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Li, Chenxi (Cecilia)
(2015).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0000ef89
Abstract
Many institutions and individual teachers are moving from traditional face-to-face classrooms to online teaching. Traditional classroom language teachers need to understand why online teaching is different from classroom teaching before they acquire new skills and explore new pedagogies for online teaching. This study aims to identify the differences between teaching online and in face-to-face classrooms, and explore what new skills and roles beginner online language teachers need to develop in order to become successful language teachers in online classrooms. Audio-graphic conferencing classrooms are usually a basic form of online teaching and the starting point for many face-to-face teachers to move to online teaching. This study collects data from an OU-Live EAP tutorial in the Open University UK. Four critical incidents were selected from an online tutorial and analysed through multimodal discourse analysis based on the Model of Instructor Roles by Berge (2005) and the Skills Pyramid by Hampel and Stickler (2005). A video-stimulated recall interview was conducted to elicit the online tutor’s rationale for his actions in the four critical incidents. The major findings of the study include: (a) three major differences between teaching online and in face-to-face classrooms, including technical differences, lack of non-verbal cues, and multimodality in online learning environments; (b) two suggestions for the Skills Pyramid on ‘dealing with the possibilities and constraints of the system’ and ‘online socialization skill’ (Hampel and Stickler, 2005); and (c) two suggestions for the Model of Instructor Roles the on pedagogical role and the technical role of online language teachers (Berge, 1995). Recommendations for online teacher training and future research topics are presented in the end.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
