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• Open access
• Published: 15 February 2018

Blended learning: the new normal and emerging technologies

• Charles Dziuban 1 ,
• Charles R. Graham 2 ,
• Patsy D. Moskal   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6376-839X 1 ,
• Anders Norberg 3 &
• Nicole Sicilia 1  

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education volume  15 , Article number:  3 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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This study addressed several outcomes, implications, and possible future directions for blended learning (BL) in higher education in a world where information communication technologies (ICTs) increasingly communicate with each other. In considering effectiveness, the authors contend that BL coalesces around access, success, and students’ perception of their learning environments. Success and withdrawal rates for face-to-face and online courses are compared to those for BL as they interact with minority status. Investigation of student perception about course excellence revealed the existence of robust if-then decision rules for determining how students evaluate their educational experiences. Those rules were independent of course modality, perceived content relevance, and expected grade. The authors conclude that although blended learning preceded modern instructional technologies, its evolution will be inextricably bound to contemporary information communication technologies that are approximating some aspects of human thought processes.

Introduction

Blended learning and research issues.

Blended learning (BL), or the integration of face-to-face and online instruction (Graham 2013 ), is widely adopted across higher education with some scholars referring to it as the “new traditional model” (Ross and Gage 2006 , p. 167) or the “new normal” in course delivery (Norberg et al. 2011 , p. 207). However, tracking the accurate extent of its growth has been challenging because of definitional ambiguity (Oliver and Trigwell 2005 ), combined with institutions’ inability to track an innovative practice, that in many instances has emerged organically. One early nationwide study sponsored by the Sloan Consortium (now the Online Learning Consortium) found that 65.2% of participating institutions of higher education (IHEs) offered blended (also termed hybrid ) courses (Allen and Seaman 2003 ). A 2008 study, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education to explore distance education in the U.S., defined BL as “a combination of online and in-class instruction with reduced in-class seat time for students ” (Lewis and Parsad 2008 , p. 1, emphasis added). Using this definition, the study found that 35% of higher education institutions offered blended courses, and that 12% of the 12.2 million documented distance education enrollments were in blended courses.

The 2017 New Media Consortium Horizon Report found that blended learning designs were one of the short term forces driving technology adoption in higher education in the next 1–2 years (Adams Becker et al. 2017 ). Also, blended learning is one of the key issues in teaching and learning in the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s 2017 annual survey of higher education (EDUCAUSE 2017 ). As institutions begin to examine BL instruction, there is a growing research interest in exploring the implications for both faculty and students. This modality is creating a community of practice built on a singular and pervasive research question, “How is blended learning impacting the teaching and learning environment?” That question continues to gain traction as investigators study the complexities of how BL interacts with cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of student behavior, and examine its transformation potential for the academy. Those issues are so compelling that several volumes have been dedicated to assembling the research on how blended learning can be better understood (Dziuban et al. 2016 ; Picciano et al. 2014 ; Picciano and Dziuban 2007 ; Bonk and Graham 2007 ; Kitchenham 2011 ; Jean-François 2013 ; Garrison and Vaughan 2013 ) and at least one organization, the Online Learning Consortium, sponsored an annual conference solely dedicated to blended learning at all levels of education and training (2004–2015). These initiatives address blended learning in a wide variety of situations. For instance, the contexts range over K-12 education, industrial and military training, conceptual frameworks, transformational potential, authentic assessment, and new research models. Further, many of these resources address students’ access, success, withdrawal, and perception of the degree to which blended learning provides an effective learning environment.

Currently the United States faces a widening educational gap between our underserved student population and those communities with greater financial and technological resources (Williams 2016 ). Equal access to education is a critical need, one that is particularly important for those in our underserved communities. Can blended learning help increase access thereby alleviating some of the issues faced by our lower income students while resulting in improved educational equality? Although most indicators suggest “yes” (Dziuban et al. 2004 ), it seems that, at the moment, the answer is still “to be determined.” Quality education presents a challenge, evidenced by many definitions of what constitutes its fundamental components (Pirsig 1974 ; Arum et al. 2016 ). Although progress has been made by initiatives, such as, Quality Matters ( 2016 ), the OLC OSCQR Course Design Review Scorecard developed by Open SUNY (Open SUNY n.d. ), the Quality Scorecard for Blended Learning Programs (Online Learning Consortium n.d. ), and SERVQUAL (Alhabeeb 2015 ), the issue is by no means resolved. Generally, we still make quality education a perceptual phenomenon where we ascribe that attribute to a course, educational program, or idea, but struggle with precisely why we reached that decision. Searle ( 2015 ), summarizes the problem concisely arguing that quality does not exist independently, but is entirely observer dependent. Pirsig ( 1974 ) in his iconic volume on the nature of quality frames the context this way,

“There is such thing as Quality, but that as soon as you try to define it, something goes haywire. You can’t do it” (p. 91).

Therefore, attempting to formulate a semantic definition of quality education with syntax-based metrics results in what O’Neil (O'Neil 2017 ) terms surrogate models that are rough approximations and oversimplified. Further, the derived metrics tend to morph into goals or benchmarks, losing their original measurement properties (Goodhart 1975 ).

Information communication technologies in society and education

Blended learning forces us to consider the characteristics of digital technology, in general, and information communication technologies (ICTs), more specifically. Floridi ( 2014 ) suggests an answer proffered by Alan Turing: that digital ICTs can process information on their own, in some sense just as humans and other biological life. ICTs can also communicate information to each other, without human intervention, but as linked processes designed by humans. We have evolved to the point where humans are not always “in the loop” of technology, but should be “on the loop” (Floridi 2014 , p. 30), designing and adapting the process. We perceive our world more and more in informational terms, and not primarily as physical entities (Floridi 2008 ). Increasingly, the educational world is dominated by information and our economies rest primarily on that asset. So our world is also blended, and it is blended so much that we hardly see the individual components of the blend any longer. Floridi ( 2014 ) argues that the world has become an “infosphere” (like biosphere) where we live as “inforgs.” What is real for us is shifting from the physical and unchangeable to those things with which we can interact.

Floridi also helps us to identify the next blend in education, involving ICTs, or specialized artificial intelligence (Floridi 2014 , 25; Norberg 2017 , 65). Learning analytics, adaptive learning, calibrated peer review, and automated essay scoring (Balfour 2013 ) are advanced processes that, provided they are good interfaces, can work well with the teacher— allowing him or her to concentrate on human attributes such as being caring, creative, and engaging in problem-solving. This can, of course, as with all technical advancements, be used to save resources and augment the role of the teacher. For instance, if artificial intelligence can be used to work along with teachers, allowing them more time for personal feedback and mentoring with students, then, we will have made a transformational breakthrough. The Edinburg University manifesto for teaching online says bravely, “Automation need not impoverish education – we welcome our robot colleagues” (Bayne et al. 2016 ). If used wisely, they will teach us more about ourselves, and about what is truly human in education. This emerging blend will also affect curricular and policy questions, such as the what? and what for? The new normal for education will be in perpetual flux. Floridi’s ( 2014 ) philosophy offers us tools to understand and be in control and not just sit by and watch what happens. In many respects, he has addressed the new normal for blended learning.

Literature of blended learning

A number of investigators have assembled a comprehensive agenda of transformative and innovative research issues for blended learning that have the potential to enhance effectiveness (Garrison and Kanuka 2004 ; Picciano 2009 ). Generally, research has found that BL results in improvement in student success and satisfaction, (Dziuban and Moskal 2011 ; Dziuban et al. 2011 ; Means et al. 2013 ) as well as an improvement in students’ sense of community (Rovai and Jordan 2004 ) when compared with face-to-face courses. Those who have been most successful at blended learning initiatives stress the importance of institutional support for course redesign and planning (Moskal et al. 2013 ; Dringus and Seagull 2015 ; Picciano 2009 ; Tynan et al. 2015 ). The evolving research questions found in the literature are long and demanding, with varied definitions of what constitutes “blended learning,” facilitating the need for continued and in-depth research on instructional models and support needed to maximize achievement and success (Dringus and Seagull 2015 ; Bloemer and Swan 2015 ).

Educational access

The lack of access to educational technologies and innovations (sometimes termed the digital divide) continues to be a challenge with novel educational technologies (Fairlie 2004 ; Jones et al. 2009 ). One of the promises of online technologies is that they can increase access to nontraditional and underserved students by bringing a host of educational resources and experiences to those who may have limited access to on-campus-only higher education. A 2010 U.S. report shows that students with low socioeconomic status are less likely to obtain higher levels of postsecondary education (Aud et al. 2010 ). However, the increasing availability of distance education has provided educational opportunities to millions (Lewis and Parsad 2008 ; Allen et al. 2016 ). Additionally, an emphasis on open educational resources (OER) in recent years has resulted in significant cost reductions without diminishing student performance outcomes (Robinson et al. 2014 ; Fischer et al. 2015 ; Hilton et al. 2016 ).

Unfortunately, the benefits of access may not be experienced evenly across demographic groups. A 2015 study found that Hispanic and Black STEM majors were significantly less likely to take online courses even when controlling for academic preparation, socioeconomic status (SES), citizenship, and English as a second language (ESL) status (Wladis et al. 2015 ). Also, questions have been raised about whether the additional access afforded by online technologies has actually resulted in improved outcomes for underserved populations. A distance education report in California found that all ethnic minorities (except Asian/Pacific Islanders) completed distance education courses at a lower rate than the ethnic majority (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office 2013 ). Shea and Bidjerano ( 2014 , 2016 ) found that African American community college students who took distance education courses completed degrees at significantly lower rates than those who did not take distance education courses. On the other hand, a study of success factors in K-12 online learning found that for ethnic minorities, only 1 out of 15 courses had significant gaps in student test scores (Liu and Cavanaugh 2011 ). More research needs to be conducted, examining access and success rates for different populations, when it comes to learning in different modalities, including fully online and blended learning environments.

Framing a treatment effect

Over the last decade, there have been at least five meta-analyses that have addressed the impact of blended learning environments and its relationship to learning effectiveness (Zhao et al. 2005 ; Sitzmann et al. 2006 ; Bernard et al. 2009 ; Means et al. 2010 , 2013 ; Bernard et al. 2014 ). Each of these studies has found small to moderate positive effect sizes in favor of blended learning when compared to fully online or traditional face-to-face environments. However, there are several considerations inherent in these studies that impact our understanding the generalizability of outcomes.

Dziuban and colleagues (Dziuban et al. 2015 ) analyzed the meta-analyses conducted by Means and her colleagues (Means et al. 2013 ; Means et al. 2010 ), concluding that their methods were impressive as evidenced by exhaustive study inclusion criteria and the use of scale-free effect size indices. The conclusion, in both papers, was that there was a modest difference in multiple outcome measures for courses featuring online modalities—in particular, blended courses. However, with blended learning especially, there are some concerns with these kinds of studies. First, the effect sizes are based on the linear hypothesis testing model with the underlying assumption that the treatment and the error terms are uncorrelated, indicating that there is nothing else going on in the blending that might confound the results. Although the blended learning articles (Means et al. 2010 ) were carefully vetted, the assumption of independence is tenuous at best so that these meta-analysis studies must be interpreted with extreme caution.

There is an additional concern with blended learning as well. Blends are not equivalent because of the manner on which they are configured. For instance, a careful reading of the sources used in the Means, et al. papers will identify, at minimum, the following blending techniques: laboratory assessments, online instruction, e-mail, class web sites, computer laboratories, mapping and scaffolding tools, computer clusters, interactive presentations and e-mail, handwriting capture, evidence-based practice, electronic portfolios, learning management systems, and virtual apparatuses. These are not equivalent ways in which to configure courses, and such nonequivalence constitutes the confounding we describe. We argue here that, in actuality, blended learning is a general construct in the form of a boundary object (Star and Griesemer 1989 ) rather than a treatment effect in the statistical sense. That is, an idea or concept that can support a community of practice, but is weakly defined fostering disagreement in the general group. Conversely, it is stronger in individual constituencies. For instance, content disciplines (i.e. education, rhetoric, optics, mathematics, and philosophy) formulate a more precise definition because of commonly embraced teaching and learning principles. Quite simply, the situation is more complicated than that, as Leonard Smith ( 2007 ) says after Tolstoy,

“All linear models resemble each other, each non nonlinear system is unique in its own way” (p. 33).

This by no means invalidates these studies, but effect size associated with blended learning should be interpreted with caution where the impact is evaluated within a particular learning context.

Study objectives

This study addressed student access by examining success and withdrawal rates in the blended learning courses by comparing them to face-to-face and online modalities over an extended time period at the University of Central Florida. Further, the investigators sought to assess the differences in those success and withdrawal rates with the minority status of students. Secondly, the investigators examined the student end-of-course ratings of blended learning and other modalities by attempting to develop robust if-then decision rules about what characteristics of classes and instructors lead students to assign an “excellent” value to their educational experience. Because of the high stakes nature of these student ratings toward faculty promotion, awards, and tenure, they act as a surrogate measure for instructional quality. Next, the investigators determined the conditional probabilities for students conforming to the identified rule cross-referenced by expected grade, the degree to which they desired to take the course, and course modality.

Student grades by course modality were recoded into a binary variable with C or higher assigned a value of 1, and remaining values a 0. This was a declassification process that sacrificed some specificity but compensated for confirmation bias associated with disparate departmental policies regarding grade assignment. At the measurement level this was an “on track to graduation index” for students. Withdrawal was similarly coded by the presence or absence of its occurrence. In each case, the percentage of students succeeding or withdrawing from blended, online or face-to-face courses was calculated by minority and non-minority status for the fall 2014 through fall 2015 semesters.

