engleski

Online teaching experiences amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic forced higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide to shift from traditional on-site instruction to an online environment, causing issues for both students and teachers (cf. Mahmood, 2021). Notwithstanding the advantages of technology, limitations such as the inadequate infrastructure or poor digital skills are reported to be the most common obstacles encountered in this process by teachers and learners (cf. Nambiar, 2020 ; Sunita, 2020). The transition from traditional face-to-face classes to online teaching due to the “New Normal” also affected Croatian HEIs which had to adapt to the new circumstances. After overcoming the early challenges, the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, has succeeded in implementing an efficient online system with the help of which the teaching and learning processes are carried out almost unhindered. All courses offered at the Faculty, including LSP courses (business English, German and Italian), are taught synchronously via the Google Meet platform, allowing for a realistic, real-time and interactive teacher-student dialogue, which is of a major significance in teaching an LSP course (cf. Bordet, 2021 ; De Paepe, Zhu & Depryck, 2018). In addition to this videoconferencing application and its different features, several other online services, such as Kahoot, Socrative, and the Moodle e-learning platform, are used to make the transition from an on-site to an online environment run as smooth as possible. The current situation in Croatia allows teaching to be carried out hybridly, i.e. with students both in class and online, which brings about new challenges. Namely, the lack of adequate technology in classrooms, such as cameras and microphones, impedes full interaction between students in the classroom and those online. The results of the University’s survey on student and teacher satisfaction with new online teaching practices show that this transition, even though initially viewed as unnatural and of incomparably lower quality, is well received by all stakeholders. However, the real results of this shift can only be seen in the learning outcomes obtained by students involved in the process. Therefore, we analyze and compare the results obtained by three different generations of students (the fully on-site, the fully online and the hybrid generation) based on written continuous assessments within business language classes. Our analysis encompasses 1085 Bachelor degree students of the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Economics and Business, attending three LSP courses: business English, German and Italian. The students’ results were obtained at the end of the winter semesters of 2020 (on-site), 2021 (online) and 2022 (hybrid) and statistically analysed with the help of the Stata software. The findings show that the online generation achieved better results when it comes to business English and Italian, whereas the onsite generation obtained better results in business German. In all three LSP courses offered at the Faculty, the hybrid generation achieved the lowest results. When comparing the three models, we may conclude that the role of the teacher and the student differs in each, and that a different and an innovative approach is necessary for each of them in order to make the teaching and the learning processes successful.

teaching methods ; COVID-19 ; online ; onsite ; hybrid

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