Online English Teacher Training during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Thai Contexts
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Abstract
During the disruptive coronavirus pandemic, English Language Teaching (ELT) teachers, among others, encountered dramatic changes and challenges regarding instruction, assessment, and research. Due to an abrupt shift from onsite to online modes, they urgently needed digital professional development to enhance their academic performance. A number of webinars were launched to provide information useful for ELT practices. This mixed-methods study was aimed at investigating how three webinars (on online toolkits, research publication, and action research) organised by a language institute at a Thai university were perceived in terms of satisfaction and usefulness. Forty-eight participants responded to an online questionnaire, and five of the participants attended online focus-group interviews. Both quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the participants had a high level of satisfaction towards and usefulness of the webinars because of the content, the speakers, as well as the format. Some of them, however, expressed their interest to engage more deeply with the webinars and the speakers through other audience engagement activities than a simple Q&A session in the end. These findings provide insights into how the language institute will be able to organize webinars more effectively for ELT professional development by increasing the level of audience engagement throughout the session to better simulate the face-to-face interaction found in on-site seminars.
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