in a large sense, Covid-19 does not only bring hardship and challenges to the world but also opportunities and innovations to improve the entire globe and particularly the teaching and learning process (Agbele & Oyelade, 2020). These opportunities create avenues to explore different ICT platforms that promote effective sourcing and online delivery of learning materials.
Electronic learning is a new way of teaching and learning through the use of electronic media, such as internet-based learning material. It is more a means of transforming the existing learning process in schools or colleges into a digital form which is facilitated by internet technology. Elearning is defined as the self-paced or real-time delivery of educational instructions/materials to the learners through different web techniques (Li, Lau, & Dharmendran, 2009;Liao & Lu, 2008). It allows learners to study educational material through online computers network in their places without necessarily attending physical classroom.
Observation has shown that adoption of e-learning to keep teaching and learning alive in Nigeria educational institutions as directed by the governments during the lock down has far reaching implications for educational process in the country. Its importance cannot be overemphasized since it allows the teacher to teach a large number of students simultaneously and conveniently (Sahu, 2020). It also helps create a collaborative and interactive learning environment where students can give their immediate feedback, ask questions, and learn interestingly (Agbele & Oyelade, 2020). Some of the global and widely used platforms by most Nigerian lecturers for eteaching and learning include Whatsapp, Telegram, Zoom, Google meet, YouTube, Skype, Facebook, and so on.
Like every other field of studies in Nigeria, Arabic and Islamic Studies, as twin recognized teaching subjects/courses in the Nigerian educational system from pre-Primary through Universities levels of education also have their own peculiars problems even before the challenges of Covid-19 (Surakat & Olaniyi, 2016;Folorunsho, 1997). However, the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic has intensified the need to utilize e-learning facilities for effective delivery of the learning contents of these twin subjects by the lecturers to the learners. Zaidi and Hoque (2019) observed that applying e-learning platforms using various ICT tools for teaching and learning Arabic and Islamic studies has proven to be effective and positively impact students' performance.
However, despite all these apparent advantages of e-learning adoption in the teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic studies, its utilization is relatively too low among the lecturers of the two subjects in Nigeria. This may not be unconnected with factors, such as, lack of required ICT skills by teachers, inadequate provision of modern teaching and learning infrastructures by the concerned authorities, poor network service, low network bandwidth and failure of all other stakeholders to be alive to their responsibilities (Uzodimma, 2007).
Against this background, this paper aims to examine e-learning as an implication of Covid-19 pandemic for teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic studies in higher institutions of learning using Ogun State tertiary institutions as a case study. This is to identify likely challenges, innovations, opportunities and suggesting pragmatic approaches for effective teaching and learning of the twin disciplines to meet the contemporary education and learning realities.

Research Questions
This study provided answers to the following research questions: (1) To what extent are the Arabic and Islamic Studies lecturers in Ogun states tertiary institutions aware of e-teaching and learning model?
(2) How effective is the utilization of e-teaching and learning model among lecturers of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun states tertiary institution?
(3) What are the challenges facing effective utilization of e-learning platforms in teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic studies in Ogun states tertiary institutions?
(4) What are the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for teaching and learning Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun state's tertiary institutions?

Research Design
The descriptive research design of a survey type was adopted for this study.

Population
The population of this study comprised all thirty-four (34) lecturers of Arabic and Islamic Studies in all the five (5) tertiary institutions in Ogun state that offer either one or the two courses.

Sample and Sampling Techniques
The sample consisted of all the thirty-four (34) Arabic and Islamic Studies lecturers in Ogun State tertiary institutions using the total enumeration sampling technique.

Research Instrument
A self-designed validated questionnaire was used to collect data for this study. The instrument contained items on the set objectives and research questions for this study viz: knowledge, utilization and challenges militating against effective utilization of e-learning platforms by Arabic and Islamic lecturers to teach the courses,

Validity of Research Instrument
To ensure the validity of the questionnaire, a draft copy of the research questionnaire was given to experts in the field of Arabic and Islamic studies and Educational technology for necessary International Journal of Social Learning (IJSL) corrections and to ensure its content and construct validity before it was administered to the respondents.

Reliability of Research Instrument
Reliability is the degree of consistency between independent measurements of the same phenomenon. Thus, the reliability of the research questionnaire was determined using the test-retest method. The data gathered was further subjected to Cronbach alpha's reliability testing, which gave a reliability co-efficient of 0.75, thereby making the instrument reliable.

Method of Data Collection
An online version of the validated questionnaire was created using the Google Doc platform. The links to the questionnaire were sent by the researcher to the different whatsapp groups containing all the lecturers (NATAIS). Also, face to face administration was done in some cases with the help of three trained research assistants. Out of the 34 questionnaires, only 30 were returned and found valid for analysis.

