Moroccan Higher Education at the Time of Covid-19: Issues and
Challenges: A Case Study among Master Students Business
Administration at IGA Casablanca
Hassna Akhasbi
1
, Naouar Belghini
1
, Bouchaib Riyami
1
, Mohamed Benitto
1
and Nesrine Gouttaya
2
1
Institut Supérieur du Génie Appliqué (IGA), Place de la Gare Voyageur, 20300, Casablanca, Morocco
2
OFPPT, Casablanca, Morocco
Keywords: COVID-19, Higher Education, Distance Learning, Hybrid Learning, Design Thinking, Human Development,
Human Interaction.
Abstract: The year 2020 is marked by a COVID-19 that was propagated and impacted people all over the world. A total
confinement of the population was imposed in many countries. In Morocco since March 16, 2020, a state of
health emergency and confinement has been declared. The Ministry of National Education, Vocational
Training, Higher Education and Scientific Research has taken a series of measures to ensure educational
continuity. It has broadcasted online courses in synchronous/asynchronous modes. The restrictions imposed
by Covid 19 and advances in information technology (IT) raise the question of implementation of new
methods of teaching, mainly distance learning. This article presents the impact of the COVID19 pandemic
and challenges confronted by the Moroccan higher education sector. A survey was conducted among master
students (Business Administration) using an anonymous questionnaire. A thinking workshop on the Mural
software has also been implemented with a group of professors, in order to draw up a list of proposals and
recommendations. Through this research work, it has been concluded that accompanying and support should
be provided to the students so as to remedy the difficulties encountered during this period and to encourage a
use of active methods of learning.
1 INTRODUCTION
In the light of the restrictions imposed by the
pandemic and state of health emergency, the
Moroccan Ministry of National Education,
Vocational Training, Higher Education and Scientific
Research has taken a set of measures. Educational
continuity for the year 2019/2020 was ensured,
adopting a remote mode by broadcasting online
courses in synchronous/asynchronous modes.
According to Devinney and Dowling (2020), this
new dynamism will surely lead to unprecedented
changes in the education system. Claire Marin (2020)
asserts in a recent article published in the newspaper
"Le Monde" that "when faced with a catastrophe, one
is reassured by considering it as a parenthesis rather
than a warning". For Claire Marin, the experience of
the pandemic and its implications
(e.g., fear of the epidemic and confinement), have a
destructive potential at all levels (psychic, moral,
social, economic and political). They deconstruct the
foundations of society and the rules by which they
function. For the historian Françoise Hildesheimer,
pandemics have played a very important role in
societal, political, economic and sociological
developments throughout history.
Covid-19 coupled with considerable advances in
information technology have led to a revolution that
is reinventing most of the foundations already
established (Marin, 2020). Indeed, in educational
institutions, the 'contract' that is defined by the unit of
time, place and subordination is being reinvented.
Currently, new technologies make it possible to
work synchronously and asynchronously in different
contexts. The notion of place is no longer the same. It
has been mutated into new spaces. Hence, human and
professional relationships may be shaped by new
management and leadership styles.
It is only when the crisis ends that the possibility
of hindsight and reasoning about experience and
choices opens up and the degree of impact can be
measured (Hildesheimer, 2020). According to Claire
Marin (2020), during the time of pandemics, a
thousand voices and ideas are possible though they
will not have the same weight and consistency.
Akhasbi, H., Belghini, N., Riyami, B., Benitto, M. and Gouttaya, N.
Moroccan Higher Education at the Time of Covid-19: Issues and Challenges: A Case Study among Master Students Business Administration at IGA Casablanca.
DOI: 10.5220/0010438700730085
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2021) - Volume 2, pages 73-85
ISBN: 978-989-758-502-9
Copyright
c
2021 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
73
In this context, this article is a contribution to
debate and research about inventing new teaching
methods. It shares observations, recommendations
with regard to distance learning with the emphasis
laid on the following questions:
Which means to put at the disposal of the
students, in a state of health emergency?
How to maintain, outside the school wall, the
relations between administrators, teachers and
students?
How to keep and maintain the synergy of the
group between students in virtual mode?
How to ensure the professional insertion of the
young laureates in the era of Coronavirus?
To answer these questions, this contribution falls
into four parts. In the first part, we will present the
impact of the COVID19 pandemic on Moroccan
education sector. In the second part, we will explore
the new challenges facing higher education in
Morocco. The third part will be devoted to the
description of the methodology in order to present the
results obtained, their analysis and discussion in the
last part.
