Students’ Perception on KSU Translation Online Learning Amidst the COVID-19 Global Pandemic

The 2020 CoVid-19 pandemic has changed the pattern of the educational sector as it continues to struggle operating amidst a global health emergency. With the transition from the conventional face-to-face to the current online classes, multiple challenges and opportunities sought to be identified and resolved, especially with some language courses like translation, which struggle with the additional contextual teaching and learning difficulties. Given the need, this study focused on the student perceptions of KSU Translation online learning. Data was collected from eighty (80) KSU Translation students using a mixed-method paradigm utilizing a questionnairechecklist to determine students’ perceptions of the quality and effectiveness of KSU Translation classes’ online delivery. Multiple factors like student participation and focus, KSU faculty ICT teaching competence, and preventive measures on screen time effects were primarily identified. Overall, the students have perceived the KSU translation online learning as highly effective, with some improvement points on instruction methodology. The conduct of faculty webinars, workshops, and online learning training is highly recommended and is perceived as a potential guide on faculty development efforts, projects, and possible future research.


INTRODUCTION
A pandemic, on a global scale, is an alarming emergency international health crisis. With the onset of the CoVid-19 global pandemic last March 2020, educational institutions worldwide have rightly decided to cancel in-person instruction temporarily. However, as the pandemic continued to spread and numbers showed no signs of dropping, the crisis has hardened and highlighted the dilemma administrations and policymakers face between closing schools to reduce contact and save lives and keeping them open to allow workers to work and maintain the economy). Some universities eventually closed and decided not re-open in some countries until this academic year, whereas others have progressively provided new means to cope with the current situation.
According to Salmon (2013), the answer to this problem lies in different presentation modes and delivery of teaching and learning opportunities. Online educational opportunities, such as distance education, with e-learning as a significant component, are an excellent option for students, parents, university administrators, state and federal legislatures who are currently trying to grapple with the increasing demands and challenges of online education. As students and teachers need not physically meet in a classroom, people in remote Published by Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.12n.6.p.30 areas are given access to courses they might not have had access to otherwise. Asynchronous courses also allow more flexibility, particularly to students who may have other obligations (such as family and work) common to the undergraduate student population. As Means, Bakia, and Robert (2014) stated four, inter-related trends driving the world into its rapid growth towards online learning. They mentioned that this was due to having most of our day-to-day functions going virtual, given the convenience and comfort technology offers, which paves the way to the endless list of multiple positive uses and opportunities online learning brings.
However, this severe short-term disruption to the traditional delivery method still proves stressful and is not only felt by the teachers and the school but mainly by the students who struggle to cope with the sudden change. Teaching and learning have moved to remote online, on an untested and unprecedented scale, in an attempt to contain the disease. Uncertainty became a part of the transition for everyone, with a lot of trial and error in delivering the same quality education online compared to before. These interruptions will not be causing short-term and long-term consequences for the affected cohorts and are likely to increase inequality.

Online Learning Challenges
Online education also brings a lot of effort, time, and money to the screen. Anderson (2011) discussed in his book the significant components to make online learning work. One of the teachers' deliveries of the lesson, which Anderson mentioned, involves devising and implementing activities to encourage discourse between and among students, between the teacher and the student, and between individual students and groups of students content resources. Therefore, most of the teaching-learning process's effectiveness lies with how the teacher maneuvers technology into teaching lessons that may require some skills that would be hard to develop online. As shown in the study of Al-Nofaie (2020), virtual education is not always appealing to students.
Like in the face-to-face set up, the students still play a vital role, which became a lot more with the current online setup. Multiple scholars expressed the importance of student participation through their active mental and physical presence, even in the virtual platform. As conventional face-to-face classes became minimal to none, it has become challenging for teachers to increase or sustain motivation and encourage students' focus. Technology becomes a double-edged sword by providing both means of learning and distractions to students. To ensure that specific online teaching methods are effective, both students' performance and opinion must be considered. They may have seen specific positive points or might be having particular difficulties with learning, which neither the teacher nor the school administration knows. This mainly highlights the role students play in schools' development and growth through feedback and active involvement.

Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of Online Learning
Nevertheless, it all comes down to various factors affecting the effectiveness of online learning. One study by Zia (2020) showed that "attitude, curriculum, motivation, technology, and training were found to impact online classes. Three variables (attitude, motivation, and training) have a positive impact on online classes, whereas two variables (curriculum and technology) have a negative impact on the online classes." This was also supported by another study conducted by Montgomerie et al. (2016), who led a similar study in an organization. The results of their study showed that among the critical factors perceived to influence participants' learning, the following factors, online considerations (such as time allocation and discipline), peer support, and technical delivery, are most evident in order of their perceived influence. These two studies show that there are varying yet similar primary factors affecting online learning. Considering these results and other studies conducted, it was clear that most of the major concerns in online education are often linked with the Information and Communication Technology competence of students and especially for the teachers, internet connectivity and other persistent technical issues (Susila and Thompson, 2020), availability of learning resources (gadgets, books, e-materials, etc.) (Ferraro, 2020), student participation and focus, time management and effects of prolonged screen time (Li, et al., 2019). It only depends on the institution, school, organization, university, or college on which among these factors highly affects the delivery of their respective online activities.