Next, a classification and regression tree (CART) analysis (Brieman et al. 1984 ) was performed on the student end-of-course evaluation protocol ( Appendix 1 ). The dependent measure was a binary variable indicating whether or not a student assigned an overall rating of excellent to his or her course experience. The independent measures in the study were: the remaining eight rating items on the protocol, college membership, and course level (lower undergraduate, upper undergraduate, and graduate). Decision trees are efficient procedures for achieving effective solutions in studies such as this because with missing values imputation may be avoided with procedures such as floating methods and the surrogate formation (Brieman et al. 1984 , Olshen et al. 1995 ). For example, a logistic regression method cannot efficiently handle all variables under consideration. There are 10 independent variables involved here; one variable has three levels, another has nine, and eight have five levels each. This means the logistic regression model must incorporate more than 50 dummy variables and an excessively large number of two-way interactions. However, the decision-tree method can perform this analysis very efficiently, permitting the investigator to consider higher order interactions. Even more importantly, decision trees represent appropriate methods in this situation because many of the variables are ordinally scaled. Although numerical values can be assigned to each category, those values are not unique. However, decision trees incorporate the ordinal component of the variables to obtain a solution. The rules derived from decision trees have an if-then structure that is readily understandable. The accuracy of these rules can be assessed with percentages of correct classification or odds-ratios that are easily understood. The procedure produces tree-like rule structures that predict outcomes.

The model-building procedure for predicting overall instructor rating

For this study, the investigators used the CART method (Brieman et al. 1984 ) executed with SPSS 23 (IBM Corp 2015 ). Because of its strong variance-sharing tendencies with the other variables, the dependent measure for the analysis was the rating on the item Overall Rating of the Instructor , with the previously mentioned indicator variables (college, course level, and the remaining 8 questions) on the instrument. Tree methods are recursive, and bisect data into subgroups called nodes or leaves. CART analysis bases itself on: data splitting, pruning, and homogeneous assessment.

Splitting the data into two (binary) subsets comprises the first stage of the process. CART continues to split the data until the frequencies in each subset are either very small or all observations in a subset belong to one category (e.g., all observations in a subset have the same rating). Usually the growing stage results in too many terminate nodes for the model to be useful. CART solves this problem using pruning methods that reduce the dimensionality of the system.

The final stage of the analysis involves assessing homogeneousness in growing and pruning the tree. One way to accomplish this is to compute the misclassification rates. For example, a rule that produces a .95 probability that an instructor will receive an excellent rating has an associated error of 5.0%.

Implications for using decision trees

Although decision-tree techniques are effective for analyzing datasets such as this, the reader should be aware of certain limitations. For example, since trees use ranks to analyze both ordinal and interval variables, information can be lost. However, the most serious weakness of decision tree analysis is that the results can be unstable because small initial variations can lead to substantially different solutions.

For this study model, these problems were addressed with the k-fold cross-validation process. Initially the dataset was partitioned randomly into 10 subsets with an approximately equal number of records in each subset. Each cohort is used as a test partition, and the remaining subsets are combined to complete the function. This produces 10 models that are all trained on different subsets of the original dataset and where each has been used as the test partition one time only.

Although computationally dense, CART was selected as the analysis model for a number of reasons— primarily because it provides easily interpretable rules that readers will be able evaluate in their particular contexts. Unlike many other multivariate procedures that are even more sensitive to initial estimates and require a good deal of statistical sophistication for interpretation, CART has an intuitive resonance with researcher consumers. The overriding objective of our choice of analysis methods was to facilitate readers’ concentration on our outcomes rather than having to rely on our interpretation of the results.

Institution-level evaluation: Success and withdrawal

The University of Central Florida (UCF) began a longitudinal impact study of their online and blended courses at the start of the distributed learning initiative in 1996. The collection of similar data across multiple semesters and academic years has allowed UCF to monitor trends, assess any issues that may arise, and provide continual support for both faculty and students across varying demographics. Table  1 illustrates the overall success rates in blended, online and face-to-face courses, while also reporting their variability across minority and non-minority demographics.

While success (A, B, or C grade) is not a direct reflection of learning outcomes, this overview does provide an institutional level indication of progress and possible issues of concern. BL has a slight advantage when looking at overall success and withdrawal rates. This varies by discipline and course, but generally UCF’s blended modality has evolved to be the best of both worlds, providing an opportunity for optimizing face-to-face instruction through the effective use of online components. These gains hold true across minority status. Reducing on-ground time also addresses issues that impact both students and faculty such as parking and time to reach class. In addition, UCF requires faculty to go through faculty development tailored to teaching in either blended or online modalities. This 8-week faculty development course is designed to model blended learning, encouraging faculty to redesign their course and not merely consider blended learning as a means to move face-to-face instructional modules online (Cobb et al. 2012 ; Lowe 2013 ).

Withdrawal (Table  2 ) from classes impedes students’ success and retention and can result in delayed time to degree, incurred excess credit hour fees, or lost scholarships and financial aid. Although grades are only a surrogate measure for learning, they are a strong predictor of college completion. Therefore, the impact of any new innovation on students’ grades should be a component of any evaluation. Once again, the blended modality is competitive and in some cases results in lower overall withdrawal rates than either fully online or face-to-face courses.

The students’ perceptions of their learning environments

Other potentially high-stakes indicators can be measured to determine the impact of an innovation such as blended learning on the academy. For instance, student satisfaction and attitudes can be measured through data collection protocols, including common student ratings, or student perception of instruction instruments. Given that those ratings often impact faculty evaluation, any negative reflection can derail the successful implementation and scaling of an innovation by disenfranchised instructors. In fact, early online and blended courses created a request by the UCF faculty senate to investigate their impact on faculty ratings as compared to face-to-face sections. The UCF Student Perception of Instruction form is released automatically online through the campus web portal near the end of each semester. Students receive a splash page with a link to each course’s form. Faculty receive a scripted email that they can send to students indicating the time period that the ratings form will be available. The forms close at the beginning of finals week. Faculty receive a summary of their results following the semester end.

The instrument used for this study was developed over a ten year period by the faculty senate of the University of Central Florida, recognizing the evolution of multiple course modalities including blended learning. The process involved input from several constituencies on campus (students, faculty, administrators, instructional designers, and others), in attempt to provide useful formative and summative instructional information to the university community. The final instrument was approved by resolution of the senate and, currently, is used across the university. Students’ rating of their classes and instructors comes with considerable controversy and disagreement with researchers aligning themselves on both sides of the issue. Recently, there have been a number of studies criticizing the process (Uttl et al. 2016 ; Boring et al. 2016 ; & Stark and Freishtat 2014 ). In spite of this discussion, a viable alternative has yet to emerge in higher education. So in the foreseeable future, the process is likely to continue. Therefore, with an implied faculty senate mandate this study was initiated by this team of researchers.

Prior to any analysis of the item responses collected in this campus-wide student sample, the psychometric quality (domain sampling) of the information yielded by the instrument was assessed. Initially, the reliability (internal consistency) was derived using coefficient alpha (Cronbach 1951 ). In addition, Guttman ( 1953 ) developed a theorem about item properties that leads to evidence about the quality of one’s data, demonstrating that as the domain sampling properties of items improve, the inverse of the correlation matrix among items will approach a diagonal. Subsequently, Kaiser and Rice ( 1974 ) developed the measure of sampling adequacy (MSA) that is a function of the Guttman Theorem. The index has an upper bound of one with Kaiser offering some decision rules for interpreting the value of MSA. If the value of the index is in the .80 to .99 range, the investigator has evidence of an excellent domain sample. Values in the .70s signal an acceptable result, and those in the .60s indicate data that are unacceptable. Customarily, the MSA has been used for data assessment prior to the application of any dimensionality assessments. Computation of the MSA value gave the investigators a benchmark for the construct validity of the items in this study. This procedure has been recommended by Dziuban and Shirkey ( 1974 ) prior to any latent dimension analysis and was used with the data obtained for this study. The MSA for the current instrument was .98 suggesting excellent domain sampling properties with an associated alpha reliability coefficient of .97 suggesting superior internal consistency. The psychometric properties of the instrument were excellent with both measures.

The online student ratings form presents an electronic data set each semester. These can be merged across time to create a larger data set of completed ratings for every course across each semester. In addition, captured data includes course identification variables including prefix, number, section and semester, department, college, faculty, and class size. The overall rating of effectiveness is used most heavily by departments and faculty in comparing across courses and modalities (Table  3 ).

The finally derived tree (decision rules) included only three variables—survey items that asked students to rate the instructor’s effectiveness at:

Helping students achieve course objectives,

Creating an environment that helps students learn, and

Communicating ideas and information.

None of the demographic variables associated with the courses contributed to the final model. The final rule specifies that if a student assigns an excellent rating to those three items, irrespective of their status on any other condition, the probability is .99 that an instructor will receive an overall rating of excellent. The converse is true as well. A poor rating on all three of those items will lead to a 99% chance of an instructor receiving an overall rating of poor.

Tables  4 , 5 and 6 present a demonstration of the robustness of the CART rule for variables on which it was not developed: expected course grade, desire to take the course and modality.

In each case, irrespective of the marginal probabilities, those students conforming to the rule have a virtually 100% chance of seeing the course as excellent. For instance, 27% of all students expecting to fail assigned an excellent rating to their courses, but when they conformed to the rule the percentage rose to 97%. The same finding is true when students were asked about their desire to take the course with those who strongly disagreed assigning excellent ratings to their courses 26% of the time. However, for those conforming to the rule, that category rose to 92%. When course modality is considered in the marginal sense, blended learning is rated as the preferred choice. However, from Table  6 we can observe that the rule equates student assessment of their learning experiences. If they conform to the rule, they will see excellence.

This study addressed increasingly important issues of student success, withdrawal and perception of the learning environment across multiple course modalities. Arguably these components form the crux of how we will make more effective decisions about how blended learning configures itself in the new normal. The results reported here indicate that blending maintains or increases access for most student cohorts and produces improved success rates for minority and non-minority students alike. In addition, when students express their beliefs about the effectiveness of their learning environments, blended learning enjoys the number one rank. However, upon more thorough analysis of key elements students view as important in their learning, external and demographic variables have minimal impact on those decisions. For example college (i.e. discipline) membership, course level or modality, expected grade or desire to take a particular course have little to do with their course ratings. The characteristics they view as important relate to clear establishment and progress toward course objectives, creating an effective learning environment and the instructors’ effective communication. If in their view those three elements of a course are satisfied they are virtually guaranteed to evaluate their educational experience as excellent irrespective of most other considerations. While end of course rating protocols are summative the three components have clear formative characteristics in that each one is directly related to effective pedagogy and is responsive to faculty development through units such as the faculty center for teaching and learning. We view these results as encouraging because they offer potential for improving the teaching and learning process in an educational environment that increases the pressure to become more responsive to contemporary student lifestyles.

Clearly, in this study we are dealing with complex adaptive systems that feature the emergent property. That is, their primary agents and their interactions comprise an environment that is more than the linear combination of their individual elements. Blending learning, by interacting with almost every aspect of higher education, provides opportunities and challenges that we are not able to fully anticipate.

This pedagogy alters many assumptions about the most effective way to support the educational environment. For instance, blending, like its counterpart active learning, is a personal and individual phenomenon experienced by students. Therefore, it should not be surprising that much of what we have called blended learning is, in reality, blended teaching that reflects pedagogical arrangements. Actually, the best we can do for assessing impact is to use surrogate measures such as success, grades, results of assessment protocols, and student testimony about their learning experiences. Whether or not such devices are valid indicators remains to be determined. We may be well served, however, by changing our mode of inquiry to blended teaching.

Additionally, as Norberg ( 2017 ) points out, blended learning is not new. The modality dates back, at least, to the medieval period when the technology of textbooks was introduced into the classroom where, traditionally, the professor read to the students from the only existing manuscript. Certainly, like modern technologies, books were disruptive because they altered the teaching and learning paradigm. Blended learning might be considered what Johnson describes as a slow hunch (2010). That is, an idea that evolved over a long period of time, achieving what Kaufmann ( 2000 ) describes as the adjacent possible – a realistic next step occurring in many iterations.

The search for a definition for blended learning has been productive, challenging, and, at times, daunting. The definitional continuum is constrained by Oliver and Trigwell ( 2005 ) castigation of the concept for its imprecise vagueness to Sharpe et al.’s ( 2006 ) notion that its definitional latitude enhances contextual relevance. Both extremes alter boundaries such as time, place, presence, learning hierarchies, and space. The disagreement leads us to conclude that Lakoff’s ( 2012 ) idealized cognitive models i.e. arbitrarily derived concepts (of which blended learning might be one) are necessary if we are to function effectively. However, the strong possibility exists that blended learning, like quality, is observer dependent and may not exist outside of our perceptions of the concept. This, of course, circles back to the problem of assuming that blending is a treatment effect for point hypothesis testing and meta-analysis.

Ultimately, in this article, we have tried to consider theoretical concepts and empirical findings about blended learning and their relationship to the new normal as it evolves. Unfortunately, like unresolved chaotic solutions, we cannot be sure that there is an attractor or that it will be the new normal. That being said, it seems clear that blended learning is the harbinger of substantial change in higher education and will become equally impactful in K-12 schooling and industrial training. Blended learning, because of its flexibility, allows us to maximize many positive education functions. If Floridi ( 2014 ) is correct and we are about to live in an environment where we are on the communication loop rather than in it, our educational future is about to change. However, if our results are correct and not over fit to the University of Central Florida and our theoretical speculations have some validity, the future of blended learning should encourage us about the coming changes.