2 IMPACT OF COVID 19 ON THE
EDUCATION SECTOR
The COVID-19 pandemic has had several
repercussions on the economic and social sectors.
This has prompted governments around the world to
implement a series of urgent decisions to combat its
spread. They mainly imposed a total confinement,
which impacted social, economic and educational
sectors. UNESCO estimates that more than 1.5 billion
pupils and students in 165 countries are no longer in
school because of COVID-19.
The pandemic has forced the academic
community around the world to explore new methods
of teaching and learning through distance learning.
This has proved difficult for both students and
teachers, who must, not only cope with the emotional
(Béland, 2020), psychological (Wang et al, 2020) and
economic (Aissaoui and Aissaoui, 2020) difficulties
posed by the pandemic, but also do their best to adapt
to these new changes to ensure "pedagogical
continuity".
2.1 Lectures
During this pandemic, universities and colleges have
opted for online lectures in the hope of limiting the
spread of the COVID-19. Students from various
private and public higher education institutions were
obliged to follow their courses at distance. They used
several digital media: PPT presentations, Word or
PDF documents, recorded video and interactive
courses via internet platforms (university website,
Moodle, Zoom, Meet, Google Classroom, Teams,
etc.). In the light of the organizational and personal
constraints resulting from the pandemic that affected
teachers, the courses were not constructed in an
optimal way, or even in a home-made way. In
developing countries (including Morocco), the lack of
network infrastructure in rural areas has prevented
several thousand of students from pursuing programs
online.
2.2 Tutorials and Practical Works
Tutorials are a form of teaching that allows you to
apply the knowledge learned in the classroom or to
introduce new concepts. Students work individually
on application or discovery exercises in the presence
of the teacher, who intervenes to help and correct the
exercises. The tutorials are done in a small group, so
that the teacher can more easily help the students and
adapt his interventions to their difficulties.
Practical work is a type of teaching based on
practical learning with, in particular, the realization of
experiments to verify and complete the knowledge
given in the theoretical courses. Therefore, Practical
Work (TP) is considered an essential part of science
teaching and learning (Pekmez, Johnson & Gott,
2005; Abrahams & Millar, 2008; Abrahams, Reiss &
Sharpe, 2013).
In the context of distance learning, and if
dispensing of lectures and tutorials were possible
thanks to the sharing of digital media, it was more
delicate to simulate the materials virtually to carry out
practical work. In many cases, several hours of
practical work had to be cancelled.
2.3 Continuous Monitoring and
End-of-Training Exams
The objective of the tests is to evaluate the knowledge
acquired during a training period. The context of the
pandemic raises the question of the evaluation
method based on numerical scoring. This issue is of
concern during this period of crisis in the light of the
difficulty that teachers may encounter in evaluating
their students at distance (Béland, 2020). It
necessitates the obligation to rethink alternative
forms to guarantee equal opportunities for all students
and to apply measures to control and reduce fraud,
plagiarism and cheating (Béland, 2020).
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2.4 Internships and Professional
Integration
It is important for every student to obtain a first
professional experience. This contributes to the
acquisition of skills related to the discovery of the
company's context.
Thus, internships are presented as a first
experience and a means of acquiring skills,
complementary to those obtained in training. Also,
they give young graduates access to a professional
network and facilitate integration into the job market
(Vincens, 2001).
In these uncertain times, and especially for
millions of students who have to graduate during the
Covid period, they will be confronted with an
economically almost paralyzed world in certain fields
(especially tourism, transport, etc.).
In Morocco, the results of a study under the theme
"the impact of COVID-19 on the employability of
young people in Morocco" showed that 67% of
recruitments and 64% of internships were postponed
or suspended during the crisis. Only 2% of companies
plan not to suspend the recruitment of young
graduates in 2020 (medias24.com, 2020).
3 HIGHER EDUCATION: NEW
CHALLENGES AND ISSUES
3.1 Some Issues in Education 4.0
The traditional definition of a school/university is a
place where learners acquire knowledge and skills
necessary to not only integrate and evolve in the
labour market but above all to participate in the
development of nations.
The professional world has often evolved in a
rapid and often unpredictable manner. At the same
time, education has always known and followed
important evolutions and revolutions that have
marked it throughout human history. Increasingly,
questions are being asked about the content learned
and the way it is acquired and transmitted: is it
adapted to new socio-economic realities?
