STUDIA PAEDAGOGICA
vol. 27, n. 2, 2022
https://doi.org/10.5817/SP2022-2-1
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION
IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS:
A CASE STUDY OF TWO TEACHERS
DURING EMERGENCY REMOTE TEACHING
Tomáš Lintner1
© Klára Šeďová'®
a
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
ABSTRACT
While learning is most effective when students are actively engaged, student participation
in university classrooms is usually dominated by monologic teacher talk. Digital technologies
are often seen as a way to enhance active student participation, yet most reports show that
the emergency remote teaching that used digital technologies during the COVID pandemic
worsened student participation. We look at active student participation in the synchronous
online university lessons of two teachers with shared views on the importance of active
student participation but differing approaches to online teaching. We employed a range of
tools, including multiple lesson observations over time, line-by-line micro-analysis of the
lessons, analysis of discourse moves based on Hardman's coding system, network visualizations
of interactions, and interviews with the teachers reflecting on their teaching. With these
tools, we aimed to link the teachers' views of online teaching with their teaching practices
and with the resulting active student participation in their online lessons. The findings of
our study indicate that teachers' views of online teaching can significantly influence their
teaching practices. We found that the view that online teaching can serve as a substitute
for contact teaching has a detrimental effect on teacher ability to employ the practices
necessary for active student participation in online settings. We suggest abandoning the
idea of online teaching as a substitute for contact teaching. Instead, online and contact
teaching should be seen as two distinct entities requiring different teaching practices.
We discuss specific teaching practices that we observed in relation to their role in promoting
active student participation in online lessons.
KEYWORDS
emergency remote teaching, online learning, COVID teaching, interactive lessons, case
study, mixed design
CORRESPONDING AUTHOR
Tomáš Lintner, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Arna Nováka 1, 602 00 Brno, Czech
Republic
e-mail: tomas.lintner@mail.muni.cz
10 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
Introduction
Student active learning and student engagement in classroom talk have become
key topics in educational sciences (Borte et al., 2020). It is understood that
learning is most effective when students are actively involved in a dialogic
co-construction of meaning (Wells & Arau2, 2006). Empirical studies have
indicated that the more students talk, discuss, and argue, the better they learn
and the more motivated they are to study (Baber, 2020; Bernard et al., 2009;
Kuo et al., 2014). However, investigations across the world have demonstrated
that student participation in university classroom dialogue is limited — teachers
mainly pose factual questions and students reply with short and rote answers.
The current style of teaching in higher education has been characterized as
teacher-centered with little space for student active learning and engagement
(Borte et al., 2020). Studies investigating student engagement report that few
students participate and contribute to class discussions; most remain silent
during the lesson (Fritschner, 2000; Howard & Baird, 2000). A typical lesson
scenario includes monologic teacher talk combined with short question and
answer sequences with brief student utterances (Klerk, 1995; O'Boyle, 2010;
Wood et al, 2018).
Hardman (2016) conducted a particularly elaborate study, recording,
thoroughly coding, and analyzing interactions in four university seminar lessons.
Based on the observed lessons, Hardman created a set of different types of
discourse moves occurring in the university setting. The discourse moves
represent exchanges between students and teachers based on the "initiation,
response, follow-up" (IRF) structure. However, Hardman observed that the
IRF can take on very different forms, leading to very different outcomes in
student engagement. She therefore expanded the prototypical IRF structure
into further subcategories. The initiation moves were categorized into open,
closed, and check questions directed toward students and student questions
directed toward the teacher. The response moves were categorized into brief
(one word, phrase, or sentence) and elaborate answers. The follow-up moves
were categorized into acknowledgement (verbally acknowledging or repeating
an answer), praise (praising a student answer), negation (disagreeing with or
rejecting an answer), comment (building on or expanding an answer), probe
(asking the same student to elaborate or justify a previous answer), and uptake
(incorporating a previous answer into a new question for everyone). In her
study, closed questions comprised 50.3% of the teacher's initiation moves,
brief answers made up 86.5% of the student responses, and acknowledgements
were 51.7% of the follow-up moves. As closed questions lead to brief answers
and acknowledgements do not give space for any further elaboration (whether
from the students or the teacher), Hardman (2016) found the interaction
in the lessons to be dominated by short question and answer sequences.
