Abstract

The last decade of the twentieth century saw increasing interest in and advertising of online teaching and learning (OTL) as a means of an inexpensive and convenient form of education, especially for working people and those with extensive commitments, are due to the rapid growing number of courses offered online and degrees offered through the Internet, there is a considerable interest in online education, particularly as it relates to the development of technologies and decreasing costs of electronic hard and software. The major concerns center around the following questions: What will be the new function of instructors in online education? How case will students' learning outcomes be assured and improved in the online learning environment? How can effective communication and interaction be established with the students in the absence of face-to-face instruction. This paper examines the students’ perceptions of the critical success factors of Online Teaching and Learning (OTL) in one of the universities in the Middle East. The findings of this paper clearly indicated that all the critical success factors have a high positive impact on the successful implementation of OTL. The study contributes to the OTL literature by providing the rankings of all these factors with regard to their importance.