Moreover, could the COVID-19 pandemic be a
"godsend" for higher education in Morocco?
Certainly, the Moroccan educational landscape, and
higher education in particular, is undergoing a serious
transformation brought about by the integration of
Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) as innovative tools to improve performance
and quality, and to harmonize with international
standards. More or less lagging behind in this area,
has higher education in Morocco been able to catch
up several years of delay, moving from 1.0 to 4.0
education? And have initiatives had anything to do
with it?
In what follows, we consider higher education
under the following headings:
Education in the age of digital transformation;
Education in the Age of Industry 4.0;
Education and Generation Z.
3.1.1 Teaching in the Age of Digital
Transformation
The world that is taking shape in the 4.0 perspective
of digital transformation is reinventing the way
businesses operate virtually in every field. The
education sector has also been affected by this
transformation. Pedagogical innovations have seen
and continue to see the light of day through the use of
diverse digital resources. And, for educational
institutions as for businesses in other sectors, the
digital transformation is taking place at the strategic
and organizational levels as well as at the human and
technological levels.
All companies today have become aware that they
have entered a new civilization in which digital
technology is transforming the way they produce,
exchange, consume and communicate. The most
informed are now looking to better understand and
align themselves with the challenges of this new
civilization characterized by the emergence of new
players, new powers, and new forms of knowledge,
innovative business models and new managerial
skills (Dejoux and Léon 2018).
Digital competencies consist in developing the
competence that includes a multitude of transversal
skills traditionally associated with the following
literacy: media, technological, informational, visual
and social communication skills. Within the
International Society for Technology (ISTE), digital
competencies are equated with digital literacy, which
is based on: creativity and innovation, communication
and collaboration, information retrieval skills, critical
thinking, problem solving and decision making, digital
citizenship, and technological concepts and operations.
Thus, in this context of global civilization,
education (especially higher education) in Morocco is
then directly concerned by the requirements of
international competitiveness which forces the
university to change paradigm. It is crucial to have
training profiles with a high potential capable of
meeting the challenges for a developing country like
Morocco, or even on a continental scale, that of Africa.
Moroccan Higher Education at the Time of Covid-19: Issues and Challenges: A Case Study among Master Students Business
Administration at IGA Casablanca
75
In order to place education at the heart of the
digital transformation and help young graduates to
become lucid citizens in a changing world, the teacher
must be supported in the integration of new
technologies so as to develop new curricula that
respond effectively to the new requirements of
today's world.
3.1.2 Education in the Age of Industry 4.0
Like mechanization, electrification, automation and
globalization, the "fourth industrial revolution" called
Industry 4.0 promises to have remarkable impact on
the way goods and services are produced and sold.
Industry 4.0, is mainly characterized by intelligent
automation, including connected objects, big data,
data backup on cloud spaces, augmented reality,
virtual reality, etc. all combined with cyber security.
These are fundamental elements for creating
intelligence in an industrial system capable of great
adaptability in the production of goods and services.
Indeed, since its arrival companies are experiencing
real changes that have influenced their value chains.
In the Moroccan context, the crisis of Covid-19
will serve as a catalyst for an in-depth reflection on
the opportunity to make choices regarding the
industrial policies to be implemented. In this
perspective, educational institutions as well as SMEs
have to make important investments to set up R&D
departments and laboratories within their structures.
Thus, the development of an "Industry 4.0" strategy
and a digital plan are essential for universities,
colleges and SMEs that want to make the best
investment decisions for the acquisition and
integration of new technologies (Benomar, 2017).
3.1.3 Teaching and Generation Z
Generation Z, also known as Generation C for
Communication, Collaboration, Connection and
Creativity, represents people born in 1997 and
beyond (wikipedia).
Despite being Digital Natives, specialists talk
about some common characteristics of this
generation:
It is enterprising: it invests itself and wants to
be enterprising;
It promotes an experiential and interactive
learning style, involving collaborative work
around projects;
It is technology-dependent: it is the most
connected generation. About half of
Generation Z reports being connected 10 hours
a day and using an average of five screens
(desktop, laptop, smartphone, TV and tablet).
According to (Philippe, 2017), the point of view
of the Internet Generation clashes with the vision of
teachers, who overwhelmingly adhere to the idea that
education is for everyone a way to increase their
"human capital". This reporting theory helps to
explain students' behaviour, their search for the least
demanding teacher, and the sincere joy they express
when a teacher is absent.