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The authors acknowledge the contributions of several investigators and course developers from the Center for Distributed Learning at the University of Central Florida, the McKay School of Education at Brigham Young University, and Scholars at Umea University, Sweden. These professionals contributed theoretical and practical ideas to this research project and carefully reviewed earlier versions of this manuscript. The Authors gratefully acknowledge their support and assistance.

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Dziuban, C., Graham, C.R., Moskal, P.D. et al. Blended learning: the new normal and emerging technologies. Int J Educ Technol High Educ 15 , 3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-017-0087-5

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Modeling the Contribution of EFL Students’ Digital Literacy to Their Foreign Language Enjoyment and Self-Efficacy in Online Education

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• Lijuan Feng   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0004-4339-7332 1  

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With the spread of online education, many studies highlighted the crucial role of digital literacy in second/foreign language (L2) learning. However, the influence of such a competency on L students’ perceived emotions has remained under-research. To fill this lacuna, this study used a quantitative design via three questionnaires to investigate the predicting role of students’ digital literacy (DL) in their perceived enjoyment and online learning self-efficacy (OLSE). To do so, a sample of 987 Chinese English as a foreign language students, at university level, were invited to partake in the study. The results of structural equation modeling demonstrated that DL could predict about 95% of changes in the participants’ FLE ( β  = .949, p  < .001). Furthermore, it was found that about 92% of changes in Chinese students’ OLSE could be significantly predicted by their DL ( β  = .916, p  < .001). Drawing on the obtained results, the study presents discussions and implications for L2 educators regarding the role of digital literacy in students’ perceived emotions.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Feng, L. Modeling the Contribution of EFL Students’ Digital Literacy to Their Foreign Language Enjoyment and Self-Efficacy in Online Education. Asia-Pacific Edu Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40299-023-00787-1

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Brief research report article, lockdown learning: changes in online foreign-language study activity and performance of dutch secondary school students during the covid-19 pandemic.

• 1 University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
• 2 Noordhoff Uitgevers, Groningen, Netherlands
• 3 Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

The COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns and sudden school closures around the world in spring 2020, significantly impacting the education of students. Here, we investigate how the switch to distance learning affected study activity and performance in an online retrieval practice tool used for language learning in Dutch secondary education. We report insights from a rich data set consisting of over 115 million retrieval practice trials completed by more than 133 thousand students over the course of two consecutive school years. Our findings show that usage of the tool increased substantially at the start of lockdown, with the bulk of study activity occurring on weekday mornings. In general, students’ progress through the material was largely unaffected by lockdown, although students from the highest educational track were somewhat more likely to be on or ahead of schedule than students from lower tracks, compared to the previous year. Performance on individual study trials was generally stable, but accuracy and response time on open answer questions went up, perhaps as a result of students being more focused at home. These encouraging findings contribute to a growing literature on the educational ramifications of distance learning during lockdown.

1 Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to school closures around the world. As schools shifted to distance learning in early 2020, teachers were forced to swiftly revise their teaching methods ( Hall et al., 2020 ; Lorente et al., 2020 ; Mohan et al., 2020 ). The rapid transition has caused widespread concern about compromised learning and mental health in children ( UNICEF, 2020 ). Indeed, initial reports have suggested learning decrements Engzell et al. (2020) , Kuhfeld et al. (2020) and adverse mental health effects ( Bignardi et al., 2020 ; Pearcey et al., 2020 ; Wright et al., 2020 ) in primary school students, compared to preceding years. In many cases, the shift to distance learning also reinforced existing inequalities: students from disadvantaged backgrounds were found to suffer greater learning setbacks than their more advantaged peers ( Alvi and Gupta, 2020 ; Sevilla et al., 2020 ; Dietrich et al., 2020 ; Doyle, 2020 ; Engzell et al., 2020 ), and there were reports of disparities in access to resources and preparedness of instruction materials required for distance learning between educational levels and schools ( Bol, 2020 ; Mohan et al., 2020 ; van de Werfhorst et al., 2020 ).

While many studies have reported on pandemic-related learning losses in primary education, relatively little is known about the impact of the pandemic on older students. Surveys of secondary school students have suggested that these students spent significantly less time on school work during lockdown ( Anger et al., 2020 ; Grätz and Lipps, 2021 ), and had difficulty concentrating at home ( de Haas et al., 2020 ). In higher education, preliminary results point to a similar drop in motivation and effort, but indicate that academic performance was unaffected or even somewhat improved ( Gonzalez et al., 2020 ; Jacques et al., 2020 ; Meeter et al., 2020 ). These findings suggest that learning losses may vary with student age—perhaps as a function of students’ developing ability to engage in self-regulated learning ( Paris and Newman, 1990 ).

One factor that likely contributed to variation in the extent to which students were affected by school closures is the availability of digital educational materials and online learning tools ( Ferri et al., 2020 ; Hall et al., 2020 ; Klapproth et al., 2020 ). German secondary school students reported spending more time on school work if their school offered more digital learning materials ( Anger et al., 2020 ). A study of French university students showed that, in a course redesigned around appropriate online tools, distance learning achieved similar learning outcomes to a course taught in person ( Jacques et al., 2020 ). Offering online adaptive practice software as part of the curriculum could even benefit students, as a study of Dutch primary schools showed that including such software in mathematics education led to students performing better, not worse, than they would otherwise have ( Meeter, 2021 ). Dutch educators surveyed before and during the lockdown reported seeing the benefits of digital learning tools, remarking on their efficiency and ability to offer a personalised learning experience in particular ( van der Spoel et al., 2020 ). The development of suitable digital materials and learning tools may thus mitigate (some of) the impact of school closures on learning.

To explore this further, we studied the use of online learning tools in secondary education in the Netherlands during the spring 2020 school closures. Educational systems—and the effects of the pandemic on these systems—differ substantially between countries (e.g., Crawford et al., 2020 ; Loima, 2020 ; Toquero, 2020 ; Assunção Flores and Gago, 2020 ; Wu, 2021 ; Watermeyer et al., 2021 ). Robust national-level empirical studies are therefore essential in understanding the impact of COVID-19 in the unique context of each country. The Netherlands was relatively well-prepared for distance learning in terms of technological infrastructure ( Engzell et al., 2020 ); the regular curriculum already included digital components, and, by-and-large, students had access to the necessary tools at home ( de Haas et al., 2020 ; Bol, 2020 ). Nevertheless, the sudden lockdown meant that schools and teachers had little time to prepare for the switch to fully-online teaching. In many cases, scheduled lesson hours were reduced or shortened, and more emphasis was placed on digital components of the curriculum ( Voogel, 2020 ). Dutch teachers reported having to quickly reevaluate and adapt their teaching methods, which was particularly challenging for those less familiar with educational technology ( van der Spoel et al., 2020 ). Furthermore, a survey of students’ parents indicates that, in secondary education, school involvement differed between educational levels: compared to students in the pre-vocational track (vmbo), students in the higher pre-university track (vwo) were more likely to have digital classes, a structured lesson programme, and schoolwork checks ( Bol, 2020 ).

The online learning tool that we studied enables self-regulated, autonomous rehearsal of foreign-language vocabulary through retrieval practice, a study method requiring learners to actively recall information ( Roediger and Butler, 2011 ). The tool was accessible to a large number of students in different year groups (12–16 years old) and educational tracks (pre-vocational, general secondary, and pre-university), and was already widely used before the lockdown. This enabled us to compare usage and performance during the school closure period to measurements from earlier in the same school year and from the same period in the year before. As such, the data collected from this tool provides valuable insight into the effects of lockdown on Dutch secondary students’ foreign-language learning.

In this paper, we use the collected data to address two research questions:

1. Did usage of the retrieval practice tool change during the lockdown period?

2. Did retrieval practice performance change during the lockdown period?

The analyses that we report are limited to the domain of the online learning tool, which means that other components of the curriculum and learning environment are left out of consideration. Nevertheless, these results, when combined with other studies addressing the impact of lockdown on other facets of education, bring us closer to a complete picture of the effects of distance learning on education.

We recorded the online retrieval practice activity of a large sample of secondary education students in the Netherlands during two consecutive school years (18/19 and 19/20; both school years lasting from 1 August to 31 July). The sample includes students from each of the three educational tracks in Dutch secondary education—pre-vocational (vmbo), general secondary (havo) and pre-university (vwo)—and from year groups 1 (age: 12; corresponds to grade 7) through 4 (age: 16; corresponds to grade 10).

Students in the sample used SlimStampen, an online, adaptive retrieval practice tool made available to them through the educational publisher Noordhoff Uitgever s as part of the foreign language learning curriculum for English and French. Retrieval practice is a well-established and effective study method in which learners are prompted to actively recall the learning material ( Roediger and Butler, 2011 ; Rowland, 2014 ). The workings of the retrieval practice tool used here are described in detail in Sense et al. (2016) ; van der Velde et al. (2021) ; van Rijn et al. (2009) . The tool enabled students to rehearse the course material through retrieval practice sessions, both upon their teacher’s instruction and of their own volition. Sessions consisted of a sequence of trials in which students rehearsed a set of foreign vocabulary items by answering retrieval prompts in various formats. For example, a student practising French vocabulary might see the Dutch prompt waarom (English: why) and be asked to retrieve and type its French translation pourquoi. Data recorded in each trial included the response accuracy and response time, as well as information about the question format, the studied item, and the corresponding textbook chapter.

Approval to analyse the anonymised activity data was granted by the Ethics Committee Psychology of the University of Groningen (study code: PSY-1920-S-0397).

Over the course of two school years and across both courses, a total of 133,450 students completed 115,232,555 trials (18/19: 52,917,284 trials; 19/20: 62,315,271 trials). Supplementary Table 1 gives a breakdown of the data in the sample by course and school year.

We addressed the two research questions outlined in the Introduction by first looking at usage of the retrieval practice tool over time, and then investigating how study performance changed during lockdown.

All analyses were conducted in R (version 3.6.3; R Core Team, 2020 ). Regression models were fitted using the lme4 package version 1.1–21; Bates et al. (2015) and the lmerTest package (version 3.1–0; Kuznetsova et al., 2017 ). The analysis code is available at https://osf.io/t25fe/ . Additional figures and tables are available in the supplement to this article. Wherever analyses are split by year group and educational track, we only show the French results in the main article. Results for English-language study are included in the supplement.

3.1 Study Activity

To identify changes in usage of the retrieval practice tool, we looked at the frequency of study trials over time, as well as the time of day at which students were most active.

3.1.1 Study Frequency

Figure 1 shows French-language study activity during both school years in terms of the total number of practice trials completed per week, stratified by year group and educational track. It also shows the percentage change in trial count during the whole lockdown period, marked in grey, relative to the same period in the previous school year. Across all strata, there was a notable increase in study activity during the lockdown period; in the most extreme cases, the number of completed trials grew almost nine-fold. Usage increased more strongly in higher year groups, where baseline usage was much lower. The increased usage persisted after schools started to reopen in June 2020. Similar patterns were found in English-language study activity (see Supplementary Figure 1 ).

FIGURE 1 . Comparison of French-language study activity during a regular school year (18/19) and the school year affected by COVID-19 (19/20), stratified by year group (columns) and education track (rows). Activity is measured through the number of trials completed per week. The shaded area marks the school closure period in the 19/20 school year. The change in activity during this period is shown as a percentage in each plot.

3.1.2 Study Timing

The effects of distance learning during lockdown were also visible in the time of day at which students were actively using the retrieval practice tool. Figure 2A shows how study activity was distributed over the week during the school closure period, as well as during the same period in the preceding school year. The year-on-year change is depicted in Figure 2B , which shows that study activity during lockdown shifted towards the weekday mornings, with less activity being recorded on weekday afternoons and on Sundays.

FIGURE 2 . (A) Distribution of study trials over the week during the school closure period (16 March–2 June) in both school years. The colour of each square shows how many trials were recorded in a learning session starting within a particular hour on a particular weekday, as a proportion of the entire week. (B) Change in distribution of study trials from the 18/19 school year to the 19/20 school year.

3.2 Study Performance

We assessed the effects of distance learning on study performance in two ways. Firstly, we tracked students’ progression through the study materials in aggregate to identify changes in study pace. Secondly, to identify more immediate behavioural effects, we looked at response accuracy and response time at the level of individual trials.

3.2.1 Progress Through Materials

Figure 3 visualises students’ progress through the textbook chapters of the French course over the school year. Supplementary Figure 2 in the online supplement shows the same for English. The time plots show the weekly share of trials that correspond to each chapter per year group and track in both school years. Gaps indicate weeks in which no trials were recorded. There was generally a smooth progression over time from one chapter to the next; a trend that appeared to continue during the lockdown.

FIGURE 3 . Progress through the French materials over time: the share of study trials pertaining to each textbook chapter as a percentage of all trials completed in a week. The school closure period in the 19/20 school year and the corresponding period in the previous year are marked by a dashed border. The change in trial share during this period is shown, per chapter, below each set of plots, where the dark-grey and light-grey bands indicate the variability between the two school years in the period preceding the lockdown (1 SD and 2 SD, respectively).

