Understanding Chinese students’ online learning experiences with emergency remote teaching: a case study

ABSTRACT

Despite the growing body of research on college students’ online learning experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about how individual students perceive and experience emergency remote teaching in China. To fill this gap, this study seeks to explore college students’ perceptions of emergency remote teaching as well as the factors deemed favourable and unfavourable to online learning. This study, adopting a photo elicitation method, investigated four college students’ online learning experiences in an emergency remote instruction context. Our study revealed that students went through three stages of online learning and their perceptions of emergency remote teaching changed from one stage to another. Additionally, student-content interaction, strong teacher support and a high-level of digital inclusion were three factors that facilitated effective online learning, whereas lack of interaction with teachers and peers and dormitory confinement were two factors perceived as hindrance. The study explored possible explanations of the findings and made pedagogical recommendations to foster online learning success. The study bears significance for teachers and administrators practicing technology-supported teaching activities amid and beyond the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Emergency remote teaching
• higher education
• online learning
• interaction
• COVID-19

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express gratitude to every participant for their active involvement in the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Education Department of Jilin Province under [Grant JJKH20201141SK].

Notes on contributors

Yu Cao

Yu Cao is a lecturer at the School of Foreign Language Education, Jilin University, China. She teaches a variety of English language courses at Jilin University. Her current research interests include language teaching and learning in digital context and second language writing.