Exploring teachers’ verbal resources and strategies for building rapport in COVID-emergency online university courses: some preliminary ideas (original) (raw)
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About building rapport in distance learning during COVID-19 pandemic
2021
This study is based on the experience gained over the period of March 2020- December 2020 when the outbreak of covid-19 pandemic forced millions of students of secondary and higher schools to shift almost overnight to distant or remote learning. Our paper predominately focuses on pedagogical aspects that are required to make online learning more attractive and motivating for students. We carried out a survey of 27 teachers of the Department of foreign languages of the Faculty of Economics at of RUDN University aged 25-67 to find out what advantages and disadvantages of online learning they found and what was the role of rapport during on-line learning. The obtained results point out that rapport remains important in distant learning and part of the teachers consider that its role increased because of the absence of face-to-face communication.
Oscar pardomuan Butar-butar , 2021
THE EFFECT OF ONLINE LEARNING ON COMMUNICATION BETWEEN INSTRUCTORS AND STUDENTS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC CHAPTER I emerges from the exchange of information (Cheney, 2011). This act of making common and known is done by sharing opinions, ideas or the like. One can have the exchange of thoughts and ideas by gestures, signs, signals, expression or writing. People are said to be in communication when discussing some subject, when talking on their telephone, or when exchanging information via letters. Communication is essentially the exchange of information, whether written or oral (Velentzas and Borni, 2014). Furthermore, the communication process also draws from many interpersonal skills. They include talking, listening, watching, interviewing, analyzing, interpretation and evaluation. Message recipients must be able to identify the intent of the sender, take into account the context of the message, resolve any misunderstandings, decode the information accurately and decide how to act upon it. Such skills are essential for learning, building healthy relationships, building a sense of community and gaining workplace success (Velentzas and Borni, 2014). 2.2 EFFE TIVE COMMUNICATOIN "Great communication skills will add years to your tenure as a successful teacher." Dr. Jerry Weast of Montgomery County, Maryland (Weast, 2008). Therefore, effective communication must be a priority not a forgotten thought for great teachers (Hilliard and Newsome, 2013). Effective communication occurs when a desired effect is the result of intentional or unintentional exchange of information, which is communicated by different individuals and performed in a desired manner. This influence also ensures no distortion of the message during the contact process. Effective communication will achieve the desired effect and uphold the effect, with the potential to improve the message's effect. Therefore, effective communication serves the purpose it was intended or built for. Possible objectives may be to make change, to encourage action, to create awareness, to educate or to convey some idea or perspective. Good communication means talking and listening (Velentzas and Borni, 2014). To succeed in their career, instructors need outstanding communication skills. Instructors need listening, interpersonal, written and oral communication skills to promote comprehension of the teaching results and the ability to effectively fulfill their responsibilities. Instructors not only need to carry out technical tasks, they also do need to communicate effectively and efficiently with internal and external customers. Developing effective communication skills is an essential part of the ability for the instructors to succeed. To become a good professional, instructors must possess highly developed levels of communication skills. Developing these skills not only increases the potential of the instructors but will also improve the quality of the teachers created. Advanced communication skills are important in all aspects of the teaching cycle. Instructors must have highly developed oral and writing skills to interact
Teacher-Student Interaction in Distance Learning in Emergency Situations
InSITE Conference
Aim/Purpose : The goal of this study was to examine which of the types of teacher-student interactions found in previous studies by Kang (2009) and Kang and Im (2013) during distance learning in routine situations, were also found in times of emergency, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether these interactions differed between students with regard to the extent and nature of each type of interaction. Background: Teacher-student interactions during learning in general and particularly in distance learning has an impact on students’ satisfaction, motivation, and ability to contend with learning assignments. As learning in times of emergency poses additional, unique challenges, teacher-student interactions may be affected as well. Methodology: The participants in the study were 591 undergraduate students from different departments in a teaching college, who answered an opinion survey after completing a semester of distance learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Qualitat...
Interaction in Emergency Remote Higher Education: A Case Study
Emergency Remote Education (ERE) has provided an effective response to the education emergency created by the coronavirus outbreak. Teachers, lecturers and students have experimented with new teaching and learning strategies and digital tools, adjusting to the possibilities and the constraints of computer-mediated communication. This study investigates a case study to show how multimodal interaction, communication and engagement can be established during video lessons in English courses delivered in a university environment. Data collected through the participant observation of a 2-hour-online class will be analysed combining classroom discourse and multimodal analysis to investigate synchronous interaction and the different modes of meaning-making emerging during emergency remote teaching and learning. The goal of the present study is twofold: on the one hand, it aims to contribute to the discussion of the short-term and mediumterm impact of wisdom gained during ERE on academic teaching in terms of interaction and multimodality. On the other hand, it sheds light on challenges and best practices revealed during ERE classes, which at the same time could contribute to improve lecturers' interactional competence in terms of ways of interacting and meaning-making in an instructional context.
Communication barriers in emergency remote education
Revista Brasileira de Educação do Campo Brazilian Journal of Rural Education, 2022
Despite the abundance of methods, materials, pedagogical philosophies, and a variety of teacher training programs, many educators still do not have the skills and self-efficacy to effectively navigate the new combinations of distance, blended, and in-classroom learning. The review of literature signals the disrupted nature of teacher-student communication caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This is a literature review focused on the findings of 206 published open-access journal articles on teacher-student educational interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary goal of the current research is to provide an initial indication of the potential size and nature of the extant communication barriers in emergency remote learning. Furthermore, authors attempt to draw overall conclusions about the merits of existing propositions or methods aimed at overcoming the existing barriers. The complaints reported in the surveys include technical, psychological, personal, emotional, and health issues, lack of feedback, and poor student engagement. The latter prompts us to search for good practices that solve the aforementioned teacher-student interaction barriers or reduce the scope of these barriers. The outcomes of this study can help theorize about the many forms of barriers that exist in teacher-student interactions in emergency remote learning.