Online Translation Learning
Looking into the context of translation learning, this is still and will also be the case. Like any language learning course, translation studies require process-oriented activities, entailing a great deal of metacognitive monitoring. Gambier and Doorslaer (2012) mentioned that activities that help students reflect on their beliefs about translation and their self-concept of translators motivate and grasp the importance of understanding. This is done through reading, problem spotting and solving, and allowing ad hoc knowledge acquisition and management necessary for translation students. It can also be structured into a learning model that will only develop a process-oriented perspective and also a routinized behavior. However, online learning challenges and opportunities can either make an online translation course harder or more accessible for students. Ko's (2012) study looked at different aspects of an online translation course, including the technical requirements, pedagogical strategies and constraints, classroom interaction issues, and the advantages and disadvantages of online teaching. Based on the analysis of actual teaching experience and feedback from the students involved, its findings indicated that although advances in Internet technology have made online teaching of translation feasible when offering a course online as part of a formal study program, consideration will need to be given to several practical issues which do not exist in conventional teaching and may not be encountered in experiments in online education. Some of these issues concern selecting an appropriate network and software program, online technical support, online teaching strategies, communications protocol, in-class interaction, and discussion, marking, and other relevant factors. Such issues all impact formal online teaching and need to be considered when designing and implementing online translation courses.
This study follows a similar purpose: to determine any perception of King Saud University (KSU) Translation Students on Online Learning during the current pandemic, which hopefully can identify a particular point of improvement in the online delivery KSU Translation Courses. This study, entitled "Student Perception on KSU Translation Online Learning during the Covid-19," will benefit the researcher and KSU, who will be receiving the results and recommendations of this study. Furthermore, this study's conduct will enable a better understanding of online learning and online translation courses from the students' perspective.
Therefore, this study will use the analytic-evaluative survey method to collect factual data with a questionnaire-checklist as the main data-gathering instrument. This mixed-method instrument comprises two parts: the Likert Scale-based checklist and the evaluative questionnaire, which will substantiate the analysis and interpretation of the respondents' data through qualitative and quantitative measures.
The researcher used three (3) indicators under each of the determined six (6) factors affecting the effectiveness of online education to determine specific strengths and weaknesses of, as well as the total average, mean for KSU online instruction and learning as perceived by its translation students. The following interpretation chart shall guide the results of the questionnaire-checklist:

Scale Verbal interpretation
Interval scale This study's respondents are the eighty (80) Translation students of the English Language and Translation Department, King Saud University at Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, chosen through universal sampling, considering each respondent is taking the said university's said course. However, with the ongoing pandemic and the government's intensified dissuasion for human mobilization, the questionnaire-checklist will be administered online through Google Forms. Data was collected by voluntary request, with the anonymity of respondents upheld. Figure 1 shows the respondents' composition by yearlevel, providing a more specific breakdown for the respondents of the study. It showed that there were approximately nine (9) freshmen, thirteen (13) second-year students, fourteen (14) third-year students, twenty-five (25) from the fourth-year, and nineteen (19) students from the 5 th year who actively participated in this study. Results show that major-ity were fourth-year students. There is no implication to the study regarding this breakdown.

