**1. Introduction**

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education systems all over the world, but institutions ensconced in traditional practices and hesitant to incorporate technology were affected to a greater extent. Isolation and social distancing became mandated, which disrupted physical classrooms and forced a shift to hybrid teaching and learning for faculty and students in all UAE HEIs [1]. This shift was intended to enable flexibility in teaching and learning while maintaining the institutional expectations [2]. These flexible and novel approaches to educational practice still require good learning outcomes and the meeting of expectations. While United Arab Emirates (UAE) higher education institutions (HEIs) were impacted, one UAE HEI was uniquely well positioned to transition to a virtual format, as it had been in the

vanguard of nations in implementing hybrid learning before the pandemic. Despite this prescience, which limited some of the chaos arising from the pandemic, some institutions were nevertheless affected by staff shortages, because of the huge cuts as a consequence of the COVID-19 [3]. Without action, a lot of adjunct faculty are likely to go and funding in many universities is becoming very precious with many research projects potentially in jeopardy [3]. As a consequence, there was a need for speedy and creative thinking to operationalize the sudden shift of practices to online platforms. Various solutions are documented and discussed in the recent literature to support preservice teachers' practices [4]. Students and educators are encouraged to implement new approaches to teaching and learning to ensure social and cognitive interaction [2], for example FlipGrid which is a tool that is used primarily for hosting video discussions and peer-to-peer communication especially when tasks are assigned by educators [5]. It has been proven that FlipGrid is a useful tool for practicing oral communication and discussion [5]. Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, teacher education programs have been affected and creative solutions to effectively implement lesson observations were needed. One creative solution was to implement peer observation of teaching (POT) in an online context. POT is a process by which a peer observes the teaching of another colleague with an intention to provide constructive feedback [6].

This chapter describes an initiative by the Education Faculty at the HEI involved in this reflective chapter to record preservice teachers' experience of peer observation of teaching (POT) and the establishment of phygital communities of inquiry (PCoI). Teachers' use of Flipgrid, a social learning platform tool, was key in the physical and online presence of students, and it helped ensure reflective practice. More importantly, this chapter illustrates the importance of educators and students working together in a community of inquiry (CoI) using online communication platforms to facilitate rigorous teaching and learning practices and their professional development in order to continue meeting the program's expectations.

### **2. Background**

Before the onset of the 2020 pandemic, the HEI involved in this reflective experience had transitioned to hybrid learning. This was largely possible as a result of the institution's preexisting use of technology to create blended learning, e-portfolios, learning management systems, assessment, digital library services, intelligent learning systems, digital services, and relevant infrastructure [7]. The UAE Ministry of Education (MoE) in collaboration with HEIs, provided unique regulatory solutions to ensure the continuity of the teaching and learning process [1]. During the transition to hybrid teaching, this HEI supported the faculty and students by transforming its 'Digi-campus' and maintaining ongoing professional development and the sharing of best practice.

Students play an important role in the HEI involved in this reflective experience community. For the education faculty, student teachers quickly understood that the learning practices that would be necessary during the pandemic differed from the ordinary learning practices and could be used to supplement their future professional development. Student teachers and their instructors' gradual transition to the new normal after the pandemic lockdown took place in both physical and digital spaces. Before the onset of the pandemic, student teachers completed their teaching practicum (TP) at schools, studied face-to-face, and took some online courses. Their

#### *Perspective Chapter: Peer Observation of Teaching in Phygital Communities of Inquiry DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109380*

mentor teachers visited them in schools and provided immediate and constructive feedback. The practice of combining the use of both online and on-site spaces creates what is referred to in this article as phygital learning environments.

To give the reader a clear picture of the context, the physical learning space prepandemic and the digital learning space during the pandemic are briefly described here.

The physical learning spaces in each of the five campuses where the Bachelor of Education Early Childhood program is offered at the HEI consist of classrooms both at the HEI campus and at the early childhood schools, kindergartens and nurseries, which host the teaching practicums, as well as three unique learning spaces. The first of these is a model early years classroom which is equipped with cameras and microphones and set up as an ideal learning space for young children. The second is an observation room, which is linked to the model classroom by a one-way mirror so that observers can see what is happening without disturbing the classroom environment or the children and student teachers' learning. This observation room also hosts the recording equipment, which is used by student teachers and their faculty to review teaching performance in the model classroom. The third space, which in some campuses is combined with the observation room, is the learning resources room, which is stocked with all the materials students teachers and faculty may require for the design and preparation of teaching materials. The room includes several tables, where student teachers can prepare their lesson plans and teaching materials in collaborative groups. These three rooms together are called the Education Hub, because they act as a community hub for local schools who can bring their children in for master teacher demonstrations or student teacher lessons as a break from the school routine. Schools can also host professional development sessions with their teachers in the Education Hubs, which thereby act as a catalyst for strong college-school partnerships that encourage joint research.