Emergency Remote Teaching: A Temporary Solution to a Permanent Problem
The Journal of Aisa TEFL, 2023
Considering the COVID-19 crisis and the sudden shift from face-to-face classes to online ones, universities had to initiate a new phase of educating learners using online platforms, known as ERT (Emergency Remote Teaching). This study aims to uncover the challenges EFL instructors, their learners, and university administrations encountered during ERT through conducting a qualitative case study. Accordingly, twentytwo learners, six instructors, and two administrative staff members who faced difficulties with online instruction during ERT at Alzahra University participated in this research by invitation. The participants were semi-structurally interviewed through social networking platforms (WhatsApp and Telegram) as well as telephone conversations. Subsequently, the collected data were manually coded and subjected to thematic analysis. The study's findings revealed that the inadequate infrastructure of the university, the lack of technical knowledge among learners and professors, unsuitable online materials, absence of training workshops, evaluation challenges, inadequacies of Adobe Connect (the chosen video conferencing platform for Alzahra University's online classes), lack of interaction among learners, overcrowded heterogeneous classes, suboptimal learning environments, and internet connectivity issues were the most significant challenges faced by language learners and instructors during ERT. Additionally, the study identified that the primary challenge for the online department authorities during ERT was addressing instructors' and learners' problems throughout the semester and conducting online exams at the conclusion of the course.
Rapport has been recognized as important in learning in general but little is known about its importance in distance education (DE). The study we report on in this paper provides insights into the importance of rapport in DE as well as challenges to and indicators of rapport-building in DE. The study relied on interviews with 42 Canadian high-school DE teachers. Findings revealed that rapport is necessary in DE because of the absence of face-to-face communication. Challenges to building rapport relate to the geographic dispersion of students, the asynchronous nature of DE, teacher workload, limits of the software, teachers and students not seeing the need for rapport, and DE traditions. We identified six categories of rapport-building in DE as follows: Recognizing the person/individual; Supporting and monitoring; Availability, accessibility, and responsiveness; Non text-based interactions; Tone of interactions; Non-academic conversation/interactions. We break the categories into subcategories and provide indicators for each one. The indicators might also be used in contexts of DE teacher professional development as a springboard for discussion , or, more prescriptively, as guides to DE teacher behaviour. A follow-up study using a more fine-grained focus on specific indicators might provide insights into specific rapport-related behaviours.
Russian Language Journal, 2021
Jason merriLL, shannon donnaLLy spasova 1. Introduction The COVID-19 crisis took all of us by surprise. Universities and schools, in unprecedented fashion, quickly began to move instruction online. In some universities, the switch to online instruction coincided with spring breaks, allowing instructors a brief period for hurried preparation, whereas other colleagues had only a few hours' warning. In any case, few educators had previous experience with online instruction, so most were suddenly asked to teach in a completely new way. Despite these new challenges and the isolation necessitated by COVID-19, the language teaching community, in addition to adapting or creating courses for online delivery, was quick to share tips and best practices, publish case studies of ways programs navigated the move online, and conduct research that studied aspects of the pandemic's impact on our field. During this intensive introduction to online instruction, as a profession we learned a great deal about teaching and our priorities as teachers. This special volume of Russian Language Journal seeks to capture the spirit and lessons of the COVID-19 crisis. While most of its articles concern the teaching of Russian, the challenges faced by instructors and students during COVID-19 have affected the entire language teaching community. We hope therefore that the lessons learned will be useful to instructors of all languages. This special volume takes an early step in reflection and discussion of the developments that have affected all of us during this time. At the time of publication of this volume, most institutions of higher education in the United States intend to return to face-to-face instruction in Fall 2021. Even if we are able to meet in our physical classrooms, we
19th European Conference on e-Learning, 2020
The restrictions placed on face to face working practices in higher education because of the Covid-19 Virus pandemic has resulted in educational activities being moved exclusively online for an extended period of time. While tools such as Blackboard Collaborate, Adobe Connect, and Microsoft Teams environments are readily available to academics, the pedagogical approaches needed to utilize these tools effectively may not be immediately apparent. There are several facets to the delivery of online learning but the rapid transition away from face to face delivery meant that there was a need for creating synchronous activities with groups of students. This requires a refocusing of the skill set the pedagogue already has in the organization of activities such as lectures, tutorials and labs. The sudden need to support students from a distance has required a rapid upskilling of academic staff across a range of disciplines in the use of online delivery platforms. The authors believe that the core approach to delivering online activities is very similar to that required for face to face delivery but the tutor is required to be much better prepared in terms of developing the synchronous activities due to the "invisible" nature of the participants. Each of the staple face to face methods of Lecture, Tutorial and Lab need to be rethought for delivery online. The standard Lecture requires less adjustment than a Tutorial or Lab as the Lecture still contains the same familiar components of "chalk and talk". Tutorials would, generally, require a higher level of interaction between Lecturer and student(s) involving a greater discursive discourse and small group work but is still achievable via tweaking the existing material to suit the technology tool being used. Labs, depending on subject area, may well prove to be inoperable or require innovative nonorthodox solutions that combine multiple technology tools. The absence of visible and audible cues makes for a more restricted interaction with the Tutor supporting the activity having the additional burden of trying to get the students to speak and interact online. This paper will seek to explore the factors needed to make the transition to supporting students online delivery straightforward.