Virtual Faculty in Teaching Foreign Languages: Perceptions of Foreign Language Faculty.

Abstract
Virtual faculty in teaching is an undiscussed issue in Saudi Arabia. Having virtual faculty teaching at Saudi public universities is also utterly new. This study investigates the perceptions of physical foreign language (FL) faculty members at King Saud University in Riyadh on having virtual faculty in the post-Covid-19 era. Four questions guided the study: (1) What are the FL faculty perceptions of recruiting virtual faculty abroad? (2) What modes of teaching do the physical faculty believe the best for virtual faculty: solo teaching or co-teaching with a physical faculty? (3) Which FL domain courses among skills, linguistics, or translation are the most needed for virtual faculty? And (4) What are the merits of virtual faculty to be hired: FL native speaker, distinguished in teaching linguistics, and excellence in teaching translation courses. A total of 64 faculty from eight foreign language majors participated in the study. The findings showed that participants were neutral on having virtual faculty. For pro-virtual faculty, they chose the co-teaching mode in all FL courses. For the merits of virtual faculty, participants welcomed all distinguished in teaching in all FL domains, then in FL linguistics. The most significant merits of virtual faculty were the excellence in teaching FL domains and FL nativity.