Naturally, when the pandemic broke out, the Education Hubs closed down as the country went into lockdown. However, the three federal HEIs in the UAE with the support of the MoE were able to ensure the continuity of teaching and learning through flexible but rigorous regulations [1]. Therefore, student teacher preparation was not impacted by the loss of physical teaching practicum opportunities in the schools. The MOE allowed student teachers and mentor college tutors (MCTs) access to the virtual MS Teams platform, issuing codes for all student teachers and college faculty to the assigned schools and mentor schoolteacher (MST) classrooms. This allowed the HEIs to give MCT, MST and student teacher groups the opportunity to explore different ways to complete the required observations in the new virtual spaces. There were, of course, numerous challenges but the flexibility and determination of all involved ensured that no students' program duration was impacted and student teachers were able to graduate and progress according to their study plans, dependent on them demonstrating the competencies required to pass each practicum course. The HEI provided MCTs, MSTs and student teachers with Online Teaching Practicum Guidelines, which included detailed information on the roles and responsibilities of each party, outlined the flexibility each MCT/MST/Student Teacher team had to assess student teacher competencies in each course and provided best practice examples gathered continuously from everyone's experience as they coped with the new virtual world of the pandemic lockdown.

The innovation and creativity witnessed along with the unique opportunities for learning to teach in an online environment provided a myriad of experiences, material, approaches, methods and techniques for both enhanced learning and teaching.

After three semesters and over 2000 virtual teaching practicum placements, schools and colleges returned to work face to face but with some pandemic restrictions still in place. These were gradually reduced, but everyone had to refamiliarize themselves with another new world where the best practices of the pre-pandemic physical world and the during pandemic online world could be combined in a new hybrid phygital learning environment. It is this new environment that is the context for this chapter.

As with traditional learning environments, the success of the new phygital learning environment and the transition to the new normal began with classroom implementation and authentic learning. At the same time as innovative approaches were being implemented by student teachers and their instructors, they still needed to face and solve specific challenges related to the issues created by the pandemic, such as the shortage of faculty [2, 3] and the appearance of COVID-19 cases among children, student teachers, and their mentor teachers, while completing their TP in the schools. Therefore, reflecting on the TP at the HEI involved in this reflective practice and the phygital model, integrating both physical and digital spaces, was pivotal to understanding the procedures and responsibilities of all parties when applying this new approach to students' authentic and innovative approaches to learning.

As this HEI had begun focusing on technology use and was implementing hybrid models even before the pandemic, the sudden transition to hybrid learning after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a new array of leading and managing learning and teaching in online communities. Geng et al. [8] refer to this as a blended or hybrid learning environment. While hybrid learning has been the most prominent means of delivery for higher education during the gradual transition to face to face learning, it presents certain specific challenges for students' effective learning and communication within the new context. In general, hybrid practices tend to have drawbacks, such as the lack of a real online community to ensure positive learning outcomes [9, 10] beside the issues that continued to arise as a result of the pandemic.

Student teachers faced multiple challenges due to the pandemic. Among the negative impacts was the lack of the community-based experiences they had been used to, which had ensured positive social and cognitive interaction among learners, peers, mentors, and instructors [11, 12]. Attempts to salvage this type of interaction prompted researchers to identify factors that could support successful online experiences [13, 14]. The CoI model was proposed to examine the quality of virtual learning experiences (VLE) [15, 16]. The contextualized practice of this framework integrates the student as a cognitive presence and the instructor as designer, facilitator, and instructional presence, together with a social presence as the construct of meaning by means of the maintenance of sustained communication that concretizes the community [2, 17].

Among the significant dilemmas faced at this time was that of ensuring sufficient, effective, and constructive feedback during the period of the student teachers' TP, despite the faculty shortages [18]. The idea of this approach was to solve issues creatively and innovatively, with the support of available resources and using creative methods. College mentor teachers (MCT) conducted four observations for year four student teachers, and the school mentor teachers (MST) observed the student teachers four times. The MST was able to complete their observations, but the MCT was unable to observe all assigned student teachers, due to the high number of observations involved and additional issues related to the pandemic, including faculty shortages and cases of COVID-19 among faculty and student teachers. Therefore, creative and innovative methodologies to utilize the available phygital spaces were needed. There was likewise a need for a community that could link physical and online

presences while ensuring critical thinking and rigor in practice. In summary, the need to develop a peer observation system that was able to withstand the disruption of the pandemic but could also facilitate teaching and learning within a community of inquiry was recognized.
