Integrating Self-Generated Online Projects in an ELT Class at a Thai University during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

This paper reports how self-generated online projects were integrated into an English language teaching (ELT) class at a Thai university and their impact on pre-service teachers’ experience during the unexpected COVID-19 situation. A qualitative approach was used to describe the integration of self-generated online projects as final group projects and report the learners’ opinions towards their online project-based learning. The participants were 58 pre-service English language teachers who took the Linguistics and Language Teaching course at a Thai university during the first semester of the 2020 academic year. The course initially required the students to organise an English teaching camp at a rural school after they had learned ELT theories and approaches throughout the semester. However, due to the COVID-19 spread, the learners’ original project had to be shifted to creating online English teaching. The online projects were designed to be self-generated, encouraging learners to use their English teaching knowledge and skills to design online lessons for rural school students. The project-based multimedia learning approach (Simkins et al., 2002) was adopted to guide the self-generated projects. The learners’ opinion towards integrating the online projects during the difficult situation was elicited using a reflection form and a small group interview. The findings reveal project integration procedures, the challenges the students faced, their ways of dealing with those challenges, and the advantages and disadvantages of the integration. The students used a variety of working strategies to collaborate their work. They admitted that the COVID-19 lockdown, project time limitations, and limited technology skills delayed their work. However, they believed that the online projects enhanced their teaching and digital skills, increased motivation as well as problem-solving and collaboration skills.

The Implementation of Digital Technology in Online Project-Based Learning during Pandemic: EFL Students’ Perspectives

“…Through the collaboration, they added that students' problem-solving and critical thinking were also developed. In the same breath, Poonpon (2021) found that integrating a selfgenerated online project improved the students' motivation, problem-solving, and teamwork skills. Additionally, it enhanced their digital and teaching abilities.…”

Online project-based learning for teacher education during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review

“…It can be seen that the number of studies conducted in 2020 is very low compared to 2021 and 2022; this may be the impact of the disruption of educational activities in countries during the period when the COVID-19 pandemic took place most explosively. However, after a certain adaptation period and to meet the learning needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, online PjBL studies have been accelerated in the years 2021-2023 (Paristiowati et al, 2022;Poonpon, 2021;Prasetiyo et al, 2023;Rusmini et al, 2021;Schina et al, 2021;Tsybulsky & Muchnik-Rozanov, 2023;Yustina et al, 2020).…”

“…Duration of the study conducting the intervention or the time of pre-service teachers learning with the PjBL approach of the included articles varied quite widely, ranging from two weeks (Chung & Li, 2021) to a year (Kamali Arslantas & Kocaoz, 2021; Lee & Galindo, 2021), takes place in the years from 2019 to 2022. In which most of the included articles, this process takes place in about one-two semesters (no less than 16 weeks), including Al-Busaidi and Al-Seyabi (2021), Alromaih et al (2022), Brown and Jain (2020), Elfeky et al (2022), Habibi et al (2022), Hernández-Barco et al (2021, Huo et al (2021), Lin et al (2021), Martinez (2022), Poonpon (2021), Schina et al (2021), Tsybulsky and Muchnik-Rozanov (2023), Van Loi and Hang (2021), and Yustina et al (2020). The remaining studies had durations ranging from two to 15 weeks.…”

“…The outstanding development of science and technology and the demand for online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed society's requirements for teachers' professional knowledge and skills. Therefore, higher education-with a decisive role in training responsible citizenship (Hernández-Barco et al, 2021)-has adopted modern teaching approaches that can connect the learning of teachersstudents with real-life problems and their future work (Al-Busaidi & Al-Seyabi, 2021;Martinez, 2022;Poonpon, 2021;Tsybulsky & Muchnik-Rozanov, 2023). A particular example of a promising approach that improves student learning in higher education is the project-based learning (PjBL) approach (Guo et al, 2020).…”

“…For students, the main challenges are related to skills in using information technology to access information resources and implement projects (Aksela & Haatainen, 2019;Al Mulhim, 2022;Alromaih et al, 2022;Chung & Li, 2021), and authentic challenges such as the abilities to execute the research steps (Al-Busaidi & Al-Seyabi, 2021), focus on project participation (Alromaih et al, 2022), and the time management skills (Aksela & Haatainen, 2019;Kamali Arslantas & Kocaoz, 2021;Nava & Park, 2021). During the COVID-19 period, on the other hand, both teachers and students are under great pressure, and limited technology skills, inconvenient online communication, project time constraints, and inexperienced management skills have delayed their work (Poonpon, 2021;Prasetiyo et al, 2023), are also significant difficulties for the implementation of PjBL. In addition, implementing teaching strategies such as PjBL also requires investing financial resources, references, tools, and devices for educational institutions, teachers and students (Alromaih et al, 2022).…”