To measure the effect of distance learning on progress, we performed pairwise comparisons of the chapter distribution (i.e., the proportion of trials associated with each chapter) during the lockdown period in the 19/20 school year and the same period in the preceding school year using a chi-square test of homogeneity. This test was done separately for each combination of year group and education level. In all cases, we found that there was a significant year-on-year change (all p < .001). However, the observed changes in trial share were often within the bounds of typical fluctuations between school years, as a comparison to changes outside the lockdown period indicated. We calculated the year-on-year change in trial share per chapter over the period preceding the lockdown, using a sliding window of equal duration to the lockdown period. The change plots in Figure 3 and Supplementary Figure 2 show the spread of these typical changes as two grey bands, extending to 1 SD and 2 SD, respectively. For a large part, the changes in trial share during the lockdown period, shown as points, fall within this range. This means that, while there were statistically significant changes in progress during the lockdown period, many of these changes were comparable to typical year-on-year fluctuations.

Whenever there were unusually large changes outside the typical range, these sometimes pointed to students being behind the previous year’s schedule (i.e., one chapter’s trial share was higher than the year before while that of a subsequent chapter was lower), and sometimes to students being ahead of schedule. The tendency to be behind or ahead in these cases appeared to differ somewhat between educational tracks: for both French and English, pre-university (vwo) students were ahead of schedule in five year groups and on schedule in one group; general secondary (havo) students were ahead in two year groups, on schedule in three, and behind in one; pre-vocational (vmbo) students were ahead of schedule in two year groups, on schedule in three, and behind schedule in two groups.

3.2.2 Trial-Level Performance

Trial-level performance was measured through response accuracy and response time. These variables were analysed separately for multiple choice questions, which only required the student to select the answer from a set of options, and open answer questions, which required the student to type the answer. The English-language study data contained virtually no open answer questions (see Supplementary Table 1 ), so only multiple choice performance is reported for English. We saw similar changes in trial-level performance across educational tracks and year groups; here we report performance at the population level.

Figure 4A shows mean response accuracy over the course of the school year. Accuracy on multiple choice questions was consistently high in both courses, a pattern that continued during the lockdown period in the 19/20 school year. Accuracy on open answer questions, however, did change over the course of the 19/20 school year, increasing by about six percentage points from the period before the lockdown ( M = 77.48 % , SD = 17.76 % ) to the lockdown period itself ( M = 83.70 % , SD = 15.17 % ) and remaining higher after schools had started reopening ( M = 81.90 % , SD = 18.16 % ). These patterns were confirmed by a binomial generalised linear mixed-effects model fitted to students’ daily accuracy scores (see Supplementary Table 3 ). Due to the size of the data set, the model found significant changes in accuracy over time for both question types, but there was only a meaningfully large effect size for open answer questions in the lockdown and post-lockdown periods of the 19/20 school year.

FIGURE 4 . Comparison of study performance over time during a regular school year (18/19) and the school year affected by COVID-19 (19/20). (A) Mean response accuracy ( ± 1 SE). (B) Mean response time (± 1 SE) on correct answers.

There were similar trends in the response time measured on correct answers, as Figure 4B shows. While response times on multiple choice questions remained reasonably stable across both school years, response times on French open answer questions did change substantially, increasing by about 0.25 s from the pre-lockdown period ( M = 2.44 s, SD = 4.58 s) to the lockdown ( M = 2.71 s, SD = 3.58 s) and the period that followed ( M = 2.82 s, SD = 8.73 s). These changes were confirmed by a generalised linear mixed-effects model (see Supplementary Table 4 ). Although we cannot be certain about the cause, the higher response time and accuracy may indicate that students experienced less time pressure or were more focused on the task at home than at school, typing out their responses more carefully.

4 Discussion

Our results show that the shift to distance learning during the COVID-19 lockdown of spring 2020 coincided with an increase in usage of an online retrieval practice tool by students in Dutch secondary education, with activity increasing on weekday mornings in particular. In general, we found little evidence of major study delays as a result of the lockdown; students in the highest educational track were likely to be on or even somewhat ahead of the previous year’s schedule, and students in lower tracks were also roughly on schedule. Students’ trial-to-trial learning performance was, if anything, better during the lockdown period than the year before. In particular, we saw higher accuracy and higher response times on open answer questions, perhaps indicating that students experienced less time pressure or were better able to focus at home.

The online learning data reported here offer a detailed look at day-to-day changes in behaviour of a large and diverse group of students. Of course, observing students’ activity in a single online learning tool provides only a limited view into their learning, and students who do not use the tool (anymore) fly completely under the radar. A more complete analysis of the effects of lockdown should also consider other components of the curriculum and students’ environment. As previous work has shown, there are likely to be differences among school subjects, students, and schools in how much learning fell behind during lockdown ( Engzell et al., 2020 ; Lek et al., 2020 ; Maldonado and Witte, 2020 ; Meeter, 2021 ). Identifying the causes of such differences can be helpful in effectively combating the negative consequences of lockdown. Analyses like the current one contribute to this goal. In addition, it is possible that the initial sudden switch to distance learning caused certain learning behaviours to persist out of inertia. It would therefore be valuable to compare our current findings to data from the second lockdown in the Netherlands, during the winter and spring of the 20/21 school year, at which point schools and students would have had more time to adapt to distance learning.

Because of differences between countries in educational systems, access to education and technology, and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to interpret these findings within their national context. Compared to other countries, the Netherlands was relatively well-prepared for distance learning, with good availability of the necessary technological infrastructure for digital education ( Engzell et al., 2020 ; de Haas et al., 2020 ). Technological hurdles related to the accessibility of digital resources have been much more problematic in developing and newly industrialised countries ( Alvi and Gupta, 2020 ; Owusu-Fordjour et al., 2020 ; Lorente et al., 2020 ). Nevertheless, even in the Netherlands access to appropriate digital educational materials and online learning tools was not universal, but was found to vary depending on socio-economic factors ( Bol, 2020 ), teachers’ familiarity and experience with these resources ( van der Spoel et al., 2020 ; Voogel, 2020 ), and, in secondary education, students’ educational track ( Bol, 2020 ). While our findings are based on a large sample of Dutch secondary school students, they offer only limited insight when it comes to such issues of accessibility. They depend on students actively using a particular online retrieval practice tool, and no further information about the students, teachers, or schools was recorded. We did observe slight differences between educational tracks in pre-lockdown usage of the online retrieval practice tool, but usage increased fairly uniformly during the lockdown. We therefore did not see evidence in our sample of disparities in technological preparedness between educational tracks that Bol (2020) reported.

Where studies have reported decrements in learning during the school closures, these could be caused by both lower quantity of learning, and lower quality. Surveys have already shown that secondary school students, on average, spent much less time on school-related work during the lockdown than they would normally do ( Anger et al., 2020 ; Grätz and Lipps, 2021 ). In contrast, we found an increase in usage of the retrieval practice tool. However, learning activity increased during what would normally be students’ regular school hours, suggesting that retrieval practice may have replaced other parts of the language-learning curriculum, rather than being added on top of it. The retrieval practice tool we studied addresses the learning of vocabulary, which is only one part of learning a foreign language. It may be that students focused on vocabulary learning, which may be relatively well-suited for distance learning, to the detriment of other aspects of language learning that could not be done as easily from home, in effect leading to a narrowing of the curriculum ( Voogel, 2020 ). Our results do suggest that in the specific case of vocabulary learning, the quality of learning remained constant or improved slightly, as indicated by normal or above-normal progress through the chapters of the textbook and stable or increasing response accuracy.

This work contributes to a growing literature aiming to understand the positive and negative impact of distance learning on students and to identify the factors that may amplify positive effects or mitigate negative effects. The reported findings offer a retrospective view of the impact of lockdown in a specific educational context that, together with similar studies on other aspects of education, can help shape future educational policy ( World Bank, 2020 ). Online learning tools such as the one discussed here have the potential to offer an efficient, personalised learning environment and give immediate and detailed insight into students’ learning. This can be very helpful for teachers and curriculum designers, particularly when regular classroom teaching becomes impossible.

Author’s Note

The online retrieval practice tool SlimStampen is licensed to Noordhoff Uitgevers by the University of Groningen .

Data Availability Statement

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because of the terms of the data processing agreement between Noordhoff Uitgevers and the University of Groningen. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to HR, [email protected] .

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics Committee Psychology of the University of Groningen. Written informed consent from the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

Author Contribution

MV performed the data analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication .

Conflict of Interest

Author RS was employed by Noordhoff Uitgevers.

The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2021.712987/full#supplementary-material

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Keywords: distance learning, learning analytics, COVID-19, Technology-enhanced learning, secondary education

Citation: van der Velde M, Sense F, Spijkers R, Meeter M and van Rijn H (2021) Lockdown Learning: Changes in Online Foreign-Language Study Activity and Performance of Dutch Secondary School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Front. Educ. 6:712987. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.712987

Received: 21 May 2021; Accepted: 19 July 2021; Published: 03 August 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 van der Velde, Sense, Spijkers, Meeter and van Rijn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Maarten van der Velde, [email protected]

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Online Distance Learning: A Literature Review

29 Sep 2020

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This week’s blogpost is a guest post by Dr John L. Taylor , Director of Learning, Teaching and Innovation at Cranleigh School .

Dr Taylor is leading a free CIRL professional development webinar on project-based learning, on 17 November from 4-5pm GMT. The link will be available on CIRL’s Eventbrite page soon and the webinar recording will be added to CIRL’s Resources and Professional Development page .

What does the secondary research literature tell us about distance learning?

This blogpost offers a literature review on online distance learning, which is thematically divided into four sections. I first consider what the literature tells us about the efficacy of online distance learning (section 1) and the importance of building a learning community (section 2). I then discuss what the literature says in response to two questions: ‘Does online distance learning work better for some students?’ (section 3) and ‘Can online distance learning support the development of self-regulated learning?’ (section 4).

In this review, the following key terms are defined as follows:

• Distance learning: a ‘form of education in which the main elements include physical separation of teachers and students during instruction and the use of various technologies to facilitate student-teacher and student-student communication.’ [1]
• Online learning: ‘education that takes place over the internet’. [2] This can be subdivided into asynchronous online courses that do not take place in real-time and synchronous online courses in which teacher and student interact online simultaneously. [3]
• Blended learning: a hybrid mode of interaction which combines face-to-face in-person meetings with online interaction. [4] As blended learning is a hybrid model, either the face-to-face or the online elements may be dominant. So, for example, blended learning can occur when online instructional tools are used to support face-to-face learning in a classroom, or when some face-to-face instruction is interspersed with online learning as part of a longer course.
• A virtual school: ‘an entity approved by a state or governing body that offers courses through distance delivery – most commonly using the internet’. [5]
• Self-regulated learning: ‘the modulation of affective, cognitive and behavioural processes throughout a learning experience in order to reach a desired level of achievement’. [6] Self-regulating learning skills have been described as abilities such as planning, managing and controlling the learning process. [7] Processes that occur during self-regulated learning include goal setting, metacognition and self-assessment. [8]

1. The Efficacy of Online Distance Learning

That said, there is also evidence of equivalence across a number of outcome measures. A 2004 meta-analysis by Cathy Cavanaugh et al of 116 effect sizes measured across 14 K-12 web-delivered distance learning programmes between 1999 and 2004 found that there was no significant difference in outcomes between virtual and face-to-face schools. [10]

A 2015 study by Heather Kauffmann explored factors predictive of student success and satisfaction with online learning. [11] Kauffmann notes that several studies have found that online learning programmes lead to outcomes that are comparable to those of face-to-face programmes.

VanPortfliet and Anderson note that research into hybrid instruction indicates that students achieve outcomes that match, if not exceed, outcomes from other instructional modalities. In particular, academic achievement by students in hybrid programmes is consistently higher than that of students engaged in purely online programmes. [12]

The ongoing discussion in the literature suggests that it is difficult to draw general conclusions about the efficacy of online learning as such, not least because it constitutes in significant ways a distinctive mode of learning when compared with real-world instruction. It is perhaps better, then, to look more specifically at questions such as the comparative strengths and challenges of moving to virtual schooling, the conditions which need to be in place for it to function well and the manner in which this transition is experienced by learners with different capabilities.

2. The Importance of Building a Learning Community

A helpful summary of research about online learning by Jonathan Beale at CIRL contains an outline of principles concerning successful online distance learning programmes.The summary explores research-based recommendations for effective teaching and learning practices in online and blended environments made by Judith V. Boettcher and Rita-Marie Conrad in their 2016 work, The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips . [13] A central emphasis of these recommendations is that successful online learning depends upon the formation of an online learning community, and this is only possible if there is regular online interaction between teachers and students:

Why is presence so important in the online environment? When faculty actively interact and engage students in a face-to-face classroom, the class evolves as a group and develops intellectual and personal bonds. The same type of community bonding happens in an online setting if the faculty presence is felt consistently. [14]

The significance of relationship building is noted in the Michigan Virtual Learning Research Institute’s Teacher Guide to Online Learning :

Creating a human-to-human bond with your online students, as well as with their parents/guardians and the student’s local online mentor, is critical in determining student success in your online course. This can be accomplished through effective individual and group communication, encouraging engagement in the course, productive and growth-focused feedback, and multiple opportunities for students to ask questions and learn in a way that is meaningful to them. [15]

Research into virtual learning emphasises the importance of the connection between students and their teachers. This can be lost if there is no ‘live’ contact element at all. As Beale notes, this does not necessarily mean that every lesson needs to include a video meeting, though there is a beneficial psychological impact of knowing that the teacher is still in contact and regular face-to-face online discussions can enable this. There are other forms – a discussion thread which begins during a lesson and is open throughout can perform the same role, though in cases where meeting functions are available, students may be directed to use these rather than email.

