Foreign Language Students’ Voices on Blended Learning and Fully Online Classes

What is it about?

Due to the restrictions of direct interactions during the pandemic, educational practices have massively and simultaneously shifted to remote teaching. Remote teaching is to some extent often viewed as an ineffective means of instructional delivery. It lacks the kind of interactions between teachers and students that are primarily found in traditional classrooms. In addition to ubiquitous technical hindrances, many educators find students' learning progress hard to monitor in remote teaching. The obstacles in remote teaching have prompted the government and educators to explore the possibilities of holding face-to-face meetings in a blended learning format amid the pandemic. This paper is aimed to present a sketch of students' perceptions of the possibilities of combining face-to-face classes with online learning during a pandemic. Using online surveys for data gathering and descriptive statistics for data analysis, this study found that students’ perception of current emergencies influences their preferred mode of instructional delivery. The students appear to be much more tolerant of numerous hindrances in remote teaching than the potential risks of COVID-19 transmission. Most students in this study preferred fully online learning to blended learning. For them, health is the top priority.

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Why is it important?

This paper is important because it addresses the significant shift to remote teaching prompted by the pandemic and explores its perceived effectiveness compared to traditional classroom interactions. It highlights the technical challenges and difficulties in monitoring student progress that educators face in remote teaching. Moreover, the study investigates students' preferences and perceptions regarding blended learning, combining face-to-face and online formats, amidst the pandemic. The findings shed light on how student perceptions of safety during emergencies influence their educational preferences, emphasizing health as a top priority for students in the current learning environment.