Crowdsourcing and language learning habits and practices in Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of North Macedonia and Poland in the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods

The popularity of online crowdsourcing platforms was slowly increasing among language learners before the pandemic, but COVID-19 changed the educational systems worldwide. This study aims to uncover whether or not, and if ‘YES', how the attitudes and habits of language learners concerning the use of crowdsourcing materials in Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of North Macedonia and Poland changed during the pandemic. To compare the pre-and during the covid crowdsourcing tool usage, the cross-culturally appropriate questionnaire utilised in the pre-COVID-19 period was used again. The collected data were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively to identify the differences between the periods. The study's findings showed that the shift from face-to-face to online learning significantly affected the development of crowdsourcing platforms worldwide and their employment in the studied countries. The results also demonstrated that a combination of factors, such as reduced interactions with teachers and peers, an increase in workload, and a lack of support on the part of institutions, led to students taking responsibility for their learning. The number and characteristics of the popular platforms changed from country to country since expectations from students varied. © 2022 Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts. All rights reserved.

Digital Language Learning Strategies Subject to Change or Not – Post Pandemic Reflections

The strategic approach to language learning has gained recognition among both language teachers and learners since the early nineties. However, the use of such strategies in technology-enhanced environment has remained marginal, focusing interest of a small group of CALL (TELL, MALL) pioneers. The sudden outburst of the COVID-19 pandemic with its restrictions enhanced the need of learning languages in the digital environments. The change had a big impact on the teachers, who needed to learn quickly how to work online. However, it is interesting whether the change influenced the ways students learn. Reflection on the experience is necessary to incorporate it into development of the domain. In the text, the current digital strategy use among students is compared with the results of the previous study. Both datasets were collected with the use of similar questionnaires – three more answers were only added to let the respondents indicate the change in their use of digital strategies during the pandemic. The results show that the strategies remained the same as before the pandemic. Thus, the intensive use of digital tools may not have a substantial impact on students' learning habits. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Emergency online learning during the first Covid-19 period: Students' perspectives from Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Poland and Turkey

In spring 2020 both teachers and learners experienced the interruption of education as it had been established for over 150 years and seemed to be unchangeable. The paper focuses on students' perspectives on how they perceive the changes in learning due to the pandemic educational emergency response based on the results of a survey of students in four countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Poland and Turkey. We aim at discussing the data collected at the end of the 2019-2020 Spring semester. The research focuses on the accessibility of the tools for learning, modes of instruction, as well as interaction patterns. In addition, we present students' opinions on the difficulties they experienced, the learning strategies they adopted and what aspects of online learning should remain as a regular educational practice after the pandemic period. © 2021 Lina Miloshevska et al., published by Sciendo.