Overcoming Duck Syndrome — Students' Perspective of Online Classes

Description

In April 2020, barely one month after beginning of the first lockdown in Portugal, I asked my EFL students at the Catholic University in Lisbon to write a brief account of their, at the time, still recent experience with remote classes and discuss its advantages and disad- vantages. One student mentioned that she felt teachers were generally suffering from the “duck effect,” a term originally used to describe Stanford university students who “seem to be calm on the surface” when they are actually “frantically struggling to stay above water to meet the demands of student life” (medicinet.com). Those were certainly unprecedented times for the academic community and the struggle against technological and personal issues became apparent during the transition to online teaching and learning.
Three semesters and two lockdowns later, under the “hybrid mode” which is currently being adopted by many European universities, and at a stage when the duck effect uncer- tainties have subsided, I decided to ask students to write about the same topic.
The study is based on the content qualitative analysis of the texts written by 105 students in the context of EFL classes and aims at better understanding the perspective of students regarding the transition and adaptation to online teaching and learning. Content analysis methodology is used to quantify qualitative data (Krippendorff, 2004; Cohen et al, 2007). Results show that, although students recognize the benefits of the online system during the pandemic, they remain reluctant about digital teaching and learning and prefer the tradi- tional presential classes. Internet connection breakdowns are among the main drawbacks pointed by the students.

Period	3 Dec 2021
Event title	III Coloquio Internacional de Aprolínguas 2021
Event type	Conference
Location	on line, PortugalShow on map