In their choice of studies, Generation Z adults no
longer select their university based on academic
performance, but rather seek the one that can offer
them a unique learning experience.
4 THE COVID-19 ERA:
TOWARDS A STUDENT
EXPERIENCE ADAPTED TO
TEACHING 4.0
4.1 Context of the Study
Under the circumstances of COVID-19, studies at
the Higher Institute of Applied Engineering (IGA) as
well as in other higher education institutions in
Morocco switched from face-to-face mode to remote
mode in a brutal manner. This switchover was in the
form of creative, artisanal, intuitive DIY, which leads
us to characterize it by a simple transposition from the
face-to-face to distance learning. Many educational
institutions, in the best cases, have urgently equipped
themselves with videoconferencing environment or
virtual classrooms without too much planning and
with the use of free systems with degraded
functionalities.
Institute of applied engineering (IGA) already has
a digital space (extranet) dedicated to exchange with
students and their parents. With the switchover to
remote mode, several measures have been adopted to
ensure the continuity of studies in the best conditions:
The teaching staff has made considerable
efforts to make course documents and the series
of tutorials and practical works available to
students online, 48 hours in advance of the
scheduled sessions;
For each subject, a Hangout group was created
containing the professor, the students and an
administrator manager (for real-time
monitoring of absences). In addition to
Hangout, several other platforms were used by
the teachers to ensure the smooth running of the
training and remote coaching (meet,
Classroom, zoom...). This allowed teachers to
quickly switch from face-to-face to distance
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learning close to what they were doing in class,
with the possibility of immediate speech, chat
and access to document sharing spaces in real
time;
Several WhatsApp groups have been created to
keep communication links between
administration and faculty on one hand and
students on the other.
Several other initiatives have been launched by
individual faculty members to help students
overcome the effect of the crisis on their education
(
Louiz, 2020)
.
4.2 Methodology
In view of the study problematic and the field of
investigation, a methodological approach by indirect
observation was favoured. It is based on what the
researcher notices, "observes" by living with people,
sharing their activities and by using a survey
questionnaire. The survey will initially be conducted
in the form of a feedback questionnaire intended for
a homogeneous group of 24 students of the Master 2
"Business Administration" (AE). They will be
assured that their answers will be confidential and
will not have any impact on their academic results.
The aim is to gather additional arguments to shed
more light on the most promising actions to be
implemented in order to create an appropriate
teaching environment and to reduce the impact of the
COVID-19 pandemic. Also, a Design Thinking
workshop was conducted with a group of teachers.
This workshop allowed drawing up a list of solutions,
proposals and recommendations to be undertaken.
4.2.1 Survey on the Impact of COVID-19 on
Higher Education
A survey was conducted among a sample of IGA
students. The targeted students are enrolled in a
professional Master 2 "Business Administration" for
the academic year 2019-2020.
The main objective of the study is to collect a
certain amount of information in order to know:
Impact of Covid19 on the student life and the
course of the distance studies;
To what extent the current distance learning
devices have allowed to maintain a link with
the educational institution;
Impact of COVID19 on students' professional
life.
For the development of the questionnaire, and in
order to facilitate the analysis of the results, closed
questions with check boxes were used. The general
structure of the questionnaire is as follows:
General and simple questions;
Filtered questions;
Issues with strong involvement;
An open-ended question giving the student a
free choice of expression.
Given the constraints of time and means, the
administration of an anonymous questionnaire was
online using Google Form via: mailing List and
WhatsApp.
The data were exploited in a spreadsheet
(Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Office) allowing the
extraction of simple results (rankings, proportions).
Due to the absence of groups, no statistical analysis
was conducted.
Figure 1 and Figure 2, below, present socio-
demographic information - including gender and
country of origin (Moroccan or foreign), concerning
the sample of students who agreed to answer the
questionnaire - collected:
Figure 1: Percentage of students who agreed to complete
the survey by origin.
- 84.6% of the population studied have Moroccan
nationality versus 15.4% foreign nationality.
Figure 2: Rate of students who agreed to complete the
questionnaire by gender.
In the graph above, we see that 61.5°/° of girls versus
38.5°/° of boys answered the questions, “which
would allow to say that girls in Morocco are more
used to working from home, unlike boys who often
prefer to work outside the home” (Louiz, 2020).
Moroccan Higher Education at the Time of Covid-19: Issues and Challenges: A Case Study among Master Students Business
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4.2.2 Design Thinking Workshop
During one day, two workshops were held with
colleagues and friends working in the professional
sector to develop a list of recommendations. In this
way, the relevance and complementarily of the data
collected in the first stage was beneficial.
