COVID-19, from Crisis to Opportunity: Assessing Teaching Programming Languages Online Using Statistical Methods

In early 2020, COVID-19 appeared and widely spread worldwide. It affected all vital sectors, including commercial activities and education. Most governments decided to temporarily close educational institutions, including schools and universities. Developed countries with adequate learning-management systems moved to the online teaching mode. Hence, the sudden transition from the traditional to online teaching mode has impacted learning outcomes. The ultimate goal of this paper is to develop a method for evaluating the experience of teaching online during epidemics. More precisely, it assesses the teaching of programming language courses in the computer science and engineering college at the University of Hail. It statistically measures the courses' learning outcomes in the online mode compared to the traditional mode. Perhaps surprisingly, the difference was not significant, which shed light on the positive side of the crisis. According to the obtained results, the experience of teaching online during an epidemic has led us to investigate the opportunities of using online teaching, especially for programming language courses. This highlighted opportunities for using online platforms as supportive teaching tools or even merging them with traditional teaching approaches at times when attending classes on campus is impossible. Finally, to ensure best practices, the author recommended some guidelines to follow.