ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has created many formidable challenges for educational institutions around the world. This case study sought to gain insight into South Korean university students’ satisfaction with online learning during the pandemic. It also obtained participant recommendations for improving online learning. Participants included 20 South Korean students studying at a university in central South Korea. Data included open-ended surveys, a focus group, and semi-structured interviews. Most students had mixed feelings in regard to satisfaction with online classes. A salient result is a need for more interaction in online classes. Students also provided a wide range of recommendations to improve online learning. Through these recommendations, university educators and administrators can better optimize online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and after the crisis has dissipated. © 2022, Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education. All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
The onset of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) during the winter of 2020 presented challenges for education including transferring courses online, which gave experienced online lecturers an inherent advantage over their less tech-savvy counterparts. Online teaching poses challenges and affords opportunities for EFL instructors who rely on live communication for pronunciation and speech lessons. To help newcomers overcome the steep learning curve associated with computer-assisted language learning (CALL), this study maps expected benefits, challenges, and strategies of implementing an online EFL course among teachers with different levels of online teaching experience. A group of 43 EFL university instructors teaching communication courses in South Korea completed a survey measuring benefits and challenges for teachers, benefits, and challenges for students, communication channels, and activity types. Analysis of variance across no-, low-, and high-experience groups revealed several findings. Key differences between experience level included expected challenges for instructors and activity choice. Those with online teaching experience perceived fewer obstacles and used a wider array of communication channels and activities when doing so. All groups reported similar levels of expected benefits for instructors and teachers and challenges for students. The most popular benefits, challenges and strategies, and differences between the no-and high-experience groups are discussed and recommendations for future teacher training are given. © 2020, CALL-EJ. All rights reserved.