This study examines university faculty members' successful behaviours and the factors influencing these behaviours, when dealing with the issues posed by emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data was gathered through interviews with 12 carefully chosen instructors who competently prepared and implemented their first online classes despite various challenges encountered during the crisis. Interview transcripts were analysed by applying the theoretical concepts of the positive deviance approach to identify exemplary behaviours in the face of crisis. The results revealed that the participants performed three unique but effective behaviours, called 'positive deviance behaviours', in their online teaching: philosophy-driven decision making informed planning and ongoing performance monitoring. These behaviours were affected by individual factors (e.g., community engagement and emotion management during different phases of emergency remote teaching) and organisational factors (e.g., networks/hardware and training/support). By examining the positive deviance behaviours of instructors who delivered effective classes, this study offers online teaching and faculty development strategies in both crisis and non-crisis situations.
Keywords: COVID-19; Emergency remote teaching; Faculty experience; Information communication technology (ICT); Online education; Positive deviance approach.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.