Developing an adaptable framework for online education

As online education, which is thought to be in its infancy, has been under the spotlight after a forced migration because of the pandemic of Covid-19, it has been witnessed that one of the essential requirements of an effective online course is to understand the needs of the learners and instructors and develop a framework accordingly. The necessity for the framework is two-fold: (1) Meeting the student needs and maintaining student satisfaction, (2) Preparing the academic staff to transfer their pedagogic knowledge and instructional strategies into the online world. In this respect, the present study employed a mixed-methods approach to gain insights into the students' needs and satisfaction levels in online courses to develop an adaptable framework. For this purpose, 78 sophomore and senior students in an ELT department responded to the e-Satisfaction Questionnaire, twelve of which also participated in the semi-structured interviews for a deeper understanding. In addition to the students, three lecturers answered the interview questions to add their perspectives to the insights. The interviews with the students and the lecturers were analyzed through content analysis and all the findings were gathered to propose an adaptable framework that could be utilized in various online courses. Key Words: Online education, online course, framework, adaptable framework