Exploring the Challenges of Technology in Language Teaching in the Aftermath of the Pandemic

Abstract

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been varied, and while there was a clear upsurge in the use of technology in language and learning contexts during the worst lockdown periods, the long-term impact on technology usage remains to be seen. As has been widely noted, lockdowns forced teaching into remote modes, making technology indispensable. Many teachers found themselves struggling to use technologies with little or no experience or training, and often in spite of earlier resistance to using it. The affective barriers to using technology may have decreased somewhat, but other potential problems have arisen as well. There has generally been a narrow view about the effectiveness of technology use in language teaching and learning. During the pandemic, teaching often entailed using videoconferencing tools as a means of emulating face-to-face teaching, albeit inhibited by the limitations and the affordances of the technologies. While research into mobile learning prospered prior to the pandemic, long periods of lockdown saw them being used as little more than a backup for when other technologies experienced technical difficulties. In this paper, we discuss not only the often-cited positive effects of technology usage in language learning during COVID, but also the possible negative implications for how technology has come to be used and viewed by learners, teachers, and administrators. Suggestions for a potential way forward in this ‘aftermath’ of the pandemic are discussed, along with some guidelines for making the most of what we have learned about using technology for language learning in the future.

Keywords

Technology-enhanced language learning ERT affordances COVID-19 training

Introduction

Due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, much of the world went into lockdown, causing educational institutions to be closed and classes to be cancelled, and many face-to-face classes were moved online in order to continue teaching and learning. This ‘temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode’ was called emergency remote teaching (ERT) (Hodges et al., 2020), and it allowed education to continue when students and teachers were isolated from one another due to these closures. This situation exposed teachers, learners, and administrators to educational technologies more than ever before. In some cases, teachers who had never seriously contemplated using these technologies found that they needed to learn how to use them quickly in order to do their jobs (Moorhouse, 2023). At first glance, this seems to be positive for teachers and learners, allowing them to learn at a time and place that was convenient for them, but an important point to be kept in mind is that ERT was intended merely as a short-term solution to an urgent problem. Initially, many teachers and learners faced extrinsic barriers as they struggled to adapt to new educational methods. Language teaching and learning proved to be particularly challenging, with the technological affordances of devices making it difficult to conduct effective pair and group work. While training may have helped to alleviate these barriers, intrinsic barriers to using technology began to surface over time – some as a direct result of ERT – and it has become apparent that there are challenges in sustaining technology usage for language educational purposes in the aftermath of the pandemic. One potential key for overcoming these barriers is understanding the changes in language education contexts and how the affordances of technologies may contribute to an enhanced learning ecology.

Language Teaching in the Pandemic

Change in Environments

As described above, due to the long periods of lockdown, border closures, and quarantine in many regions during the pandemic, it was difficult for teachers and students to commute to schools and colleges to participate in on-site face-to-face classes. This caused an almost instantaneous and yet massive change in educational environments where established teaching practices suddenly had to be adjusted to deal with this change with little or no warning, bringing about heavy demands on teachers, learners, and administrators. Given that most learners were unable to come on-site, many were notified about how classes would proceed shortly before their courses of study commenced as teachers scrambled to choose how to conduct their classes. Many teachers elected to offer their classes synchronously online using often unfamiliar videoconferencing tools (Rha, 2022) in an attempt to maintain a personal presence with their learners (see Chesla, 2020), despite the geographical distance imposed upon them. Others opted for asynchronous means, creating their own videos and materials or using existing online instructional videos and activities (Jebbour, 2022) which could then be uploaded to a learning management system (LMS) to allow students to access them in their own time. With many teachers and learners stranded at home, they frequently needed to use their own devices to participate in classes, placing a burden on them to have access to both devices and networks that would allow them to participate in classes in this way (Sosa Díaz, 2021). At the same time, administrators were left with the task of organising infrastructures to manage classes and assessment fairly, often resulting in a need to update existing or introduce new LMSs and networks that could handle the sudden increased load. The combination of these factors resulted in a colossal overhaul of teaching that placed pressure on all stakeholders to adapt to the changes within a very short timeframe, as described below.