The Mural.co tool was adopted and used for this
purpose. It is quick and easy to use visual online
collaboration tool that allows teams to think and
collaborate together to find innovative solutions to the
most complex problems. Users benefit from Mural to
create diagrams, which are popular in design thinking
and agile methodologies.
For this study, the Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)
model was chosen. It is an animation technique that
can be used in all situations that require a group of
people (between 2 and 8 people per workshop) to
make decisions: to solve problems, discuss challenges
or implement quick actions. Indeed, LDJ exploits
collective intelligence and allows defining concrete
and viable actions, for relevant problems, in record
time.
The Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ) method was
used as a working tool, considering the IGA as a case
study (see figure below).
Figure 3: Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ).
It is imagined by AJ & Smart, a Berlin Sprint
Design agency, it takes place in several stages and
allows:
Identify and prioritize the problems to be
treated;
Bring out a maximum number of solutions and
define the most relevant ones (with more
impact and minimum effort);
Draw up an action plan to be implemented in
the short term.
Below are the steps of the workshop process.
The workshop begins with what’s working: In this
step, the different participants use sticky notes to
write down all possible ideas related to the theme.
Here, the participants list the existing elements that
can help to reduce the impact of this abrupt
changeover on the teaching and learning process of
the students. Figure 4, shows the first ideas generated
by the group of teachers participating in the
workshop.
Figure 4: Ideas working.
Then, the participants individually capture all the
problems (Regardless of the degree of their
importance or their priorities). During this phase, a
series of difficulties encountered by teachers during
this rapid transition to distancing were identified.
Figure 5 shows a summary of a set of issues
affected by teachers during this period of continuity
of distance education courses with their votes.
Figure 5: Problems and annoyances with distance learning.
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For 3 minutes participants vote on the most relevant
issues to be prioritized for treatment. The result ranked
from least to highest priority is as follows:
Figure 6: Issues Priorities.
The next phase consists of rewording the
problems in the form of challenges. Four main
challenges are taken up:
Figure 7: Rewording the problems in the form of
challenges.
In the following, analysis and discussion of the
results of the survey are presented and
recommendations from the design-thinking workshop
are proposed.
5 ANALYSIS OF RESULTS,
DISCUSSIONS AND
RECOMMENDATIONS
The results are presented in two sections. The first
section deals with the results of the analysis of the
questionnaire while the second one tackles the results
of the Design Thinking workshop.
5.1 Presentation and Analysis of the
Data from the Questionnaire
In this section, the results of the analysis of the
questionnaire will be presented.
In answer to the question “How has Covid-19
impacted your student life?”, more than 70% of the
respondents answered that the pandemic has
impacted their student life in a negative way. The
same observation is confirmed by (Hantem, 2020) in
a study on “The Conditions of Distance Education
during the Confinement of COVID19”.
Figure 8: Impact rate of Covid 19 on students' lives.
Answers to the question "Have you experienced
any difficulties in taking your online courses?"
showed that the majority of students, about 87.5%
(see Figure bellow), found it difficult to take courses
online. This may be mainly due to a lack of
interpersonal skills with the teacher. Several studies
have shown the importance of the teacher's support
and relationship with the school to motivate learners,
even if they are anxious (Elmelid et al., 2015).
Figure 9: Rate of students with difficulties in following
distance learning courses.
It is obvious that the context of the pandemic and
confinement has triggered almost instantaneous
pressure and feelings of isolation and anxiety in many
students, which may negatively impact their
motivation (Liu et al., 2014) and increase the
difficulty of working independently away from direct
teacher support. This difficulty can also be explained
by the difficulty of organizing Supervised Work or
Practical Work sessions as face-to-face sessions due
to the low quality of interaction and follow-up.
Also, this can be explained among other things by
problems related to the connection (sometimes
unstable/noisy).
Moroccan Higher Education at the Time of Covid-19: Issues and Challenges: A Case Study among Master Students Business
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Possible difficulties are confronted when using
ICT outside the classroom like the dissemination and
availability of techno-pedagogical resources for
mediated self-learning (video capsules, documents,
etc.) to students (Enfield, 2013) and the possible
pitfalls related to students who do not have access to
an Internet connection due to an unexpected
connection problem, or to the slowness of
downloading videos and documents. In these cases, it
is possible to provide recordings of the session (it is
possible to do so on Google Meet or Zoom) and make
them available to students online so that they can
access them freely via the Internet for offline viewing.