As well as the teacher-student relationship, student-student links are important. There is evidence of improved learning when students are asked to share their learning experiences with each other. [16]

Beale’s research summary also emphasizes the importance of a supportive and encouraging online environment. Distance learning is challenging for students and the experience can be frustrating and de-motivating if technology fails (e.g., if work gets lost or a live session cannot be joined due to a connection failure or time-zone difference). More than ever, teachers need to work at providing positive encouragement to their students, praising and rewarding success and acknowledging challenges when they exist. It is also valuable if teachers can identify new skills that students are acquiring – not least skills in problem-solving, using information technology and resilience – and encourage their classes when they see evidence of these.

3. Does online distance learning work better for some students?

Given that, more or less by definition, students participating in an online distance learning programme will be operating with a greater degree of autonomy, it may be expected that those who will be best suited to online learning will be those with the greatest propensity for self-regulated learning. This view is advanced in a review of the literature on virtual schools up until 2009, by Michael Barbour and Thomas Reeves:

The benefits associated with virtual schooling are expanding educational access, providing high-quality learning opportunities, improving student outcomes and skills, allowing for educational choice, and achieving administrative efficiency. However, the research to support these conjectures is limited at best. The challenges associated with virtual schooling include the conclusion that the only students typically successful in online learning environments are those who have independent orientations towards learning, highly motivated by intrinsic sources, and have strong time management, literacy, and technology skills. These characteristics are typically associated with adult learners. This stems from the fact that research into and practice of distance education has typically been targeted to adult learners. [17]

Given the lack of evidence noted by Barbour and Reeves, a more cautious conclusion would be that we may expect to find a relationship between outcomes from online distance learning programmes and the propensity of students for self-regulated learning, rather than the conclusion that this capacity is a precondition of success.

Kauffmann notes that students with the capacity for self-regulated learning tend to achieve better outcomes from online courses. This result is not surprising, given that in online learning more responsibility is placed on the learner. [18]

A 2019 review of 35 studies into online learning by Jacqueline Wong et al explores the connection between online learning and self-regulated learning. The study highlights the significance of supports for self-regulated learning such as the use of prompts or feedback in promoting the development and deployment of strategies for self-regulated learning, leading to better achievement in online learning:

In online learning environments where the instructor presence is low, learners have to make the decisions regarding when to study or how to approach the study materials. Therefore, learners’ ability to self-regulate their own learning becomes a crucial factor in their learning success … [S]upporting self-regulated learning strategies can help learners become better at regulating their learning, which in turn could enhance their learning performance. [19]

In a 2005 study of ‘Virtual High School’ (VHS), the oldest provider of distance learning courses to high school students in the United States, Susan Lowes notes that the VHS’s pedagogical approach ‘emphasizes student-centered teaching; collaborative, problem-based learning; small-group work; and authentic performance-based assessment’. [20] This approach, Lowes comments, is aligned with a growing body of literature on the characteristics of successful online courses.

Taking a more student-centred approach during online instruction fits with features of the online environment. It is natural to make more use of asynchronous assignments and to expect students to take more responsibility for their study, given that they are not subject to direct supervision in a classroom setting and may be accessing course materials outside of a conventional timetable.

4. Can online distance learning support the development of self-regulated learning?

It may be the case that, even if Barbour and Reeves are correct in claiming that only those students with an ‘independent orientation towards learning’typically achieve successful outcomes from online distance learning programmes, a countervailing relationship obtains insofar as participation in an online distance learning programme may foster the development of the propensity for self-regulated learning.

A controlled study in 2018 by Ruchan Uz and Adem Uzun of 167 undergraduate students on a programming language course compared blended learning with a traditional learning environment.  The study found that, for the purpose of developing self-regulated learning skills, blended instruction was more effective than traditional instruction. [21]

In a 2011 review of 55 empirical studies, Matthew Bernacki, Anita Aguilar and James Byrnes noted that research suggests that:

[T]echnologically enhanced learning environments … represent an opportunity for students to build their ability to self-regulate, and for some, leverage their ability to apply self-regulated learning … to acquire knowledge. [22]

Their review suggests that the use of technologically enhanced learning environments can promote self-regulated learning and that such environments are best used by learners who can self-regulate their learning. [23]

However, an investigation by Peter Serdyukov and Robyn Hill into whether online students do learn independently argues that independent learning requires active promotion as well as a desire to promote autonomy on the part of the instructor and the necessary skills and motivation on the part of students. Where these conditions are not met, the aspiration to autonomy is frustrated, which can lead to negative outcomes from the online learning experience. [24]

Bernacki, Aguilar and Brynes employed an Opportunity-Propensity (O-P) framework. The O-P framework was introduced by Brynes and Miller in a 2007 paper exploring the relative importance of predictors of math and science achievement, where it was described as follows:

This framework assumes that high achievement is a function of three categories of factors: (a) opportunity factors (e.g., coursework), (b) propensity factors (e.g., prerequisite skills, motivation), and (c) distal factors (e.g., SES). [25]

It is plausible to suggest that the two-way relationship between self-regulated learning skills and successful participation in an online distance learning programme can be explained in terms of the opportunities online distance learning offers in three areas: first, to develop self-regulated learning skills afforded by the online distance learning environment; second, the prior propensity of learners to self-regulate their learning; and third, changes in distal factors (such as exclusive mediation of learning through online platforms to IT and parental involvement in learning).

Summary of Secondary Research Literature

The following points can be made about online distance learning based on the foregoing review:

• Successful online learning depends upon the formation of an online learning community. Regular online interaction between teachers and students is important in the development of an online community. Teacher-student and student-student links are part of this.
• Students with the capacity for self-regulated learning tend to achieve better outcomes from online courses.
• There is some evidence that online distance learning programmes can be used to help develop self-regulated learning skills. This is provided that both teacher and student are motivated by the goal of building autonomy .
• There is support in the research literature for using collaborative, problem-based learning and authentic performance-based assessment within online learning programmes.

Coda: review and revise

It is fair to say that the move to an entirely distance learning programme is the single biggest and most rapid change that many educators will ever have had to make. As with any large-scale rapid and fundamental innovation, it is hard to get everything right. We need to be willing to revise and refine. This may mean adapting to use a new software platform across the whole school if problems are found with existing provision, or it may be an adjustment to expectations about lesson length or frequency of feedback. Keeping distance learning programmes under review is also essential as we look towards a possible future in which it will co-exist with face-to-face teaching.

This literature review is an edited version of the literature review in my report, ‘An Investigation of Online Distance Learning at Cranleigh’ , September 2020, which can be downloaded here . In that report, the literature review is used to establish several conclusions about the implementation of online learning programmes. Those findings are compared to trends discernible in the responses to a questionnaire survey of three year groups at Cranleigh School (years 9, 10 and 12). The programme of study for these year groups was designed to provide continuity of delivery of the curriculum, in contrast to the programmes developed for years 11 and 13, where a customised programme of study was developed to bridge the gap created by the withdrawal of national public examinations during the summer term of 2020.

[1] ‘Distance learning | education | Britannica’ .

[2] Joshua Stern, ‘Introduction to Online Teaching and Learning’ .

[3] Fordham University, ‘Types of Online Learning’ .

[5] Michael K. Barbour and Thomas C. Reeves, ‘The reality of virtual schools: A review of the literature’, Computers & Education 52.2 (2009), pp. 402-416.

[6] Maaike A. van Houten‐Schat et al , ‘Self‐regulated learning in the clinical context: a systematic review’, Medical Education 52.10 (2018), pp. 1008-1015.

[7] René F. Kizilcec, Mar Pérez-Sanagustín & Jorge J. Maldonado, ‘Self-regulated learning strategies predict learner behavior and goal attainment in Massive Open Online Courses’, Computers & education 104 (2017), pp. 18-33.

[8] Sofie M. M. Loyens, Joshua Magda and Remy M. J. P. Rikers, ‘Self-directed learning in problem-based learning and its relationships with self-regulated learning’, Educational Psychology Review 20.4 (2008), pp. 411-427.

[9] Paul VanPortfliet and Michael Anderson, ‘Moving from online to hybrid course delivery: Increasing positive student outcomes’, Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching 6.1 (2013), pp. 80-87.

[10] Cathy Cavanaugh et al , ‘The effects of distance education on K-12 student outcomes: A meta-analysis’, Learning Point Associates/North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL), 2004.

[11] Heather Kauffman, ‘A review of predictive factors of student success in and satisfaction with online learning’, Research in Learning Technology 23 (2015).

[12] VanPortfliet & Anderson, op. cit., pp 82 – 83 .

[13] Judith V. Boettcher & Rita-Marie Conrad, The Online Teaching Survival Guide: Simple and Practical Pedagogical Tips (Second Edition; San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2016).

[14] Ibid. Boettcher & Conrad’s chapter is reprinted with permission in this article , from which the quotation is taken.

[15] Michigan Virtual’s ‘Teacher Guide to Online Learning’ .

[16] Joan Van Tassel & Joseph Schmitz, ‘Enhancing learning in the virtual classroom’, Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching 6.1 (2013), pp. 37-53.

[17] Michael K. Barbour & Thomas C. Reeves, ‘The reality of virtual schools: A review of the literature’, Computers & Education 52.2 (2009), pp. 402-416.

[18] Heather Kauffman, ‘A review of predictive factors of student success in and satisfaction with online learning’, Research in Learning Technology 23 (2015).

[19] Jacqueline Wong et al , ‘Supporting self-regulated learning in online learning environments and MOOCs: A systematic review’, International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 35.4-5 (2019), pp. 356-373.

[20] ‘Online Teaching and Classroom Change – CiteSeerX’ .

[21] Ruchan Uz & Adem Uzun, ‘The Influence of Blended Learning Environment on Self-Regulated and Self-Directed Learning Skills of Learners’, European Journal of Educational Research 7.4 (2018), pp. 877-886.

[22] Matthew L. Bernacki, Anita C. Aguilar & James P. Byrnes, ‘Self-regulated learning and technology-enhanced learning environments: An opportunity-propensity analysis’, Fostering self-regulated learning through ICT , IGI Global (2011), pp. 1-26.

[24] Peter Serdyukov & R. Hill, ‘Flying with clipped wings: Are students independent in online college classes’, Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching 6.1 (2013), pp. 52-65.

[25] James P. Byrnes & David C. Miller, ‘The relative importance of predictors of math and science achievement: An opportunity–propensity analysis’, Contemporary Educational Psychology 32.4 (2007), pp. 599-629.

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• Open access
• Published: 08 August 2023

Digital learning and the ESL online classroom in higher education: teachers’ perspectives

• Noble Po-kan Lo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7636-6146 1  

Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education volume  8 , Article number:  24 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Metrics details

This study explores teachers’ perspectives with regards to teaching English in virtual classrooms, specifically with regards to teaching English as a second language within the context of emergency remote learning in Hong Kong during COVID-19. Through undertaking thematic analysis of six interviews with English language teachers at a university in Hong Kong, this study explores how teachers view the benefits, challenges and personal and professional consequences of the shift to emergency remote teaching during the pandemic. Taking a social constructivist approach to the topic, the study also seeks to uncover how teachers view such provisions as being improved under future emergencies and with respect to online English language teaching moving forwards generally. This research topic contributes both to a longstanding debate on the ways in which digital technologies can enhance education and language learning, as well as the emerging body of literature examining how teachers and students have responded to the implementation of digital learning in online classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

This research paper explores the experiences, attitudes and perspectives of English as a second language (ESL) teachers regarding the shift to online education as brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study utilises primary qualitative research consisting of interviews with six ESL teachers from higher-education institutes in Hong Kong in order to gauge their experiences, attitudes and perspectives on the shift to online learning with a view to exploring the efficacy and sustainability of online learning moving forward. This is undertaken with a view to contributing to the longstanding debate on the ways in which digital technologies can enhance education and language learning.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 onwards has instituted an unprecedented shift to education and language learning. At a global level, the necessity of closing schools and restricting access to face-to-face teaching in order minimise viral exposure has seen education across a number of contexts move towards online platforms and spaces (Chen et al., 2020 ). Although online education has been practised for some time and is a highly theorised and studied topic, these shifts to teaching and learning in online environments largely took place without pre-existing plans for online learning on this scale in place (Chang & Fang, 2020 ). The rapid nature of this transformation in the learning environment means that educationalists are still assessing what the consequences of online learning under these conditions have been for teachers and students alike (Pandit & Agrawal, 2022 ).

As such, there may be said to be two distinct bodies of literature covering related but distinct phenomena with respect to online teaching and learning. In terms of online teaching and learning generally, there is extensive research dating back some 30 years that has produced well-established principles and best practices regarding online teaching and learning. However, with respect to emergency remote teaching and learning, the absence of a comparable phenomenon to COVID-19 over this period means that there is much less research on emergency remote teaching prior to the outset of the pandemic. As a consequence, online teaching principles and best practices during the pandemic may not match those established on the basis of research over the past 30 years. This distinction in part motivates this research insofar as it is essential to understand the difficulties that teachers have experienced in understanding and implementing these principles and practices under the context of emergency remote teaching.

There have been a number of challenges to arriving at assessments as to what the virus has meant for learners and teachers. The highly localised nature of the response to the pandemic across national education systems means that the provisions for online education varied significantly across regions and states (Aguilera-Hermida et al., 2021 ). This means that generalisable findings have been difficult to arrive at, necessitating further research into the consequences of online education at regional, national and local levels. It is only through research carried out within these contexts that overall approaches to online education may be assessed and compared across contexts.

