Engaging Online Learning at AAU and Its Impact on Students' Performance during COVID-19

The sudden and wide spread of the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) has disrupted the normal world we know. This pandemic has produced significant challenges on all world sectors including the global higher education community. In this paper, we present the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on AL Ain University (AAU), analyse AAU response strategy to shift to an emergency remote, on-line, learning system and compare it with other universities' responses. The technological infrastructure readiness of AAU and how it shifted easily to online learning is discussed. A comparison between the results of some courses that were taught in-class previously (2019) against the ones that were taught remotely (2020) is presented. For the selected sample, results show that online teaching has a good impact on students' performance for many reasons such as saving traveling time, staying at home, and quarantine that imposes focusing on the study since other outdoor entertainments are closed.