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 11
The reasons that university lessons are dominated by the prevailing teachercentered
pattern of interaction and the lack of active student participation
remain largely unclear. Research has suggested that a number of teacher
practices play a crucial role in promoting student active classroom participation.
Fischer and Hanze (in press) conducted an extensive study in 80 university
courses observing the share of students participating actively in the class
discussion. They found the number of teacher questions put to students to
be determinative in this regard. The more a teacher asked, the more students
participated. The course atmosphere was also found to have an effect. Students
participated more when they perceived the teacher as respectful and
appreciative, open to other opinions and suggestions, and incorporating
student questions and comments into discussions. Similarly, Mustapha et al.
(2010) and Abdullah et al. (2012) reported that university students feel more
likely to actively participate in the classroom when a teacher encourages them
to talk by giving them both verbal and non-verbal cues, calls them by their
names, does not scold them for their answers, is not impatient, and accepts
and even supports differing opinions.
Previous studies (Abdullah et al., 2012; Fisher & Hanze, in press; Mustapha
et al., 2010) have proposed several teacher guidelines aimed at improving
active student participation in university classrooms. Teachers should actively
pose questions, be welcoming and appreciative of all student contributions,
and incorporate student contributions into teaching. The question remains
whether such an approach is viable for a higher education environment.
Heron (2018) interviewed several university teachers and found that the
teachers believed in the crucial roles of class dialogue and discussion in
cognitively activating students, empowering their voices, and facilitating
their learning. However, at the same time, the teachers felt that various
tensions and institutional constraints limited their capacity to establish
dialogue in their lessons. These included the tension between valuing student
participation and needing to cover specific material. Richards (2006)
suggested further constraints limiting active student participation in higher
education environments — the power asymmetry in classroom dialogue
and the institutional settings that cast students in the roles of passive actors.
It has been argued that the space for student talk and active engagement
is limited in traditional settings but could be radically enhanced by digital
technologies by overcoming some of the institutional constraints — specifically,
that digital technologies could be used to facilitate peer learning with the
use of online forums and synchronous online group activities and to reduce
the power asymmetry between students and teachers by making teachers
more accessible (Coorey, 2016; Englund et al., 2017; Wdowik, 2014).
However, a study by Sed'ova et al. (2021) suggested that the use of digital
technologies in higher education does not necessarily mean higher active
12 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
student participation. The study was based on interviews with 34 university
teachers at the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University during the period of
emergency remote teaching (ERT) resulting from nationwide COVID
containment measures in 2020. As with many other university programs
across the world (Mishra et al., 2020; Walker & Koralesky, 2021), Masaryk
University was forced to shift to fully online teaching. Compared to established
online learning, ERT is unplanned, lacks established infrastructure, and is a
direct response to a crisis rather than a deliberate decision (Whittle et al.,
2020). The study by Sed'ova et al. (2021) suggested that in the ERT period,
university teachers fell into two polar categories based on their approaches
to online teaching. On one side of the spectrum were functionalists who saw
online teaching as a challenge but were willing to overcome the hindrances
by changing teaching practices with the aim of passing the required knowledge
to students. On the other side of the spectrum were authenticators who
also saw online teaching as a challenge but were not willing to change their
teaching practices as their central idea in teaching was authentic spontaneous
teacher-student communication as a means of creating new knowledge.
The study suggested that while the functionalists were mostly content with
online teaching and active student participation in their online lessons as
they saw that online teaching was bringing new features into their teaching
practices, the authenticators were mostly dissatisfied and complained about
the quality of active student participation in their online lessons. A key
limitation to their study is the fact that the authors lacked data enabling them
to assess active student participation in the teachers' online lessons beyond
self-reports in interviews with the teachers.