Method of Data Analysis
The data collected from the respondents were collated and analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts, simple percentages, charts and weighted means. were between 45-54 years, 16.2% were 54 years and above while the remaining 7.3% were below 35 years of age. This indicated that majority of the respondents were between ages 35-44 years.   above reveals that 4% of the respondents possessed first degree, 71.4% had master's degree while the remaining 24.6% were Ph.D holders. This indicated that the majority of the respondents were master's degree holders. Figure 4 above reveals that 36% of the respondents were from the University while 74.0% were from Colleges of Education. This indicated that the majority of respondents were from the colleges of education Figure 5 above reveals that 3.3% of the respondents were assistant lecturers, 30% were lecturer III, 6.6%, lecturer II, 6.7%, lecturer I, 26.7%, Senior Lecturer, 3.3% were principal lecturers, 10% were chief lecturers, 6.7% were an associate professor. In comparison, the remaining 6.7% were professors. This indicated that the majority of the respondents were Lecturer III

Research Question One
To what extent are the Arabic and Islamic Studies lecturers in Ogun states tertiary institutions aware of the use e-teaching and learning model?
Results from table 2 revealed that: 100% of the respondents agreed that live-video conferencing tool can be used to deliver lecture to students, 83.3% agreed that online teaching and learning applications are good means of educational instruction, 100% agreed that social media outlets with or without lives streaming can be used for teaching and learning, 100% agreed that video made by the institution can be circulated to students online while 90% agreed that Private distribution of self-made videos is also an effective teaching and learning mode. Also, results on the respondents' knowledge of different types of online teaching platforms indicate thus: Whatsapp Generally, the average weighted mean value of 2.91 is higher than the criterion of mean 2.50. Therefore, it could be deduced that Arabic and Islamic Studies lecturers in Ogun state's tertiary institutions had a relatively good knowledge of electronic teaching and learning tools for Arabic and Islamic Studies.

Research Question Two
How effective is the utilisation online teaching and learning model among lecturers of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun states tertiary institutions? Results from table 3 indicated that: 60% of the respondents agreed that they could make use of the different electronic platforms for teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic studies; 30.0% were conversant with the use of other computer applications to create learning materials for e-learning; 23.3% can set up their classroom environment using different online learning platforms; 36.6% were capable of controlling the learning activities going on when I teach using e-learning platforms while 46.7% could make use of e-learning platforms effectively to connect with experts to teach some contents in Arabic and Islamic Studies.
The bar chart below presented results on how effective Arabic and Islamic Studies lecturers in Ogun states tertiary institutions could utilize different electronic learning platforms.

Figure 9: Bar Chart showing different types of electronic learning platforms utilized by lecturers of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun states tertiary institution
Figure 9 above shows that out of the nine (9) electronic learning platforms identified in this study, Whatsapp was commonly used by the lecturers (76.6%), this is followed by Zoom (46.7%), Youtube (36.7%), Telegram (36.6%), Google meet and Facebook both had (30.0%), Skype (23.4%), Seesaw (10.0%) while none of the respondents reported using Edmodo.
Consequently, the average weighted mean value of 2.20 is lower than the criterion of mean 2.50. This, therefore, indicated that lecturers of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun states tertiary institutions were less effective in utilization of electronic platforms in teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic Studies.

Research Question Three
What are the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for teaching and learning Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun state's tertiary institutions?   Results from table 4 revealed that 93.3% of the respondents agreed that the lecturers' inadequate information and communication technology skills affect their use of the available elearning platform. 76.6% held that poor ICT skill level of students of Arabic and Islamic studies affects the utilisation of e-learning platforms for teaching and learning Arabic and Islamic studies. 100.0% agreed that epileptic power supply also affects the effective use of electronic gadgets for e-learning. Furthermore, 73.3% agreed that poor network from service providers affects the effective delivery of lectures through electronic platforms.
In the same vein, 40.0% opined that lack of funds to buy necessary gadgets and accessories for e-learning also affects teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic studies. 90.0% opined that unavailability of Wi-Fi and internet access inside the school premises affects effective use of elearning platforms by Islamic Studies lecturers. Finally, 83.3% agreed that poor support from the government in providing essential technological gadgets like laptops and modems to the lecturers affects utilization of e-learning platforms.
Consequently, the average weighted mean value of 3.06 is higher than the criterion of mean 2.50. Therefore, this indicated that a series of challenges are facing effective utilisation of online platforms in teaching and learning Arabic and Islamic studies in Ogun states tertiary institution.

What are the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic for teaching and learning Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun state's tertiary institutions?
Results from table 5 revealed that 53.3% of the respondents agreed that they were able to adopt different computer applications for preparing course materials for their students during the covid-19 lockdown. Also, 73.3% held that they mastered using some e-learning media to continue the class lessons with their students during the covid-19 lockdown. Furthermore, 100.0% agreed that covid-19 lockdown afforded them more opportunities for self-development through exposure to personal training from online platforms. However, only 30.0% agreed that The students effectively participated in the online classes during the covid-19 lockdown. Finally, 43.4% opined that the students improved academic performance after attending online courses during the pandemic.
Consequently, the average weighted mean value of 2.68 is higher than the criterion of mean 2.50. This, therefore, indicated that to some extent, Covid-19 pandemic had relatively high positive implications for the teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun state's tertiary institutions.