Fortunately, there is already a substantial body of research into online education that may be drawn upon in order to guide research in this regard. Online education has been suggested by past researchers to hold significant potential in enhancing the experiences of teachers and learners alike (Livingstone, 2012 ; Sun & Chen, 2016 ), suggesting that there may be much to gain from utilising online education further. However, researchers have also suggested that there may be limitations or obstacles to the utilisation of online learning with regards to second language acquisition (SLA) (Lin, 2014 ). There is therefore an ongoing debate within the area of ELT research regarding the suitability of online teaching for learning English as a second language, as well as with regards to best principles and practices in this area.

Beyond this, online teaching under pandemic conditions likewise engenders conditions for online learning that have not been present in prior research carried out into online learning and ELT/SLA. Understanding how these conditions have been navigated by teachers and what specific or unique challenges the rapid shift to emergency online teaching brought about requires research into teacher perspectives and experiences. For these reasons, new research on the outcomes and experiences of online learning during COVID-19 may be used to assess to what degree the approaches, methods and practices pursued in online contexts cohere with either perspective on the potential for online learning with regards to English language teaching (ELT). This research seeks to enter into the aforementioned literature on online education in ELT.

These aims and objectives are informed by the findings of the literature review below, much of which is summarised here. As much of this literature now focuses upon how online learning may be better designed and implemented (Groves, 2020 ), this research is designed to contribute towards this area of the literature on the topic. Critical to ascertaining how online teaching may be improved upon are the ways in which teachers have responded to the shift towards online education given that they are central to its implementation and to the delivery of content (Bergin & Bergin, 2009 ). Therefore, this research is motivated by gaining first-hand accounts and experiences on the advantages and challenges presented by online learning during COVID-19 to ELT. This serves as the primary aim of this research.

As the literature review below also demonstrates, however, the development of an entirely new classroom environment has brought about new demands upon teachers in terms of their pedagogical approaches, available resources and teaching practices (Rapanta et al., 2020 ). In addition, there is the prospect for the shift to online learning to compound the ongoing issues facing teachers—such as stress and burnout—through negative impacts on the work-life balance and isolation of teachers from school support networks (Mheidly et al., 2020 ). Assessing how teachers view their own experience of teaching to be impacted by online education serves as a secondary aim to this research, as is reflected in the design of the research outlined in methodology.

In brief, these research methods are designed to attain the objectives of this research in ascertaining how higher-education English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Hong Kong have responded to the shift to teaching in online classrooms during the COVID-19 crisis. Through undertaking semi-structured, one-to-one interviews with teachers, this research utilises a phenomenological approach to thematic analysis in order to arrive at findings regarding the experiences and attitudes of teachers towards the online ESL classroom.

Literature review

This section outlines the literature relevant to the topic of investigation reflected in this study. Dealing first with a broad overview of the literature regarding online education during COVID-19 and its trends, the review then elaborates upon the relevance of this to ELT and SLA, as well as covering the impact upon teachers as well as specific research carried out within the context of higher education institutes in Hong Kong. This review identifies a gap with regards to the extant body of research that this study is designed to close.

Theoretical framework

Before delving into the literature review, it is important to provide an overview of the theoretical framework that serves as the foundation for this research. First, the study utilises a social constructivist approach to understanding learning within an educational context that is in itself related to a social constructionist approach to knowledge more broadly. Dealing with the latter first, social constructionism holds that beliefs about physical reality are established through collaborative consensus rather than reflecting individuated inferences about objective phenomena (Jung, 2019 ). In engaging with the external world, individuals make meaning out of this world not within a vacuum but against social backdrops, producing meaning through their social interactions with others (Kritt, 2018 ). As such, at an ontological level, it makes sense to speak of ‘social reality’ and to understand meaning-making from within this environmental context (Shotter & Gergen, 1994 ). Naturally, this has certain connotations with regards to how individuals interact and form opinions, views and attitudes from experience of this interaction that are relevant to the design of this study. These factors are considered in more depth at the outset of the methodology section below.

With regards to social constructivism, this is a theoretical perspective that is related to but not identical with social constructionism. Describing to some degree social constructionist assumptions within the context of educational learning and research, social constructivism is a theory about the ways in which individual learners make meaning out of social interactions. This moves beyond a solely cognitivist approach to understanding how individuals learn new information—which would be compatible with wholly individuated learning—and holds instead that these cognitive processes often require social interaction for learning to take place (Cobb, 1994 ). Based on this rationale, it is not engagement with objective natural phenomena that is key to producing mental artefacts, but rather engagement with other individuals. This renders social and cultural backdrops incredibly relevant with regards to how individuals learn and likewise what they learn.

The relevance of such a perspective to online learning and emergency remote teaching lies in the substitution of a physical and in-person social environment for one that is abstracted and virtual. Whilst there is the translation of social interactions from the physical to the virtual to consider in itself, there are also potential consequences in terms of the mechanisms of learning associated with the classroom. For example, some studies undertaken from a social constructivist perspective have highlighted the importance of oral communication to learning (Reznitskaa et al., 2007 ), raising questions regarding the extent of provision for oral communication in virtual classrooms. Other studies have highlighted the importance of group discussion to the learning process (Corden, 2001 ), again prompting questions regarding how far this may be accommodated in online classrooms. From a social constructivist perspective, there are important questions regarding how learning might take place in online classrooms given the assumptions of the theoretical approach.

There are also further questions specifically relevant to SLA prompted by the communicative of communicative learning theory (CLT) within ELT. CLT holds that second languages are acquired through using language for everyday communicative purposes rather than through overtly instructional methods (e.g., such as the grammar-translation method) (Nunan, 1991 ). At a practical level, the dominance of CLT as a perspective necessitates frequent oral communication and the use of the target language within naturalistic everyday discussions. Again, the extent to which this can be incorporated into online teaching provides a quandary that researchers may be tasked with resolving. The prospect of incorporating a CLT approach to online teaching and emergency remote teaching, in particular, is expanded upon in more detail below.

Online education

Providing justification for an emergent field of online education, McKnight et al. ( 2016 ) originally identified five primary roles of technology in developing the learning environment, including improvements to teacher and learner access to e-resources, improving communication between teachers and learners, providing flexible time arrangements, expanding learner skill sets and discipline, and creating new, innovative roles for teachers and learners. Whilst the literature on online education prior to the pandemic may be characterised by theoretical perspectives combined with smaller scale studies, it has since the pandemic become a rapidly growing area of investigation. As some have observed, however, it is also a highly asymmetrical area, with research at the level of higher education being comparably neglected compared to research into online education at the level of primary and secondary schooling (Carrillo & Flores, 2020 ).

This asymmetry is reflected in the experiences of students in many instances as well. Whilst many students have been able to utilise online education to its fullest, others may have been inhibited by family circumstances, such as a lack of suitable technology, connectivity, or study space at home (Roberts & Danechi, 2021 ). Nevertheless, online education has permitted hundreds of millions of students to continue to receive an education where otherwise this would not have been possible in conjunction with mass school closures (OECD, 2020 ). Whilst an interpretation of emergency remote learning as being ‘better than nothing’ is very likely warranted, there still remain concerns about these asymmetries in experiences among teachers and students alike.

The persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic has either enabled or forced higher learning institutions and stakeholders to adopt contemporary technological tools for education delivery. There is a significant amount of literature that has suggested the potential for improvements to SLA as a consequence of the pandemic. For one, some proponents of ‘deschooling’ education have argued that the pandemic has presented an ‘opportunity’ for maximising the benefits of moving education outside of the traditional classroom environment (Groves, 2020 ). For example, online education might make classes more inclusive by allowing students who may not attend in-person classes for whatever reason an opportunity to engage with online lessons (Campbell, 2021 ).

Conversely, there is also a significant body of literature emerging that suggests that there may be negative results to moving education online. Some, for example, have highlighted the reduced role of the teacher in online education, such as through the increased propensity to deliver pre-recorded lectures and lessons (Ambler et al., 2020 ; Konig et al., 2020 ). Others have found that English lecturers at a university level were poorly prepared for transferring classes to online platforms, with uncertainty also about how to rapidly translate their curriculum into an online lesson (La Velle et al., 2020 ). For this reason, some such as Adedoyin and Soykan ( 2020 ) have argued that ‘emergency’ online teaching may fail to carry with it many of the alleged benefits of online education noted in prior research.

From a social constructivist perspective on teaching, this is potentially problematic given the construction of knowledge taking place through social interactions themselves (Hamat & Embi, 2010 ). For instance, some research has indicated that there are barriers to teachers implementing scaffolding through emergency remote teaching, with teachers perceiving there being insufficient scope for taking such an approach in the applications used for emergency remote teaching throughout the pandemic (Donham et al., 2022 ). On the other hand, a review of the literature on emergency remote teaching conducted from a social constructivist perspective presented such challenges as ‘teething problems’ and argued that many teachers had successfully created online communities of learners throughout the pandemic (Agopian, 2022 ).

In the context of ELT, there have been concerns expressed regarding how a communicative approach to language teaching (CLT) might function in online environments (Teh, 2021 ). For instance, one study carried out in China found that college-level English courses moved to emergency remote teaching suffered from both instability of network platforms as well as a lack of sufficient teacher–student interactions (Sun, 2022 ). These perspectives may be contrasted with those of emerging pro-online education theories, such as connectivism, which conceives of learning taking place across increasingly online networks (Siemens, 2005 ). How conducive online environments are to SLA is therefore a question to some extent mediated by theoretical perspective.

Online education and EFL

With regards to EFL courses, Hazaymeh ( 2021 ) observes that there are multiple functional advantages ranging from accelerated distribution of course content to innovative learning materials to knowledge sharing and social information exchange. In an evaluation of available technologies, Lo ( 2020 ) highlights the advantages of authentic language learning using visual cues, digital audio, and artificial intelligence (AI) supported assessments to test student abilities. This supposedly corroborates pre-existing research regarding the potential for online education to enhance language teaching and learning. Whereas traditional lecture-based classrooms rely upon teacher demonstration and student exercises, digital learning supposedly has the potential to provide a more immersive experience through innovative modules, educator creativity, and interactive student experiences (Lo, 2020 ; McWilliam & Dawson, 2008 ).

Similarly, Kodrle and Savchenko ( 2021 ) suggest that the conversational and interactive advantages associated with multimedia EFL applications are conducive to ‘favourable communication’ practices that are not only integrative but are directed towards a practical translation of knowledge into meaningful real-world outcomes. Others have suggested the utility of ‘gamification’ towards L2 acquisition (Lo & Mok, 2019 ). From word association to goal execution to dialogue construction, the familiarity of digital natives with the paratextual experience in online gaming allegedly has a direct and transferrable relevance in digital L2 learning experiences (Lo & Mok, 2019 ). Similar recommendations for an emergent digital ecosystem in EFL learning proposed by Rahimi and Yadollahi ( 2017 ) suggest that digital storytelling and exchanges allow learners to ‘develop their language literacy’ by engaging in collaborative reinforcement exercises and ‘constructive dialogue with teachers and groupmates’.

However, there is also a significant amount of research that indicates potentially negative outcomes in relation to the implementation of online education with regards to SLA. The sudden shift from traditional to digital learning was surprising to many higher education students, with Rahman ( 2020 ) reporting that despite their experience with digital technologies (e.g. home computing, mobile applications), many adjustments to behaviours, awareness, and skill sets were needed during this process. In a small sample interview of students at the higher education institution, UKI Toraja, Allo ( 2020 ) observed a variety of responses to the sudden shift from traditional education to online learning. Whilst some students reported experiencing cost and resources-related challenges, the acknowledgement of the advantages of persistent digital learning despite widespread disruption during the pandemic in other industries was viewed as positive (Allo, 2020 ). Students reported a need for instructor awareness regarding technological, material, and access-based challenges in relation to the online curriculum and course scheduling; however, through social networks and peer support, many hurdles were overcome (Allo, 2020 ).

Despite positive assessment of students’ ability to adapt to the digital learning experience by Allo ( 2020 ), other evidence in this field suggests that the transition has been challenging for both students and teachers. For example, Pobegavlov ( 2021 ) reveals that due to the switch to online education, instructors have been unable to ‘provide their educational influence’ and leverage their pedagogical skill sets to instruct students via online courses in the same ways that they would have demonstrated in traditional classes. Students without the prerequisite skill sets, alternatively, have found their transition into digital learning a difficult process, one which has resulted in frustration, poor performance, and pathway uncertainties (Pobegavlov, 2021 ). Similarly, Hava ( 2019 ) has identified as frustration, discontentment, negativity, and resistance to change among students. Key concerns such as the time-consuming nature of the educational process, the difficulty of the digital ecosystem, and the meaning versus value of the digital content were suggested to lead to student frustrations and an inability to transition into more productive EFL outcomes (Hava, 2019 ). There is therefore a lack of consensus across the literature as to the suitability of online education with regards to EFT and SLA.

Teacher experiences during COVID-19

An aspect of the literature that has emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic has been the extent to which teachers and lecturers have been impacted by the move to the online classroom environment. With respect to workload, research is largely split as to whether the shift has positively or negatively impacted the workload of teachers. Some studies have indicated that teacher workload has reduced due to reduced contact time with students following school/university closures (Kaden, 2020 ). Alternatively, other studies have found that 72% of lecturers found remote working stressful, with even those with prior experience of online teaching finding it more stressful than anticipated (Fhloinn & Fitzmaurice, 2021 ).