Adapting to the Changes

The sudden shift to ERT made the barriers to integrating educational technology starkly evident, contorting the interplay between administrators, teachers, and students. Many teachers struggled to deal with the changes at the outbreak of COVID-19, feeling unprepared to use technology in their teaching and learning contexts (Abdel Latif, 2021). Retrospectively, this is not unexpected, given the largely unanswered calls for more institutional training in technology for teachers over the past several decades (e.g. Pelgrum, 2001; Stockwell, 2012, 2022), and even research published before the pandemic on teacher education was conspicuous in its lack of reference to technology (e.g. Darling-Hammond and Lieberman, 2012; Trippestad et al., 2017). This lack of training has likely contributed to teachers’ scepticism about the applicability of technology to their teaching, and while first-order barriers such as making technologies available to teachers are comparatively easy to overcome (albeit costly), it is the second-order barriers – the teachers’ negative beliefs about using technology – that have proved to be the most challenging and slow to change (Ertmer, 1999; Ma et al., 2021; Wang, 2021). As the impact of the pandemic became apparent, it was clear that the second-order barriers impacted the ways in which teachers perceived how they felt that their classes would proceed.

A lesson learned by many teachers as they progressed with their ERT was that changing from traditional classes to deal with the new environment consisted of more than simply moving existing teaching practices to an online platform. While lessons could have been learned from extant practices in distance education, many teachers lacked the technical and pedagogical skills to be able to do this (Pokhrel and Chhetri, 2021), particularly given the urgency caused by the pandemic. Course syllabi, teaching approaches, materials, activities, and test design all needed to be reconsidered, and while many teachers struggled and exhibited negative emotions at the beginning of the ERT, they gradually gained confidence as their technical and online pedagogical skills developed (Can and Silman-Karanfil, 2022). Teachers were able to establish their own teaching styles through technology, some largely keeping the same approaches as a stop-gap until on-site teaching recommenced, others exploring various approaches throughout the periods of forced online classes (Tafazoli, 2021).

Language Teaching in the Aftermath of the Pandemic

In this paper, we have intentionally opted to use the word aftermath with regard to the end of the pandemic, as in many ways it is possible to conclude that it has also had an adverse effect on the broader view of technology in education. There has been a broader acceptance of technology in education, but on the other hand, many teachers and learners have ended up with somewhat negative perceptions as a result of their experiences. While some of these may be the result of unrealistic expectations and limited technology skills and knowledge, others have revealed several issues that need consideration and also that comprehensive support at an institutional level is crucial for the successful integration of technology.

Dealing with Emerging Challenges

As teachers and learners overcame the initial difficulties of using technology and began to get used to their online teaching environments, they were gradually faced with other challenges. Not the least of these was the tendency for students in online classes to engage in non-class-related activities using their laptops and other electronic devices during class, often referred to as cyberslacking (Taneja et al., 2015). As Koay and Poon (2022) point out, whereas once learners wasted time in class checking emails, social media, or shopping sites, when they are required to be in front of their devices to take part in online classes the temptation for distractions becomes even greater. To prevent students from cyberslacking, they suggest educators design online environments that allow students to engage in peer collaboration, community support, and learning management.

Interactions between teachers and students tend to reduce over time in videoconferencing settings, in part due to longer waiting times and silence in online classes (Cheung, 2021; Hodge, 2020) and many learners choosing not to turn on their cameras in online classes (Schwenck and Pryor, 2021). There is debate on camera usage for online education, in particular, synchronous classes. It is suggested that turning their cameras on allows students to feel a sense of both teacher presence and peer presence, where engagement and connectedness happen (Schwenck and Pryor, 2021). On the other hand, research showed that students are aware of their appearance and other students, as well as the privacy concerns (Castelli and Sarvary, 2021). Given that social interaction forms an integral part of the learning process, this issue is of particular importance in language education (see Huth, 2021). A solution to deal with this may be understanding students’ concerns about having their cameras on or off and allowing more flexibility in the online classes in this regard.