However, the implementation of these supports
requires technological skills on the part of teachers,
as the literature confirms (Ruiz & al., 2006).
Students' responses to the question "Compared to
the form of classroom instruction, do you find that
distance education requires effort on your part ...?",
show that 38.5% of students say that the transition to
distance education requires more effort on the part of
the student. The same rate represents students who
find that the switch requires little effort on their part.
15.4% felt that the switch did not affect the effort
required and 7.7% said that online courses require
less effort than face-to-face courses (see Figure 10).
Figure 10: Rate of effort required.
In view of these results, the switch, judged
"triumphant" (Villiot-Leclercq, 2020), in a short
period of time from a face-to-face teaching mode to a
synchronous distance teaching mode during the day,
may have developed a cognitive overload of the
students and increased the investment effort and the
assumption of responsibility in autonomy of the work
and tasks to be done by these learners.
With regard to knowledge control, the answer to
the question “What modes of knowledge control
would you consider most appropriate in the current
situation?”, shows that more than half of the
participants (53.8%) felt that the online MCQs were
the most appropriate form for taking assessments
during the Covid era. Individual or group assignment
seems to present another assessment alternative
appreciated by 30.8% of the students surveyed.
Figure 11: Evaluation Methods.
The pandemic context is entirely new and
stressful. In this situation, everyone is looking at the
tools at his disposal and the assessment methods that
seem the simplest, to reduce stress and pressure. We
hypothesize that this explains the high rate of students
who have preferred multiple choice questions or
delayed group or individual assignments to complete
and return their work quickly.
As far as online and real-time oral assessments are
concerned, they should be designed by teachers in
such a way as to discourage students from consulting
their materials, by proposing numerous questions and
limiting the response time. Naturally, students will
find these types of assessments dense and a bit
difficult, but they are appreciated by 21.3% of
respondents, perhaps because they consider them
reliable and fair means. This feeling is found in other
publications (Bolarinwa, 2015).
Respondents' answers to the question “To what
extent did the distance education arrangements put in
place during the period of confinement allow you to
maintain a link with the faculty?” Show that 46.2% of
respondents expressed that they sometimes
encountered difficulties in communicating with
faculty. 38.5% said that there was no change in the
level of communication with their professors and
15.4% felt that the distance learning devices put in
place facilitated communication with their professors
(see figure below).
Figure 12: Exchanges and communication
"Student/Teacher".
These rates show that the scheme has offered a
category of student’s flexibility and ease of exchange
with their teachers. This can be explained by the
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availability of the exchange applications
implemented on their smartphones, tablets and other
mobile devices. In addition, these exchange tools
offer functionalities to manage discussion channels,
chat and collaborative workspaces. Students can
therefore access the discussion group at any time to
ask for help or discuss any difficulties encountered.
The frequency of these contacts should be adapted
to the requirements of the situation (Johnston & al.,
2005). For example, professors must ensure that they
respond as quickly as possible to the students'
requests in order to maintain a feeling of follow-up
and proximity with the student and, especially, to get
out of isolation, a feeling that is strongly felt during
confinement (Zorn, 2020).
Karsenti (2003), argues that devices that offer
students a certain degree of autonomy are more likely
to support them. However, a significant rate (46.2%)
of participants found it difficult to exchange with
their teachers, leading us to wonder about the reasons
for the reduction or even absence of this exchange
flexibility. This could be the result of both a lack of
motivation among these learners to share and/or
exchange with others, induced by the constraints of
the pressure and stress caused by the pandemic and
the confinement, or they found themselves faced with
exchange situations where their teachers were less
available, trying to adapt to these modes of
communication.
In order to understand the appropriateness of
integrating e-learning into the training curriculum in
the normal, non-pandemic case, students were asked:
“In non-pandemic and no pandemic times, do you
prefer one mode of delivery?
Figure 13: Choosing the Type of Learning Outside of
COVID-19.
53.8% of the participants in the questionnaire
responded favourably for hybrid teaching. This result
shows that this category of students is interested in
this type of learning, perhaps with the aim of seeking
the possible balance between face-to-face and
distance learning.
Such an environment provides pedagogical
resources for learners to use outside the classroom in
order to optimize class time and increase practice
time, as the literature attests (Lebrun, 2015).
The shift towards distance learning was
characterized by urgency and lightning preparation.