The risk of the prolonged stress associated with periods of increased workload is the phenomenon of ‘burnout’ among teachers. Burnout refers to teachers becoming overcome with stress to the degree that it impacts their well-being and was among the most prevalent concerns of teachers prior to the onset of the pandemic (Ekinci & Acar, 2019 ). It is also a factor highly associated with teachers and lecturers leaving the profession (Bruce & Cacioppe, 1989 ), a concern given the continuing high demand for EFL teachers in Hong Kong (Copland et al., 2020 ). One study of university lecturers in Malaysia found a high degree of burnout among personnel who worked at home during the pandemic as compared with prior to the onset of the pandemic (Fitriasari et al., 2022 ), indicating that it may produce negative outcomes for teachers and lecturers.

A further cause of teacher attrition that may be relevant is the impact of teaching workload upon work-life balance (Buchanan et al., 2013 ). Some studies have found that work that ‘leaves the classroom’ is a major source of stress and worry to teachers as it reduces the time they have for activities outside of work (Ovendon-Hope et al., 2018 ) A meta-analysis of research into work-life balance throughout the pandemic found that the transition to online learning was associated with a decline in the quality of work-life balance among lecturers, resulting in poorer psychological well-being (Susilaningsih et al., 2021 ). However, other studies have indicated that experienced lecturers were far less likely to struggle in transitioning towards online education, indicating that years of experience may be a relevant factor in teacher experience of online education during COVID (Rapanta et al., 2020 ). This suggests that experiences may vary between teachers contingent upon certain variables that provide resistance or susceptibility to the stresses associated with online teaching.

The context of Hong Kong

Research within the context of Hong Kong exclusively has produced findings relevant to this study’s topic. Pre-COVID studies were largely positive regarding the potential for the outcomes for online education as compared with face-to-face lectures (Evans et al., 2020 ; Kekkonen-Moneta & Moneta, 2002 ). However, research carried out during the COVID pandemic and since has been less positive regarding its evaluations of the outcomes of online education. One survey of over 1200 university students found that a majority were dissatisfied with their online learning experiences (Mok et al., 2021 ). Others have found subject-specific problems with recreating learning experiences in online environments (Gamage et al., 2020 ). Some studies have attempted to analyse the impact and its direction with regards to ELT. One study found that an ESL teacher had fewer interactions with students (Cheung, 2021 ), though it is notable that the study only utilised interviews with one teacher. Another study of primary-level ESL teachers found that ICT self-efficacy was correlated with an intention to continue using technology in post-pandemic teaching practices (Bai et al., 2021 ), though similar studies at the level of higher education have not been carried out. This indicates a gap in the literature with regards to the challenges ESL teachers may face at a university level.

With regards to teacher experiences, some studies have noted impacted psychological well-being in the adaptation to online teaching (Cheng & Lam, 2021 ; Kong & Moorhouse, 2020 ; Yau et al., 2022 ). Others have noted burnout among teachers caused by stresses associated with the transition to online teaching (Lau et al., 2022 ). However, few primary qualitative studies appear to have investigated the impact upon English language teachers specifically at the higher-education level within Hong Kong. One study, for example, utilised in-depth interviews with teachers, but only included two teachers in the study’s actual findings (Teng & Wu, 2021 ). However, research at lower levels of school suggest there may be negative outcomes for EFL teachers (Wong et al., 2022 ). Likewise, research on EFL teachers from other states indicates that there may be negative consequences for the well-being of teachers under the conditions of online teaching during COVID-19 (Morska et al., 2022 ), implying the need for more investigation into these factors in the context of Hong Kong.

Research gap

As this study has indicated, there is a gap in the literature with regards to the perspectives of ESL teachers at the higher-education level in Hong Kong as to their experiences of online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. The literature review has revealed generally apparent challenges in translating classroom ELT into a virtual environment both generally and especially within the context of emergency remote teaching, given the apparent lack of preparedness of institutions, teachers and students for this transition. The vaunted benefits to online teaching generally and the conditions and caveats for its successful practice were not necessarily met under the conditions of remote emergency teaching as a consequence, though whether this is the case has not yet been established in the context of Hong Kong. Though some research indicates difficulties in transitioning to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the challenges facing teachers within other contexts have not been established on the basis of primary qualitative research into the experiences of English language teachers in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, there is the need to close the gap in this topic area in order to arrive at recommendations that might improve principles and practice in this area under similar future conditions.

Research questions

Identifying that there exists a research gap regarding the experiences of English language teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic mandates generating research questions designed to close this gap. Taking a social constructivist perspective to this also requires formulating a research question that attempts to close the gap on the types of teaching practice related to a social constructivist approach to learning. As such, the following research questions have been devised towards these ends:

What do university-level EFL teachers in Hong Kong view as the advantages and disadvantages of teaching English in an online classroom? What did teachers feel were the challenges to implementing online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly with regards to practices associated with a social constructivist approach? What was the experience of teachers of online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and how do they feel this impacted them both professionally and personally? How do teachers envisage online education being improved in order to better benefit both EFL teachers and students moving forwards beyond the pandemic?

How these questions might be answered forms the focus of the following section outlining this research study’s methodology.

Methodology

This section outlines the design behind this research study, justifying its methodological decisions in terms of the theoretical and practical motivations behind its design. This discussion is carried out through the presentation of the rationale behind the design of the study’s data collection and analysis methods, the considerations regarding ethics, reliability and validity that were factored into the study’s design, as well as describing the actual processes of data collection and analysis themselves.

Design philosophy

With regards to the theoretical framework behind this study, as stated above, this research is carried out within a social constructivist paradigm. Whilst social constructivism in education is associated with Vygotsky ( 1978 ) and learning through interaction with the social environment (1994), social constructionism describes a broader ontological and epistemological position regarding how individuals make meaning out of their environment (Gergen & Gergen, 2007 ). In either case, these theories hold that social practices shape institutions such as schools and are in turn shaped by these cultures (Witkin, 2012 ).

With regards to how individuals view the online classroom, it is important to understand that their views will be mediated by the social practices of themselves and others due to how social reality is constructed (Shotter & Gergen, 1994 ). It is worth noting that—epistemologically speaking—this process of meaning making is also a subjective process (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2009 ). Understanding why teachers might deliver content through certain practices requires understanding how they make meaning out of their interactions with the social environment and likewise how this translates into practice. At its core, then, social constructivism implies the need for an interpretivist paradigm to understand how teachers process information and make decisions on the basis of it (Pulla & Carter, 2018 ).

There are therefore both theoretical and practical reasons for taking a qualitative approach to research in order to address the research questions above. For one, empirical methods of data collection typically focus on material data such as practices themselves rather than how individuals interpret them (Given, 2008 ). Similarly, quantitative methods of data analysis are better suited to data that may be quantified and examined for correlations with other sets of data, a process by which individual voices and perspectives may be lost (Yilmaz, 2013 ). By way of comparison, qualitative methods can yield more personalised and detailed data regarding attitudes and experiences (Baxter & Jack, 2008 ). For this reason, qualitative methods of data collection and analysis ought to prove conducive to answering this study’s research questions.

Data collection

For similar reasons, interviews have been chosen as a method of data collection. Though surveys were explored in a pilot study, it was decided that interviews were able to offer more individualised experiences and perspectives (Peters & Halcomb, 2015 ). One-to-one interviews were selected due to the potential for group biases in conducting focus groups (Frey & Fontana, 1991 ) and the propensity for participants to be more forthcoming in their answers in one-to-one settings (Marvasti, 2004 ). Interview questions were designed to be open in order to allow participants freedom in answering, as closed questions can sometimes be leading or discourage detailed responses (Allen, 2017 ; Baxter & Jack, 2008 ). Questions were semi-structured so as to allow the researcher to encourage participants to offer more detail on areas of relevance without leading them in the content of their answers (Marvasti, 2004 ).

In terms of the sample size, six participants were selected for interviews. As the above literature review observed, previous studies utilised smaller samples, which may impact the validity of findings (Secor, 2010 ). Six participants have been argued to be within the recommended range for undertaking thematic analysis of interview data (Fugard & Potts, 2014 ). The participants are all ESL teachers at higher education institutes in Hong Kong with at least 4 years’ experience so as to control for this variable. There are three male and three female participants and all are Hong Kong nationals, so as to control for nationality as a variable.

Data analysis

This study utilised thematic analysis for its approach to data analysis, a process by which the themes raised across a text are identified and used to generate results and findings (Braun & Clarke, 2006 ). As Kiger and Varpio ( 2020 , p. 2) state, thematic analysis ‘is a method for analysing qualitative data that entails searching across a data set to identify, analyse, and report repeated patterns’ and involves ‘interpretation in the processes of selecting codes and constructing themes’. Coding therefore largely takes the form of generating themes themselves, especially themes that may be generalised across an entire interview or selection of interviews (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006 ).

The process of coding utilised was that of inductive coding, by which the researcher generates codes/themes as they encounter the data, rather than coding according to a predetermined set of codes for themes they expect to find (Joffe & Yardley, 2004 ). This has the advantage of reflecting accurately the themes actually raised across the text (Linneberg & Korsgaard, 2019 ), though does also involve comparably more labour than compared with deductive coding (Thomas, 2013 ). In generating themes inductively, researchers are therefore more able to identify patterns across a text, as well as to emphasise any outliers or particularly emphatic points raised by individual participants (Gibson & Brown, 2009 ).

Before undertaking the data collection, certain ethical concerns were taken into account. First, the relevant permissions were sought from the institution with regards to undertaking primary research. Central to the efficacy and reliability of the research, Wallen and Fraenkel ( 2001 ) observe that ethical responsibility is of paramount concern, directing oversight and administration to protect the rights and welfare of the sample population. Nonmaleficence, the prevention of harm to participants in a given study, is identified by Punch ( 2014 ) as a core expectation of any primary research techniques.

As undertaking primary qualitative research may be impacted by ongoing or new COVID restrictions on face-to-face interactions (Tremblay et al., 2021 ), it was resolved to use video messaging software to conduct and record interviews. Participants were informed regarding the purposes of the research and how their data would be stored and used, with informed consent being collected verbally after this (Oliver, 2010 ). Data was designed to be stored securely and anonymised at the point of transcription so as to protect the identities of the participants from any personal or professional repercussions to their participation in the research (Saunders et al., 2015 ). This also has the effect of encouraging more honest and open responses from participants (Babbie, 2015 ).

Reliability and validity

As has been discussed above, there are a number of factors that may impact the reliability and validity of such research. For one, carrying out primary qualitative research on the experiences of teachers at one institution in Hong Kong impacts the generalisability of results as compared with undertaking surveys of teachers from various institutions. Whilst triangulating results through mixed-methods research often provides a means of improving the reliability of the findings of small-scale interview studies (Ivankova et al., 2006 ), the small-scale nature of this study placed certain practical limitations on its methods, whilst prioritising the emphasis on teacher experiences and perceptions took precedence over generalisability. As such, pursuing qualitative methods in isolation was undertaken at the expense of triangulation (Mertens & Hesse-Biber, 2012 ).

A further factor that may impact reliability and validity is in terms of the influence of researcher bias on qualitative studies of this kind. In terms of data collection, there is the potential for the role of the interviewer to skew the responses of participants given their role in the research instrument (Cypress, 2017 ). Here, using open-ended questioning was selected as a means of offsetting bias through asking leading questions (Rapley, 2001 ), as open questioning allows less scope for interviewers to influence participants (Clark et al., 2019 ). Nevertheless, taking a semi-structured approach to questioning can still have this effect and interviewers therefore must be tasked with taking a reflexive and self-aware approach to the interviewing process (Chenail, 2011 ).

In terms of data analysis, the role of the researcher can contribute towards bias in findings (Mackieson et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, thematic analysis has been criticised for lacking rigour and for being more open to bias than other approaches to data analysis (Holloway & Todres, 2003 ). A potential solution to this is to use an analysis method that involves more than one researcher and that synthesises their findings (REF); however, this was not possible in this instance due to practical limitations. Instead, other approaches designed to improve reliability and validity were pursued. For instance, the process of constant comparison was used when undertaking coding so as to ensure a thoroughly rigorous approach to the identification of themes across the data (Thomas, 2013 ). As Nowell et al. ( 2017 ) remark, it is also possible to demonstrate the trustworthiness of thematic analysis through describing in detail the decision-making process underlying the analysis process itself. For this reason, the processes of data collection and analysis are described in depth below.

This research was undertaken according to the following processes. First, participants were invited through an open advertisement placed in teaching groups on social media internal to the institution where the research was to take place. The advertisement provided basic information about the study and included a brief demographic survey at the point of application. From this, potential participants were manually scoped according to the criteria set out above. Prior to the interview, all relevant information was given and verbal consent was received. Interviews took place through video messaging software and audio recording software was used to record the interviews. At the point of transcription, all personal information was anonymised.

The processes of data analysis were carried out by a sole researcher and followed the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) model set out by Smith et al. ( 1999 ). Each transcript was read twice prior to any coding, with initial thoughts being recorded in the left column of the transcript. Following this, the transcript was re-read again, with thematic codes for that participant being recorded in the opposite margin (Table 1 ). Once this process had been completed for all participants, the codes generated for each participant were sorted into themes and subthemes, recorded in a ‘cluster grid’ (Table 2 ). This cluster grid serves as the themes found through the process of thematic analysis and is used to structure the section on findings that follows.

This section presents the findings of this research as generated through the thematic analysis of interviews with six teachers. The themes generated through coding these interviews have been sorted into a thematic grid reflecting the prevalent and pronounced themes across this body of data (Table 2 ). The thematic categories for these themes form the structure to the presentation and discussion of findings that follows.

