The problem of the sudden transition from offline to online due to COVID-19 was not easy and may involve significant challenges; faculty members are critical for the success of any university and their satisfaction does matter for online education. The purpose of this research was to determine the factors influencing the satisfaction of the faculty in the virtual learning environment and to focus on the responses of faculty members to the pandemic and their satisfaction levels due to challenges and benefits that faculty members faced during the initial phase of the COVID-19 outbreak. The six factors include flexibility, training, institutional factors, ease of use, technical factors and personal or psychological factors were utilised to understand the satisfaction levels of the instructors concerning the usage of the virtual instructional platforms. The hypothesis testing of the factors was conducted and different tests, that is, regression analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Cronbach alpha were utilised for analysing the data. Data were collected from 300 academic staff members from varied colleges and universities of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The results indicated that all the factors have a significant impact on the satisfaction levels of the academic staff members. Moreover, respondents opined about the challenges faced by the instructors in conducting online classes could be eased out via obtaining adequate training in batches from the academic institutions for the smooth conduct of the online sessions without any hindrances.

COVID-19, higher education, satisfaction level, student engagement, synchronous learning, virtual learning environment

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