In saying this, however, free discussion is often seen as logistically more difficult in online settings (Gao and Zhang, 2020); for example, in breakout sessions where learners were divided into smaller groups, they could go largely unobserved as teachers are typically only able to attend a single session at a time. While motivated students may actively participate in these breakout sessions, it is not uncommon for teachers to enter a room in which all cameras are off and the room is in silence (Karas and Uchihara, 2021), leaving potential learning opportunities squandered.

Furthermore, academic dishonesty in assessment has been widely reported as teachers attempted to replicate paper-based examinations through online methods, where learners have found ways to share responses using Social Networking Service (SNS) or to access resources that were not permitted for the tests. Janke et al. (2021) surveyed around 1600 students in German higher education institutions about their dishonest behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the students’ self-reports, they cheated more frequently in online tests compared with on-site ones. While cheating has always been a serious problem, technology has the potential to make it worse or better (see also Verhoef and Coetser, 2021); learners may use technology to cheat online, but teachers can also use technology to prevent it, such as cameras to capture students’ screens (Bilen and Matros, 2020), plagiarism detection software, and remote proctoring systems. Despite the technological options for combatting cheating, arguments have also been put forward that advocate more meaningful and authentic assessment to reduce the ‘motivation to cheat’ (IUA, 2020: 1), as well as assessment of learning processes rather than just performance. The success of online assessment depends very much on the design of the tools used, and teachers need to rethink how they administer assessment. For example, it has been argued that a well-designed multiple-choice test results in similar outcomes in unsupervised online situations to those in supervised in-class ones (Ladyshewski, 2015). For tests that require learners to retrieve memorised information, it is possible to use a combination of individual and room cameras (Bilen and Matros, 2020) (notwithstanding the logistical problems with having to own and set up two devices).

These problems have led to even more negative attitudes in many teachers, particularly those who already harboured doubts about the reality of using technology in their learning environments, adversely affecting future technology use (Farrell and Stanclik, 2021; Wang, 2021). In other words, attitudes may reinforce their beliefs and cause ongoing resistance to using technology in the future. Interestingly, many of the issues with online participation and assessment have been reported in literature on distance learning (e.g. Pleines, 2020; Thompson, 2018). For instance, lack of interaction in online discussion may be a reflection of motivational issues not directly related to the technology, but the technology makes these more salient than might be seen in face-to-face environments, and the underlying motivational issues, rather than the technology, are what need to be addressed. The sudden change has also contributed to psychological and emotional problems for teachers. For example, the sharp increase in workload to manage online classes with little time or training, along with feelings of being isolated from their colleagues, has had a negative impact on teacher wellbeing, resulting in burnout, compassion fatigue, and other mental health problems (Alibudbud, 2021; Dabrowski, 2021; Ma et al., 2021; Yang, 2021). The need for teachers to possess suitable skills and attitudes towards using technology to move forward from the pandemic with an open mind is discussed below.

Moving Forward from the Pandemic

Despite the negative impressions of technology felt by many teachers, the pandemic has facilitated broad discussion on what needs to be done to avoid a repeat of the panic that occurred in early 2020. Education has seen an enormous leap towards technology usage that may not have occurred without the pandemic as a catalyst. As restrictions are slowly lifted, teachers and learners are returning to on-site classrooms, but an online element which blends with these offline learning contexts has more often than not been retained. While this blended learning allows for flexibility, at the same time it can be demanding on administrators, teachers, and students (Palikat and Gruba, 2022), requiring a mutual understanding of each other's roles and concerns in order to overcome the various intrinsic and extrinsic barriers that have emerged during ERT. In particular, both formal institutional support and informal community support for teachers remain an indispensable part of ensuring the effective integration of technology to allow them to be more accepting of change in the midst of the burdens of needing to redesign their courses and to train both themselves and their students to use technology effectively (Wang, 2021). For example, institutions may provide financial support for teachers to have more access to technology, train teachers to use technology, and provide counselling and support for those teachers who struggle technically and mentally. Teachers are also seeking advice and sharing their experiences in informal online teacher communities such as Facebook (Ito, 2023). More importantly, opening up conversations among teachers, students, and policy makers may help release teachers’ concerns about technology use.

