Engagement matters: teachers’ perceptions of and experiences with student engagement in an online EAP programme

de Lima Guedes, Karla (2024) Engagement matters: teachers’ perceptions of and experiences with student engagement in an online EAP programme. EUROCALL Conference 2024: CALL for humanity, Trnava University, Trnava, Slovakia. 26 - 29 Aug 2024.

Abstract

he onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic led to extensive closures of schools and universities worldwide, including those in the UK. This imposed a swift transition by educators from traditional in-person teaching methods to online platforms, a paradigm unfamiliar to many instructors. Throughout this adaptation, concerns regarding student engagement emerged prominently, given its acknowledged correlation with academic achievement, i.e. engaged students are considered more likely to succeed academically. Consequently, this study sought to scrutinise teachers' perspectives and encounters with student engagement within an online English for Academic Purposes (EAP) pre-sessional programme in a British university. Traditionally conducted in-person, pre-sessional programmes constitute academic language courses offered by many universities in the UK, wherein student engagement is key for effective EAP learning. The research explored how EAP practitioners perceived and experienced student engagement online, and whether their methods for fostering student engagement changed during the transition to remote teaching. Qualitative data was gathered from both group discussion forums and individual interviews conducted with 25 EAP practitioners. While the study unveiled various issues, the current paper focuses on the ones around student engagement. Key findings revealed that most practitioners felt that students engage in different ways when learning EAP online compared to in-person, and that different strategies are necessary to encourage remote engagement. Tutors also reported higher attendance, more democratic student engagement, and greater student responsibility to engage online. However, they also observed that it was easier for students not to engage online due to factors such as the absence of peer and tutor pressure, time zone differences, longer time required to build rapport, and additional technical layers needed for online engagement (e.g. audio, camera, appropriate bandwidth, etc.). Furthermore, the research findings suggest that tutors need to be pedagogically and technologically aware of how to create a learning environment that fosters the different types of engagement in virtual classrooms.

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Contributors

Author: Karla de Lima Guedes

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