CoVid-19
Based on the conducted questionnaire-checklist survey via Google forms, the researcher was able to speculate and identify the strengths and weaknesses of KSU Online Learning through varying factors. Table 1 showed the breakdown of results following the average means per indicator, the average mean per factor, and their respective interpretations.
As perceived by the KSU Translation Students, 3.56, 3.99, and 4.01 are given respectively for information, communication, and technology skills of KSU Translation Professors. In total, the three indicators had an average mean of 3.85, interpreted as Very Satisfactory (VS). For technical issues linked with internet connectivity and availability of devices used for teaching and learning, 3.95, 4.18, and 3.28 are given respectively for its three indicators, having an average mean of 3.80, interpreted as Very Satisfactory (VS), for the said factor. Meanwhile, 3.29, 3.99, and 3.75 are provided for the three indicators under Student Focus and Participation, having an average mean of 3.68, also interpreted as Very Satisfactory (VS), for the said factor. In terms of the KSU Translation Professors' Online Delivery Strategies and Lesson Contents, an average mean of 3.75, considered Very Satisfactory (VS), was provided, with 3.44, 3.38, and 4.34 distributed among its indicators, respectively. For the Preventive Measures for Effects of Screen Time, an average mean of 2.63, interpreted as Satisfactory (S), was given, following the mean for each of its indicators being 3.63, 1.98, and 2.28, respectively. Lastly, 3.70, 3.54, and 3.53 are given respectively for the time management of classes. In total, the three indicators had an average mean of 3.59, interpreted as Very Satisfactory (VS). Considering the means per factor, the KSU Translation Online Learning was rated with the total mean of 3.55, which is interpreted as Very Satisfactory (VS).
Following the given results, it was shown and identified that the students perceive that the information, communication, and technology skills of KSU Translation professors are the topmost strength of the KSU Translation online learning. In contrast, its preventive measures for effects of screen time could use some action for improvement. Figure 2.a and 2.b, which are detailed breakdowns of results on the evaluative questionnaire regarding the specific factors that positively and negatively affect KSU online learning during CoVid-19, showed different yet closely similar results compared to the checklist-initiated ones. Figure 2.a showed that based on the students' verbal answers, they find that student focus and participation, as well as the online delivery strategies and lesson content of their professors, are what positively contribute to the effectiveness of their online translation classes. This is contrary to the checklist results wherein the information, communication, and technology skills of KSU Translation professors ranked as the most positive factor, with the student focus and participation and online delivery strategies only succeeding the mentioned factor. Then again, both the checklist and the questionnaire can support that the professors' IT skills and the students' focus are equally essential in an online class's success. Figure 2.b, on the other hand, showed that student focus and participation are the top factors that negatively contribute to their online translation classes' effectiveness, only to be followed by preventive measures for effects of screen time. This is also contrary to the checklist results wherein the preventive measures were the most negative factor. However, both results imply that the students have difficulty staying focused and active during their online translation class. Though this may be due to several factors, one possible contributor is the computer or screen time strain, thus is linked with the preventive measures that the uni-versity could provide to aid the students' comfort during online classes. However, in support of the checklist results of having IT skills as the most crucial factor in online learning effectiveness, the questionnaire results in Figure 3 and Table 2 showed that the students strongly agree that technology and IT skills are essentially vital in the success of an online class. This can also imply that the students may have experienced technical difficulties like connectivity, gadgets, etc. Table 3, on the other hand, shows a detailed breakdown of results on the evaluative questionnaire regarding the effectiveness of the KSU online learning during CoVid-19. In contrast to the checklist results having a 3.55 total mean, the questionnaire results proved to be higher, with a total mean of 3.66, also interpreted as Very Satisfactory (VS). This comparison is more evidently shown in Figure 4.
The overall combined rating of 3.61, interpreted as Very Satisfactory, for the KSU Translation Online Rating shown in Figure 5, implies that despite the slight difference in the mean scores, the students still perceive the KSU Translation Online Education as effective. However, they have specific points of improvement.
Following the results of the questionnaire checklist and the students' verbal comments and suggestions shown in Figure 6, this study highly recommends the improvement of the online instruction methodology as well as ICT competence of KSU Translation Professors, wherein various strategies to increase student focus and participation as well as   preventive measures for effects of prolonged screen time, like the 20-20-20 rule, can be integrated and adapted. Some of the activities that can be proposed to address these issues are webinars, workshops, and training for KSU Translation Professors and benchmarking for online education best practices with other internationally competent schools.

Limitations and Possibilities for Future Research
The results of this study must be viewed in light of some limitations faced during its conduct. First, the small sample size does not fully represent all of the target population. Secondly, we need to be aware of the possibility of other factors that may be pertinent for the effectiveness of online learning that was not investigated in the study, i.e., teacher resilience and curriculum as with De Vera's (2020). Although there are certain limitations, it provides a foundation for further research. Future researchers can tap on varying related top-ics like teachers' perspectives and experiences, which can show how instruction explicitly affects the effectiveness of an online class and other factors like internal and external factors, which can significantly affect student participation and focus in online learning. These topics can generate results and conclusions that can help the academe understand online learning and recommend possible strategies to its full utilization and effectiveness.

CONCLUSION
Overall, the study has shed light on the student perceptions' on KSU Translation Online Learning amidst the CoVid-19 global pandemic. The findings implied that the students had found the KSU Translation Online Learning to be highly effective. There were just some improvement points in varying areas like the Faculty ICT competence and online teaching methodologies, which, once resolves, can contribute favorably in developing higher quality KSU Translation online instruction. It is also highly recommended that the faculty receive the appropriate training in teaching methods, learner support, and course delivery. Overall, the study's findings have the potential to guide faculty development efforts and highlight other potential issues in online trans-