PONE-D-22-24937The Sudden Transition to Online Learning: Teachers' Experiences of Teaching during the COVID-19 PandemicPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hasanvand,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

This manuscript is well-written. Improvement in methods section and conclusion section is suggested. Conclusions must be alligned with results & discussion. You can find reviewers report and make necessary revision in the manuscript.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Apurva Kumar Pandya, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Additional Editor Comments:

This manuscript is well-written. Improvement in methods section is suggested:

1- Theme network resulting from three-stage coding

2- Table of agreement between two coders or calculation of kappa coefficient

3- The interview questions should come in the tools and methods section

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This manuscript is well-written. To improve the methodological part, the following are suggested:

1- Theme network resulting from three-stage coding

2- Table of agreement between two coders or calculation of kappa coefficient

3- The interview questions should come in the tools and methods section

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Reviewer #1: No

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PONE-D-22-24937R1The Sudden Transition to Online Learning: Teachers' Experiences of Teaching during the COVID-19 PandemicPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Hasanvand,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 10 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Apurva Kumar Pandya, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

1. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

Additional Editor Comments:

Thanks for submitting revised manuscript. You have addressed major points; however, it requires further revision. We have received reviewers comments and I agree with their feedback. Authors need to address reviewers comments and submit.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: No

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Dear author,

Thank you for your effort and hope you succeed. I think this paper is valuable but the methodology is a very critical part of each scientific paper. I feel this section hasn't been written properly, although it is clear that you have done your study scientifically. But readers are the priority and it is important when they read your paper what they learn and understand.

Studying interviews and identifying people's opinions in a scientific article requires correct methodology. It is clear that interviews were conducted, but these interviews were reviewed without structure. If there is a theme analysis method, it is not clear what approach it is. These things you showed in the findings by mentioning the interview are more appropriate for a scientific worksheet, not methodology. If phenomenology was used, we would get a better understanding of your methodology. Also, the synthesis research method, which is the comparison of interviews with valid theories, could form a scientific research paper. But the main focus of the article, which is its methodology, does not have a proper process and structure in this research. for example, if you have done this part according to the grounded theory, it is needed to mention the reliability, and the steps of coding. Also, you stated your population was 14 people. Wasn't there any saturation? or was the information you obtained enough? wasn't there a need to spread your scope of interviews?

You may need to add 1 or 2 paragraphs to describe the interview coding step by step.

Reviewer #2: The Sudden Transition to Online Learning: Teachers' Experiences of Teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Overall, the paper is not well written.

In the abstract the method employed is missing even as a perspective paper the methodology needs to be well specified

The introduction section needs to be improved to include the main research problems and research questions.

The introduction section can be improved. The main issues and background of the study needs to be well discussed as related to the literature.

Also, improve the research questions to be explored in the introduction section.

A section on literature review or related works needs to be written. Include prior studies on Teachers' Experiences of Teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Studies as shown below can be included;

Anthony Jnr, B., & Noel, S. (2021). Examining the adoption of emergency remote teaching and virtual learning during and after COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Educational Management, 35(6), 1136-1150.

Marek, M. W., Chew, C. S., & Wu, W. C. V. (2021). Teacher experiences in converting classes to distance learning in the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (IJDET), 19(1), 89-109.

Anthony Jnr, B. (2022). An exploratory study on academic staff perception towards blended learning in higher education. Education and Information Technologies, 27(3), 3107-3133.

Mercier, K., Centeio, E., Garn, A., Erwin, H., Marttinen, R., & Foley, J. (2021). Physical education teachers’ experiences with remote instruction during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Teaching in Physical education, 40(2), 337-342.

Besides, I feel the literature review is weak

Moreover, how does your current study differ from the studies provided above

The discussion section needs to map back to the literature.

What are the practical and research implications from the study

Expand more on the limitations and future works.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.<quillbot-extension-portal></quillbot-extension-portal>

The Sudden Transition to Online Learning: Teachers' Experiences of Teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic

PONE-D-22-24937R2

Dear Dr. Hasanvand,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

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Kind regards,

Muhammad Arsyad Subu, Ph.D

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

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