Discussion of Findings
This study revealed a relatively high knowledge of different electronic teaching and learning tools for Arabic and Islamic Studies among lecturers of the disciplines in Ogun state's tertiary institutions with a low average weighted mean  The students showed improved academic performance after attending online classes during the pandemic.  Petrie (2020) that some of the online platforms used for online teaching include unified communication and collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Canvas and Blackboard, which allow the teachers to create educational courses, training and skill development programs. This is also in consonance with the findings of Pokhrel and Chhetri (2021) that during the lockdown, the virtual classroom platforms like Google Hangouts Meet, Zoom, Whatsapp, Telegram and Skype can be used for teaching and learning.
Findings on research question two revealed that lecturers of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun states tertiary institutions were less effective in utilization of electronic platforms for online teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic Studies with a low average weighted mean (A.W.M) of 2.20 when compared with the criterion mean of 2.50. This is in line with Eze, Chinedu-Eze and Bello (2018) findings who discovered that most lecturers in Nigeria's higher institutions of learning do not effectively utilize e-learning facilities for online classrooms.
However, e-learning could help serve as an effective alternative to some of the learning experiences in Arabic and Islamic studies that have been truncated due to several challenges including the coronavirus. For instance, acculturation, as an integral part of foreign languages programs, including Arabic language, has been affected negatively due to inaccessibility to the Arabic village at Bru Ingala, Bornu State, owing to the high rate of insecurity in that country. This can be done through online learning platforms by connecting the concerned students virtually from every part of Arab countries. Also, e-learning could prove effective in teaching some contents in Islamic Studies, such as At-Tahaarah (purification) that relates to health education, which could involve seeking the service of experts for more explanation. The lecturer can connect with the resource person online while the students also join the class.
On the type of e-learning tools utilised by the Arabic and Islamic Studies lecturers, it was found that Whatsapp was commonly used by the lecturers (W.M = 2.96), this is followed by Zoom These findings are in-line with the findings of Gunga (2010) who submitted that high cost of personal computer, laptop, software, internet and the technical support, and power instability, blackout in towns and poor network connections in rural areas, are some of the problems inhibiting effective utilization of e-learning in tertiary Institutions. These findings also corroborated the findings of Baiyeri (2019) that factors such as poor infrastructure, high cost, lack of relevant skills, lack of pertinent software, limited access to the internet, inadequate electricity supply, deficit in well-equipped e-learning centres, low level of computer literacy among support staff, inadequate training of students and staff on e-learning technologies are militating against the adoption of elearning model for educational purposes.
Findings on research question four indicated relatively high implications for the teaching and learning of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Ogun state's tertiary institutions. with a high average weighted mean (A.W.M) value of 2.68 compared to the criterion mean of 2.50. However, these implications have both positive and negative dimensions. On the positive side, the lecturers improved their ICT utilisation in key aspects of their teaching such as e-lesson preparation, online delivery and personal development. This finding is in-line with the findings of On the negative side, it was discovered that majority of the students found it difficult to participate in the online class while the lecturers observed no significant academic improvement by the students after attending online class during the pandemic. This is in-line with the findings of Maclean and Dahir (2020) who found that lack of physical teaching and learning for twelve weeks (i.e. 60 school days) resulted in a loss of 6% in academic success among the students. This is also in accordance with the findings of Sahu (2020) that stuents showed low satisfaction on the performance during and after switching to online learning during the covid-19 pandemic lockdown.

Conclusion
From the preceding discussion, this study established that, to a large extent, Arabic and Islamic Studies lecturers in Ogun State tertiary institutions are aware of many ICT teaching platforms, however, the levels of utilization of the tools by the lecturers is abysmally low. They are faced with various challenges hampering them from being proficient in using ICT platforms in teaching and learning, such as lack of enabling environment and required skills. It was also revealed that Covid-19 pandemic not only brings hardship and misfortune to the world but also opportunities and good innovations that could be explored to improve the entire globe. One of its great implications, especially, for the educational industry, is the adoption of ICT platforms for effective planning, teaching and learning process. Therefore, this study concluded that to be more effective and efficient, Arabic and Islamic Study lecturers should further develop and improve their level of competency in the use of ICT resources for e-learning during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Recommendations
Based on the findings of this study, the following suggestions are recommended.
(1) Arabic and Islamic studies lecturers should be proactive in acquiring sound functional digital knowledge to remain relevant in the profession. This could be attainable through attending different online courses and webinar on the use of ICT in teaching and learning.