Teaching online is fraught with challenges. Teachers are required to teach and communicate content across a screen, and maintain a sense of presence despite not being physically together. In videoconference classes, for example, teachers must engage learners using the two-dimensional images they see through their screens, facilitating interaction in a digital classroom while attending to learners’ emotional needs across distance and troubleshooting technical difficulties (Moorhouse et al., 2021; Rehn et al., 2018). As Stickler et al. (2020) have suggested, while basic technology skills are important, they are not sufficient, and teachers need to gain familiarity and confidence with technology in order to develop their own teaching styles. To achieve this, teachers need to experiment with different technologies and keep track of their successes and failures. Through gradually developing a repertoire of successful activities through technology, teachers can become empowered to adopt and adapt technology into their teaching practice (see also Moorhouse, 2023, for a discussion). It should also be noted that teachers are humans, and as learners of technology themselves, they need support on a social level as well as a technical level, providing them with self-care activities and mental training consistent with social-cognitive perspectives (Alibudbud, 2021). Educational communities can also play an important role in facilitating online teaching self-efficacy, including nurturing teachers’ beliefs about their knowledge, skills, and confidence in using educational technology, and their capacity to manage and engage their students in online classrooms (Yang, 2021).

The outlook for online teaching is not necessarily a bleak one, but it is certainly one that appears to hinge on the provision of sufficient institutional support or organisational readiness, including ‘technical infrastructure and support, flexible structures that facilitate decision-making and empower instructors, the availability of informal communication channels, and development of digital skills of faculty members’ (Iglesias-Pradas et al., 2021: 14). Understanding how institutions can become ‘ready’ for their teachers and students has become a primary issue in discussions in the literature as the pandemic has slowed down in its immediate impact on educational contexts, and suggestions for institutions have appeared (e.g. Abdel Latif, 2021; Can and Silman-Karanfil, 2022). Models have started to appear that attempt to provide a foundation for discussion of how teachers, learners, and organisations need to be coordinated to allow the smooth facilitation of not only current practices using technology but also unforeseen problems which may occur in the future. One notable model by Sailer et al. (2021), called the contextual facilitators for learning activities involving technology (C♭-model), explores each of these moving parts of the teacher, the learner, the technology, and the administration, serving to raise awareness of the complexity of facilitating a better environment that includes a significant technology element. This model highlights the interrelations among teachers’ and students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes towards educational technology, along with institutional factors in learning ecology. This is an important perspective as it demonstrates the need to view teaching and learning with technology holistically, and that even if efforts are put into one element, this is unlikely to be successful if it is done in isolation of the other moving parts in the educational context.

The future of post-pandemic language teaching will rest on the ability of teachers to create useful and appealing tasks, activities, and assessment that can be sustained in a two-dimensional, online context. At the same time, teachers need to nurture learners’ emotional development such that they can take part in these tasks and activities and complete assessment without the need for excessive ‘big-brother’ tactics to deter academic dishonesty. All of these are time-consuming and labour-intensive undertakings, and adapting to post-pandemic language education settings needs to be something that takes place systematically and progressively to help teachers, learners, and educational institutions set challenging yet achievable goals in using technology as an integrated part of their language teaching and learning environments.

Footnotes

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Glenn Stockwell

Yijen Wang

Author Biographies

Glenn Stockwell (PhD, University of Queensland) is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Waseda University, Japan. He is author of Mobile Assisted Language Learning: Concepts, Contexts and Challenges (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and editor of Smart CALL: Personalization, Contextualization, & Socialization (Castledown Publishers, 2022). He is editor-in-chief of The JALT CALL Journal and the Australian Journal of Applied Linguistics and associate editor of Computer Assisted Language Learning. His current research interests include the impact of technology on teaching and learning, mobile-assisted language learning, teacher and learner training with technology, and the development of learner autonomy.

Yijen Wang (PhD, Waseda University) is an Assistant Professor in the School of International Liberal Studies at Waseda University. Her PhD focused on the factors affecting the adoption of technology by teachers and students in language teaching. She has published a number of research articles and book chapters in the field of technology and language education, specifically looking at learner and teacher motivation and the development of autonomy. She is currently editor-in-chief of Technology in Language Teaching & Learning, and she regularly reviews for multiple journals in the field.

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