This cursory and rapid preparation of distance
learning activities may contribute to a greater fear
among some students of reliving the same distance
learning scenarios in the usual (non-Covid) case. This
may justify the rate of 46.2% who chose 100% face-
to-face outside of the pandemic.
Apart from the inconveniences caused by the
pandemic, the answer to the question: “Will you take
advantage of the confinement period to learn new
knowledge/skills online (outside of school)?” shows
that some students (53.8%) of those interviewed took
advantage of the period of confinement at home to
learn new knowledge and skills including languages
and digital training, given the important place that
digital technology occupies in the daily practices of
these young people qualified as "digital native" (see
figure 14).
Figure 14: Learning done outside the school program.
"Do you think that a learning experience in an
outdoor/open space could be a complementary
alternative to virtual and/or classroom modes of
teaching?"
Figure 15: The opening of the learning space.
In the era of the COVID-19 surely the notion of
place will no longer be the same; it will be mutated to
new agile spaces (open space, forest learning, etc.).
The COVID-19 pandemic, which paved the way
for a very worrying health crisis, has had a
considerable impact on the Moroccan economy
(Aissaoui and Aissaoui, 2020). In this context of
Moroccan Higher Education at the Time of Covid-19: Issues and Challenges: A Case Study among Master Students Business
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81
crisis of Covid 19 completely unpredictable, students
from around the world were suddenly put in a
situation of professional uncertainty. This explains
the high rate of students “69.2%” who answered
positively to the question: "Do you think that the
health crisis imposed by covid-19 will influence your
professional plan?".
Figure 16: The impact of Covid on professional insertion.
Obviously, the situation varies from one
institution to another and between regions.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Covid19 has had an
influential impact on the course of study despite the
efforts made and the initiatives put in place to help
students benefit from "pedagogical continuity" at a
distance close to that delivered in normal
circumstances. The pandemic has not only affected
the process of knowledge transmission but has given
rise to new challenges. These range from maintaining
the link between student and institution, the
development of new skills adapted to new contexts,
the need to create new forms of partnerships with
companies to ensure and facilitate professional
integration in times of crisis to the creation of start-
ups and digital companies.
5.2 Recommendations
This study highlighted a number of interesting
findings related to the negative effects of the COVID-
19 pandemic and the shift towards distance education
on students' lives. For the majority of the participants
in the survey, the current conditions have strongly
impacted the follow-up of courses, the efforts to be
made to adapt communication with the teaching and
administrative staff, and have strongly favoured the
feeling of uncertainty about their professional future
and their integration into the job market.
Faced with this context, Moroccan higher
education institutions find themselves obliged to act
to remedy and/or mitigate the negative effects of such
a situation on the operation of teaching and learning
by adopting a participatory and mobilizing strategy of
all actors: Teachers, Students and Administrators, to
respond to a massive societal demand and its
challenge: how to continue to share knowledge and
help learners to remain in the dynamics of knowledge
building?
In this section, some proposals for the creation of
a student experience adapted to the context of
COVID-19 coupled with the digital technologies,
based, as mentioned in the previous section, on the
Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ) method as a working
tool are presented.
From step 6 entitled "Generation and generation
of ideas / solutions", all participants (professors) in
the workshop propose a number of ideas and
solutions. The results of this step are shown in Figure
17.
Figure 17: Generation of ideas and propositions.
Above are the main ideas that were generated
during the LDJ (Lightning Decision Jam) workshop.
The main proposals concern the adoption of a hybrid
mode (online/offline) of teaching and coaching based
on the development and use of new solutions (virtual
classroom, sound slideshows, virtual library, etc…)
to create new user experiences.
Next step is about prioritizing solutions proposed
as illustrated in the figure below:
Figure 18: Prioritize solutions.
This crisis will constitute an opportunity for
reflection about solutions to be implemented in the
short, medium and long term.
To this effect, a number of solutions to be
implemented were listed, considering the degree of
impact and efforts required for their applicability,
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taking into account the student as a central actor in the
process of learning.
The last step concerns deciding what to execute
based on the effort/impact. Solutions are classified on
four categories: what to do now, what to make as a
task, what to make as a project and what to delay later.
The comparison of the results with the literature
and the results generated during the LDJ workshop
allowed to propose the following recommendations.
Figure 19: Decide what to execute.
In order to act more efficiently, it is more
judicious to start by implementing actions that will
allow maintaining this pedagogical continuity at
distance to anticipate new similar periods of crisis,
and to re-think the traditional mode of learning.
