Studying Abroad from Home: An Exploration of International Graduate Students’ Perceptions and Experiences of Emergency Remote Teaching

Abstract

The temporary shift from face-to-face instruction to online teaching at North American universities as an alternative solution in response to the COVID-19 pandemic brought significant challenges to international students who had to study abroad from their home countries. Studies on how international students perceive their study-abroad-from-home experiences in such an emergency remote teaching (ERT) context remain scarce. Through the lens of Community of Inquiry and an additional perspective of emotional presence, this study explored 13 first-year international graduate students’ perceptions and experiences of their learning in ERT. Based on the analyses of the pre-learning questionnaire survey results and a series of three reflection journal entries, the study finds that teaching presence has played a vital role in shaping students’ understanding and experiences when they participated in a study-abroad graduate program from their home countries. In addition, the participants demonstrated mixed emotions of both frustration and appreciation/thankfulness as well as an isolation–connectedness emotional trajectory during their learning process. The study inspires an exploration of more diverse options for international education programs and continued effort in providing institutional support to ensure better learning experiences in a post-COVID community of inquiry.

What Does It Mean To Take Online Classes As An International Student During COVID-19?

“…Their hesitation in collaboratively joining online discussions prevented them from building online discourse and reflection, constructing knowledge, and further achieving educational goals via the triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution cycle (Garrison, 2007). Similar to Dong and Ishige (2022) who noted teaching presence's vital role in shaping students' online learning experiences in an examination of international students' studyabroad-from-home experiences during the pandemic, our findings suggest that improvement in teaching presence is greatly needed to ensure that the international students feel safe learning online, particularly in discourse facilitation (Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007;Garrison et al, 2000). Anderson et al (2001) conceptualized facilitating discourse based on how students are engaged in the process of interacting with the information provided in the course materials.…”

English teachers’ perceptions of emergency remote teaching: Emotional attitudes, professional identity, and coping strategies

“…The effectiveness of technologies in language teaching and learning has been well-recognized among English teachers ( Dong and Ishige, 2022 ). For example, it transforms pedagogy, breaks the limitation of time and space, provides authentic language teaching and learning materials, facilitates communication, reduces students’ anxiety, and enhances their learning motivation ( Yang and Chen, 2007 ; Shadiev and Yang, 2020 ; Huang F. et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Different from traditional technology-enhanced teaching contexts where teachers are physically in the classroom and operate technology to assist teaching, ERT requires teachers to teach in the virtual class, deliver teaching and interact with students synchronously. It's reported that more than 1.5 billion university students in about 188 countries have shifted to ERT since the breakout of COVID-19 (Dong and Ishige, 2022). Recently some countries issued policies to implement formal school teaching and universities took measures to help students to return to in-class learning but, in many countries, especially developing countries with large population densities (e.g., China), governments and universities are still taking measures to prevent the potential largescale infection, and thus, university teachers are conducting classroom-based teaching and ERT alternatively.…”

“…With the pervasiveness of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in education, technology-assisted language teaching and learning have gradually become a norm ( Teo et al, 2018 ; Huang et al, 2019 , 2020 ; Dong and Ishige, 2022 ). Recently, technology tools, such as laptops, mobile phones, projectors, and multimedia, have been widely used by language teachers in informal and formal teaching settings, and the integration has transformed teachers’ pedagogy and brought about benefits for teaching and learning ( Kvavik, 2005 ; Herrington and Kervin, 2007 ; Baek et al, 2008 ; Shadiev et al, 2018 ; Tusmagambet, 2020 ).…”

Análisis de la docencia virtualizada en contexto de pandemia

“…En general, las universidades chilenas, optaron por la concepción de Educause (institución que se dedica a promover la educación superior a través del uso de la tecnología) de concebir el proceso de virtualización de la docencia como un proceso de enseñanza remota de emergencia, entendiendo esta, epistemológicamente diferente a la educación en línea u otras modalidades de educación a distancia, dado que esta última presenta mayores complejidades y en muchas ocasiones se fundamenta en modelos de enseñanza online y diseño instruccional más complejas, como por ejemplo; ADDIE, ASSURE y OSQAR, mientras el Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT), término propuesto por (Hodges et al,, 2020) y retomado por varios autores (Bárcenas- López, 2022;Dong & Ishige, 2022;Ducasse, 2022;Martins et al,, 2022) entre otros.…”