The EFL Online Teaching and Learning Evaluation

Abstract

Education is an integral part of peoples‟ lives; it is broadly diverse today compared with previous years because of COVID-19 pandemic. New teaching methods and other prominent inventions were implemented in different educational settings where teaching and learning processes moved from face to face mode to virtual one. This contribution is an assumption to evaluate distance learning in the Department of English at Guelma University. It aims at investigating the attitudes and perspectives of EFL students towards online learning, and to examine to which extent they are engaged in this experience. The study follows the exploratory approach through using a students‟ questionnaire and a teachers‟, head of the English Department, and the Media Engineer‟s interviews to collect their views and insights regarding the topic in question. The sample of the present research encompasses one hundred twenty (120) Second Year License students and five (5) teachers from English Department, one Arabic teacher from Arabic Department, the Head of the English Department, in addition to the Media Engineer of the Languages‟ Faculty. They all belong to the University of 8 Mai 1945-Guelma. The results of this research depend on the various perceptions that the participants expressed. The experience of online teaching/learning was described as successful for most of EFL students, because they found it flexible and easy. It was also described as alright by the head of the English Department who found it interesting. Whereas, teachers agreed on describing it as limited and insufficient. At the end there is a major optimism about the future, if all these contributors united their efforts to overcome the challenges they mentioned in their answers.