Advantages and benefits

The teachers interviewed were asked about the advantages that they felt the online classroom provided to learners and the benefits they felt they accrued from it as teachers. The teachers broadly agreed that an advantage to the shift to online learning was that it allowed for greater accessibility for students and teachers alike. One teacher stated that it cut down on her journey to work, making it easier for her to work long hours. Another felt that ‘lazy’ students were more likely to attend when they could access education online. Five of the six teachers stated that they felt that students were motivated by the opportunity to use online learning, though one argued that this motivation was in fact detrimental:

I don’t believe that they engage in the same way when utilising the online classroom because I think they’re probably watching TV or something at the same time. I’m not sure they deal well with the distraction even though they may be ‘present’. (Teacher C)

However, the majority of the teachers agreed that attendance had improved during the move to online education and cited improved accessibility and student motivation as the reason for this.

Regarding the benefits that they themselves felt online education brought, convenience was again brought up by a majority of teachers. Participant A argued that though they struggled initially to adapt to the online platform, there was a plethora of ready-made digital resources they could employ in their teaching. This, they felt, reduced their need to plan lessons so thoroughly, such as through transferring content onto multimedia platforms for delivery in the physical classroom. Two other participants (B and D) stated that they used pre-recorded lessons on a couple of occasions and found this was beneficial in that they could refer students back to timestamps in their lectures. Recording and uploading lectures was a practice they believed to be beneficial, and they felt it was worth continuing even when transitioning back to the physical classroom due to the positive impact it had on students.

Disadvantages and challenges

All six teachers cited interactivity as a potential obstacle to implementing online education successfully. Three of the teachers stated that there was difficulty in undertaking speaking and listening exercises, which they felt were essential to taking a communicative approach to teaching English. One stated that she felt the limitations of the platform were such that she was forced to resort to a ‘grammar/translation’ method in order to teach English. She elaborated on the reasons for this:

So there are problems with the platform—the online platform we used that are inherent to it. Like, we cannot actually have clear back-and-forth discussions because the audio keeps cutting out. I can’t have little groups of people chatting and I can watch and interject, the conversation cannot naturally flow, even in breakout rooms and that’s because of the technology limitations (Participant E).

Another teacher cited difficulties in conducting informal assessments of the students in his class:

I cannot judge where their English is up to because I do not hear them all talking English together. If we are trying to do something immersive, how can we do that if only one can talk? (Participant F)

All teachers were therefore broadly agreed on the communicative/interactive limitations of the technology they were being asked to use. This constitutes a finding of this research that has not previously been reported by research carried out into the emergency remote teaching of ESL in Hong Kong.

Teachers also stated that they lacked confidence in using the available technology to the utmost of its capabilities. One teacher stated that as an older teacher she wasn’t as ‘confident’ in utilising technology as other teachers. However, a relatively much younger participant also stated that they weren’t as ‘tech literate’ as their students and that this presented a barrier to using the platform:

In the first weeks, I had to rely on my students to tell me how to operate the platform and how to use breakout rooms and things. And that’s not a great look as a teacher, it’s not very professional. (Participant E)

The teachers also all stated that their lessons were disrupted by technology issues throughout. Frequent interruptions in tasks and discussions were caused by issues such as computers freezing, crashing, and internet disconnections experienced by the participants. Participant A stated that one of his classes refused to use their cameras—using technology difficulties as an ‘excuse’—making it difficult to know who was speaking or who was even present in the class. Such problems interrupted the teaching process and made the online classroom frequently disruptive.

Personal experience

The teachers interviewed were prompted as to how the shift to an online classroom had impacted their workload and work-life balance. The participants were largely split on their answer to this question. Some such as Participant A felt that their workload was initially greater due to the struggles of adapting to the online classroom but then found that the availability of digital resources reduced their workload as the weeks went by. Others such as Participant F felt that their workload had increased due to the unfamiliarity of planning classes online, as well as the absence of informal chats after lessons, requiring more correspondence via email than normal.

The participants were also split with regards to how the change had affected their work-life balance. Two felt that there was no change at all, with Participant E stating that she was ‘still busy’ regardless of teaching online or in person. Whilst participant A felt that their workload had decreased as they became accustomed to teaching in the online classroom, participants B and D stated that it had eaten into their work-life balance through removing the barrier between classroom and home environments. Participant B summarised their feelings on this topic:

I have two young children and I’ve no means for separating that home life and work life. It just compounds the stress, I’m dealing with work and home stresses at the same time. I’ve coped with it but I would rather not have to do it.

Participant D stated very strongly that they would retire if they felt the future of teaching was online education due to the amount it was impacting their work-life balance. The feelings and experiences the teacher described are akin to that of the ‘burnout’ phenomenon described in the literature review above.

However, all teachers did state that they had acquired new skills through the shift to online education. One felt that they would be better equipped for a career outside education due to improved technology literacy and three others stated that they felt they were better teachers as a consequence of having to adapt to this environment. There were therefore indications of professional development instigated by the shift to the online classroom.

Improvements

When asked about the ways in which online education could be improved, all six responded by stating that it ought to be balanced with in-person learning in future.

I feel that totally online all the time is only appropriate in such an emergency and even then only when it is actually required. The transition to and from online learning should have been smoother, it was not I believe sufficiently guided in research and planning. (Teacher C)

Whilst two went as far as to state they’d prefer never to teach online education, they were all agreed that any future for online learning required a blended approach rather than teaching solely online.

Another avenue for improvement shared among the teachers was that better training and guidance ought to be offered for teachers.

Yes, in-service training is essential. This should be part of CPD [continuous personal development] and I don’t understand how we were not given more instruction and support. It was just a sort of ‘oh, you’ll figure it out approach’. That’s not good enough. (Teacher E)

Whilst some stated they felt the resources were adequate, there was agreement that there was insufficient guidance as to how to adopt the approaches and methods to teaching expected of them to an online environment. Similarly, they felt that it was assumed that they would easily adapt to teaching online, assuming a higher level of technology literacy than actually existed among teachers. Improved training and clearer pedagogical guidance were therefore themes across the participants’ responses.

Finally, there was also broad agreement with regards to the need to improve the online platforms themselves. Two participants suggested creating brand new software tailored for teaching that included more reliable and suitable methods of communication. Participant C thought it might be useful to recreate the traditional classroom’s layout in the application, with a teacher screen and virtual whiteboard dominating the screen, so as to recreate the teacher experience. Participant A also stated that technologies such as virtual reality headsets ought to be explored to recreate the physical classroom in the virtual world. It is clear from this that the teachers broadly felt that the online classroom ought to mimic the layout and experience of the traditional classroom as far as possible and that technologies ought to be adapted to this end.

The above results from the data analysis provide some answers to the research questions of this study. For one, it is clear that the participant teachers view online education as entailing both advantages and disadvantages. For example, accessibility and student motivation to attend classes appear to be a consequence of the shift to online education. This corroborates existing research that indicates that greater accessibility may be able to offset deficits some students have in attending lectures, such as mental health problems such as depression and anxiety (AlAzzam et al., 2021 ). This study therefore corroborates the findings of extant research in this regard and establishes that they hold true within the context of ELT in Hong Kong.

However, the disadvantages are focused largely in terms of difficulties communicating utilising current information communication technologies. Indeed, communication issues have served as a focus of previous research in this regard also (Baker, 2004 ). When taking into consideration the high proportion of teachers in Hong Kong that support CLT (Miller & Aldred, 2016 ), these technological limitations may be viewed as an insuperable barrier to effective SLA through online platforms. The finding from this study that English language teachers in Hong Kong may view online teaching as insufficiently adapted to permit the implementation of CLT in the virtual English classroom is a finding unique to this study and represents a novel contribution to this area of the literature. The degree to which teacher perceptions in this regard is related to their holding social constructivist perspectives was not itself a focus of this study, however, though invites further research in this regard from future studies.

On the other hand, it is possible that the online environment is not itself perceived as a barrier to implementing CLT into English language teaching, but rather that other factors serve as barriers to this. For example, it may be that teachers’ self-reported low levels of technology literacy and proficiency may be serving as a barrier. Alternatively again, poor internet connectivity may be to blame here, as has been indicated by previous research in Hong Kong (Yeung & Yau, 2022 ). This is to say that the research corroborated previous research in this area in finding that there are many related issues perceived by teachers as providing challenges to implementing English language teaching in virtual classrooms. Differentiating between these causes and ranking them goes beyond the scope of this study, though it is clear that perceived issues in implementing CLT serves as a common complaint among ESL teachers within this context.

It is little surprise then that the teachers broadly agreed that the platforms ought to be redesigned to accommodate the communicative demands of ELT. Interestingly, the suggestion that the online classroom ought to be tailored to mimic the physical classroom suggests that teachers generally do not agree with the democratised nature of the layout and turn-based speaking format of the online meeting software generally adapted for teaching throughout the pandemic. It instead suggests that teachers prefer a teacher-centric model for the classroom and would prefer to see this structure reflected in the online classroom environment. This is supported by evidence in favour of such an approach among teachers in Hong Kong (Wong, 2015 ). The call for using virtual reality headsets in teaching may also be considered against existing research into the feasibility of this technology (Chessa & Solari, 2021 ).

There is therefore a potential avenue here for future research into the perceptions of English language teachers in Hong Kong towards both the role and status of the teacher in the classroom and the translatability of their favoured role to online teaching. It may be that criticisms of online teaching or perceived shortcomings are related to ideological or cultural perceptions of the ideal role of the teacher in the classroom. Though this study’s findings cannot themselves support such a conclusion, further research in this regard may be sparked by the revelations of the interviewed teachers’ opinions and attitudes presented above.

Finally, teachers were split as to whether their personal experience of online teaching was a positive or negative one. Some teachers viewed online teaching as freeing up more time for them due to an abundance of online resources, whereas others saw online teaching as eating into their work-life balance. This reflects a split in the literature observed in the literature review, with previous research indicating either point of view (Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al., 2021 ; Silva et al., 2021 ). It ought to be noted that one of the six respondents was particularly emphatic with regards to experiencing stress as a consequence of the move to online education and they related this to a desire to leave the profession, in-keeping with the assumed mechanisms of burnout and teacher attrition observed elsewhere (Madigan & Kim, 2021 ). However, online teaching did also provide opportunities for professional development, a touted advantage claimed by advocates of online education (Abaci et al., 2021 ). There is therefore the potential for adaptation and growth among teachers, though the barriers and sticking points that discourage teachers require understanding and addressing also to prevent losses in teachers from the profession.

This research study has explored the attitudes, experience and perspectives of in-service higher-education ESL teachers in Hong Kong towards online education during COVID-19. Using a thematic analysis of interview data, this study has found that teachers view both advantages and disadvantages to the online classroom, emphasising its accessibility for learners but also the difficulties in communicating and teaching in an interactive way. This has been attributed to shortcomings in the existing technologies available. Teachers envisage potential improvements such as developing a tailored teaching experience that can recreate the physical classroom experience in the virtual environment as far as possible, as well as through making online communication more reliable.

Teachers were split in their personal experience of online teaching, with some viewing it as reducing their workload and others seeing online education as eroding their work-life balance. How factors such as teacher experience, ICT literacy, and age factor into these experiences may serve as a focus for future research to evaluate why views varied so much over the course of this research. It is worth noting there is also the prospect for professional development as instigated by experience of adapting to online teaching. However, teachers generally view the future role for online teaching as limited to part of a blended classroom and requiring adequate resources, pedagogical guidance and training in ICT. Meeting these conditions may offset some of the challenges and stresses of teaching experienced by some participants in the study.

In terms of the study’s implications, the study corroborates past findings regarding the benefits of online learning towards promoting greater accessibility, as well as with respect to the perceived need among teachers for further support and in-person training with respect to emergency remote learning. From a personal perspective, the teachers broadly agreed that there was a need to strike a better work-life balance when undertaking remote emergency teaching and this provides insight for developing contingency plans for implementing online teaching in response to crises such as COVID-19.

In addition, novel findings include the revelation that English language teachers in Hong Kong may view online teaching platforms as not adaptable to the adequate implementation of CLT in the virtual classroom. The extent to which this reflects social constructivist principles on behalf of teachers may serve as a fruitful question for future research in this area. Additionally, how far teacher experiences, opinions and attitudes are influenced by broader cultural and personal valuations of the role of the teacher in the classroom may benefit from further research given the findings of this study.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Lo, N.Pk. Digital learning and the ESL online classroom in higher education: teachers’ perspectives. Asian. J. Second. Foreign. Lang. Educ. 8 , 24 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40862-023-00198-1

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An Insight into Online Foreign Language Learning and Teaching in the Era of COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed and transformed the traditional educational setting. Both teaching and learning have been transformed to online settings at all educational levels. The purpose of this article is to discuss students’ perception of and attitudes to online foreign language learning in the COVID-19 pandemic at the Faculty of Informatics and Management of the University of Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. The key method was a questionnaire survey, which was conducted among the third-year distant students. The results, based on five constructs/variables, i.e. language skills, learning materials, students’ motivation to study online, preparedness for online teaching and learning, and effectiveness of foreign online teaching, reveal that students do not feel that they have improved their language skills by studying purely online. The results also demonstrate students’ preference for printed materials because they are more suitable for taking notes and retaining new words and phrases, especially when students can highlight them. In addition, the findings confirm that both teachers and students are well prepared for performing their online instruction. Although students feel motivated to study online, these students experience social distance as those who are not stimulated to learn online. Moreover, the results confirm that students consider the online language classes effective, but face-to-face classes cannot be replaced. In this respect teacher’s role is irreplaceable. Therefore, educational institutions should invest in supporting them technically, mentally, as well as financially, in this difficult period in order to ensure and provide quality teaching for future generations.