challenges and opportunities of e- learning during covid-19 pandemic: a review study

With the prevalence of covid - 19 teaching - learning system has been strongly affected. the most important effect has been the suspension of face-to-face classes and the sudden change in education in universities and schools through e-learning. therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the challenges and opportunities of e-learning during covid-19 pandemic. the present study was a review and internet search of articles indexed in persian and english databases such as iranmedex, sid, google scholar, magiran, science direct, pubmed, scopus. keywords e-learning, virtual education, online education, medical education, faculty members, students, challenges and opportunities, covid-19, corona virus search from 2020 to 2022. in the initial search, 54 articles were found with related keywords. criteria for inclusion of research in this study was to examine the challenges and opportunities of e-learning during covid-19 pandemic, to provide clear and sufficient information, to place the research in the desired time frame and the language of the research (persian-english). exclusion criteria also included lack of access to the full text of the article, irrelevance to the purpose of the research and duplication that 29 articles were excluded from the analysis process. finally, according to the research criteria and review of titles, abstracts and full text and saturation of the required data, 25 articles were evaluated.the results indicate that e-learning challenges were classified into five dimensions of technical, managerial, educational, personal and ethical challenges. in terms of technical challenges, limited capacity of internet systems, high costs of internet services, lack of proper equipment, technical problems, weakness in support services; in terms of managerial challenges, lack of adequate support of managers, lack of supervision, unfavorable policy-making, lack of human resources; in terms of educational challenges, students' lack of familiarity with virtual education, low quality of education, poor quality of educational content, problems of practical classes, internships and internships, high volume of educational content, time constraints, poor evaluation, inappropriate feedback; in terms of personal challenges, psychological stress, lack of motivation, financial problems, lack of internet, lack or lack of computer equipment, weakness in social and communication interactions, cyberspace addiction, insufficient mastery of teachers in e-learning, teachers' workload, cultural problems and social users, poor computer literacy, academic failure, burnout; and in the dimension of ethical challenges, ethical and legal considerations in content production, observance of ethical codes, privacy and professionalism in e-learning as well as studies showed, pandemic covid-19 opportunities in e-learning including attention to strategic planning , the possibility of lifelong learning, creating equal educational opportunities, producing attractive digital content, eliminating the challenges of face-to-face classes and paying attention to the application of new educational technologies. according to the research results, it can be acknowledged that although the covid-19 pandemic has caused challenges in education, but by anticipating the criteria and requirements, planning and reviewing in the technical, managerial, educational, individual and ethical can expand e-learning and receive effective applications as a complement to face-to-face training.