REACHING THE ISOLATED EFL PREP-CLASS STUDENTS VIA GROUP VIDEO TASKS DURING EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING: STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS

Berna Saygıner Yanar, Hamide Şahinkayası

Abstract


Due to Covid-19 pandemic precautions, the 2020-2021 academic year was a radical shift from face to face education to online at all levels throughout the world. Students who were newly enrolled to their university from different regions of Turkey started their lessons as EFL Prep-class students without meeting their classmates, feeling isolated. In order to make them feel in a classroom, create their sense of belonging and the rate of participation in lessons during emergency remote teaching, online group video tasks were designed for an EFL prep class. This study aims to investigate students’ perceptions of the effects of online collaborative group video tasks on their English and some 21st-century skills. It has a sequential explanatory design that is a type of mixed-method research. The students were given three group video tasks during the semester. After they finished the tasks, a 4-point Likert-type scale questionnaire was administered to the whole class, groups’ videos were analysed, and in order to get students’ perceptions in-depth, semi-structured online interviews were held with six voluntary students. It was found out that group video tasks through online collaboration were beneficial for the development of the use of English, writing, pronunciation and speaking skills, helped students develop a sense of belonging to their class. These tasks made students learn how to make a presentation, helped them gain some digital skills such as using video-maker programs, as well. It was also found out that Microsoft Teams was a student-friendly platform for online classes.

 

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Keywords


emergency remote teaching, online collaboration, group video tasks, speaking skills, sense of belonging, Microsoft Teams

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References


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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejoe.v7i1.4212

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