To do Now:
Cloud support: One of the difficulties observed in
this new experience is that the students are
bombarded with digital resources. Consequently, a
strategy for managing and sharing resources in an
efficient way has to be put in place, sharing resources
at the right time so that the learner is not lost in an
avalanche of information or tasks to be done in a
determined amount of time. As highlighted in the
literature, learners need to be provided with open-
access, consistent, engaging and good quality online
resources (Bishop & Verleger, 2013; Enfield, 2013;
Sales, 2013).
Flipped classroom: Indeed, this period,
questioning the practices of pedagogical teams and
students, should lead to further reflections on new
pedagogical devices that will eventually modify the
"classic" organisation of training and teaching
methods (Zorn & al., 2020). If the technological and
digital evolution has allowed the creation of virtual
spaces of exchanges capable of enhancing the
students' learning, it is also judicious to implement a
rigorous integration of those technologies into
teaching processes in order to allow students to
optimize the learning task in an autonomous and
organized manner. In fact, specialists affirm that the
inverted classroom provides a learning context,
focused on more learner-centred pedagogical devices
with active and collaborative learning approaches.
The aim is to seek possible balances between teaching
and learning, between face-to-face and distance work,
between information and knowledge, between
knowledge and skills (Lebrun, 2017).
Special crisis management workshop: This
situation may create pressure as well as an anxiety in
a large number of individuals, which may affect
quality of students' motivation (Liu et al., 2014).
Hence, educative interventions in crisis situations
must be accompanied by coaching or support sessions
in the management of crises. The objective is to allow
both students and teachers to develop competences
that enable them to confront such a crisis situation and
to reduce feelings of isolation and stress.
Furthermore, school and teacher support can help to
motivate the students, despite their anxiety (Elmelid,
et al., 2015).
Some other recommendations with less
significant impact or which require more effort or a
larger budget in order to be implemented have been
suggested:
Social networking and online competitions
3D Holography Technology, Fab Lab or
Outdoor learning.
6 CONCLUSIONS
At times of crises, lessons have to be learned and
many opportunities to be exploited. Pandemic
COVID19 presented a forced switch to digital
technologies in all of its forms. More than ever, the
educational institutions are called on to benefit from
these new dynamics and open up pragmatically to the
evolution of training modalities and support for
learners and the distribution of the teachers',
administration's and learners' roles.
Through this research work, it has been concluded
that despite the fact that the majority of students have
expressed a sensitive interest by connecting regularly
to the dedicated platforms and have been involved in
performing the tasks asked to do, it is important to
recognize that some students are unable to adopt and
adapt to this new learning mode. Coaching and
Moroccan Higher Education at the Time of Covid-19: Issues and Challenges: A Case Study among Master Students Business
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83
support should be provided to the students in order to
remedy the difficulties they have encountered. With
all of the technological solutions that seem realistic
and effective, the face-to-face learning experience
remains an indispensable vector for the transmission
and the sharing of knowledge. The teacher-student
and student-student interaction is an essential
component that must not be neglected, in order to
promote the satisfaction and efficacy of the students'
learning.
In this context, attention must be focused on
pedagogical devices, providing a dynamic
management of learners' groups, favouring more and
more the techniques of communication and
animation, by relying on the good choices of didactic
instruments and pedagogical organization such as:
collaborative learning, resilience development and
crisis management skills workshops, reverse
pedagogy, and many more.
Thus, the continuity of sharing knowledge and
helping learners to stay in the dynamics of building
knowledge should be sustained to keep and develop
the human relations between the various actors and to
face challenges of future competitiveness and
concurrence and to adapt to transformations in
Moroccan society.
Finally, it is to be noted that many studies have
concluded that academic motivation is intimately
linked to learning. In cognitive psychology,
"academic motivation is essentially defined as a
student's commitment, participation and persistence
in a task" (Tardif, 1992). Several other factors, such
as a learner's perceptions and conceptions of himself
and his environment, which encourage him to
commit, participate and persist in a task (Viau, 1994)
(Careau & Fournier, 2002), or social objectives such
as: getting a job, (...), and succeeding in his
professional life (Eccles& Wigfield, 2002). To this
end, a study of the impact of Covid-19 on the
motivation of these learners is important, taking into
account the behaviour of the students and the
environment in which they were placed during this
unprecedented period.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
All the authors would like to thank the students who
have participated in this study, as well as all the
teachers who agreed to participate in the LDJ
workshop.
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