Students’ Character Building through Effective Communication in E-Learning: A Framework from Islamic Perspective

Abstract

Advancement in technology nowadays helps to facilitate most aspects of life, including education. Technology can also connect and make it easier for every individual to communicate with each other despite geographical distance. In line with the technology development in the 21^st century learning and the COVID-19 pandemic situation that hit the whole country, e-learning has become the choice as a medium of teaching and learning, which serves as a platform for teachers and students to communicate. In the implementation of e-learning, communication is one of the key elements to ensure the effectiveness of e-learning. Communication in e-learning can take place using two modes of delivery, synchronously or asynchronously. These two methods, if applied effectively, can help to maximise meaningful interactions between teachers and students. However, several studies found that the reality of e-learning activities can also be inefficient. Findings of previous studies show that there are constraints in the communication aspect between teachers and students during the implementation of e-learning when teaching and learning are conducted from home. This situation led to difficulties for teachers to guide and assess students’ understanding, giving feedback, as well as to build students’ personality. Therefore, this study uses the library method in a conceptual approach to discuss effective communication strategies to build students’ character through e-learning medium. This study is expected to provide an effective communication framework from Islamic perspective as a guide for teachers to enable maximum interaction with the students. Lack of efficient communication management between teachers and students during e-learning activities would lead to failure in achieving learning goals, thus in turn affecting the growth of students’ personality.