Learning from Experience in the Midst of COVID-19: Benefits, Challenges, and Strategies in Online Teaching

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.