“It’s a Small World After All”: An Exploratory Comparative Case Study of Online Teaching and Learning in Three Institutions in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States Under COVID-19

This study presents the shared experience of three faculty from Hong Kong, Singapore, and the USA amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors adopted a comparative case study approach shedding light on the collective and individual experiences of teaching and learning remotely during the pandemic. By first conducting an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study at a public university in Hong Kong, they found that university students perceived their learning experience under the COVID-19 in a negative manner, reporting problems such as social isolation, low learning motivation, and absence of practical elements in lectures. These results were compared to Singapore and the United States where the authors examined how the pandemic impacted teaching and learning from an institutional and individual faculty perspective. This study concluded that there are many similarities in the challenges faced by students and faculty members across the three institutions and countries.