Most other studies dealing with student participation in online lessons
during ERT have lacked lesson observations and relied heavily on teacher
and student reports. These studies reported decreases in active student
participation after the transition to ERT. While some studies reported teachers
and students praising the chance to interact with others in chat rooms while
hearing a lecture, feeling less stressed during online lessons, and appreciating
the opportunity to use chat rooms to ponder before engaging in discussions
(Müller et al., 2021; Shim & Lee, 2020), most studies reported more negative
aspects of ERT. Some research identified decreases in student engagement
(Petillion & McNeil, 2020; Shim & Lee, 2020; Walker & Koralesky, 2021)
and decreases in both teacher—student and student—student interactions (Ferri
et al, 2020; Le & Truong, 2021; Thurab-Nkhosi et al, 2021) during ERT at
universities. Teachers have complained about the inability to read student
faces (Mishra et al., 2020), the lack of confidence (Lei & So, 2021), and
technical problems (Nambiar, 2020); students often reported being distracted
(Petillion & McNeil, 2020; Shim & Lee, 2020; Walker & Koralesky, 2021)
and lacking stable internet connections (Shim & Lee, 2020).
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 13
1. Present study
While there have been studies investigating active student participation in
the context of ERT, they lack data from the lessons that could provide
objective measurements of active student participation and link the teachers'
perceptions of online teaching with their practices and with active student
participation in their lessons. This study aims to address the research gap —
the lack of studies providing analyses based on lesson observations.
We formulated our research question as How are teachers' views of online teaching
reflected in their teachingpractices and what effect do theirpractices have on active studen
participation? We aim to link teachers' views of online teaching during ERT
with their teaching practices, and, ultimately, with the outcomes in active
student participation in their lessons. We understand teaching practices as
specific behaviors — the means by which teachers attempt to impart knowledge
to their students. To address the question, we approach the issue as a mixeddesign
case study of two teachers and employ a range of tools including
multiple observations of lessons over time, line-by-line micro-analysis of the
lessons (Lefstein & Snell, 2014), analysis of discourse moves based on
Hardman's (2016) coding system, network visuali2ations of interactions,
and interviews with teachers with reflections on their teaching. With the
selected tools, we aim to provide a detailed image of active student participation
in ERT and put it into the wider context of teacher practices and teacher
views of online teaching. The cases are two experienced university teachers,
both aiming for interactive and dialogic lessons and having no prior experience
with fully online teaching. However, the two teachers dramatically differed
in their attitudes toward online teaching, in the teaching practices they
employed, and, ultimately, in the active student participation in their online
lessons.
2. Materials and methods
2.1 Research design
To address the research question, we employed a mixed-design case study
approach. A mixed-design approach was used to address the gap identified
in previous research from the same institution (Sed'ova et al., 2021) that lacked
objective measurements of active student participation in the form of
observations and relied solely on teacher reports. We utili2e both teacher reports
and views of online teaching from interviews and complement these with
observations of lessons followed by a qualitative analysis of teaching practices
and a quantitative analysis of active student participation. This design allowed
us to study the interconnectedness of teachers' views of online teaching,
their teaching practices, and active student participation in their lessons.
14 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
2.2 Context
Our study is based at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University — a large
public research university in the C2ech Republic. Starting in mid-2020, all
the teachers at the Faculty had to switch to synchronous online teaching via
the Microsoft Teams platform. The teachers were expected to stick to their
original schedules and lesson structures, with the only difference being the
online mode of delivery. The online mode of delivery continued for the
duration of the 2020/2021 school year.
2.3 Studyparticipants
Our cases are two university teachers. We chose the teachers based on the
criteria of: (1) having broad and similar teaching experience (mid-career
tenure-track assistant professors); (2) being noted by their students and their
fellow colleagues as having dialogic and interactive lessons before the
COVID outbreak — we made use of student course opinion polls from before
the pandemic, and we had talks with the respective departmental heads; and
(3) having no prior experience with fully online teaching. The two teachers
come from a larger sample of two previous studies — the study aimed at
exploring the transition to online learning through teachers' eyes (Sed'ova et
al., 2021) and a study of four teachers whose lessons had been studied
in relation to interactions in online lessons (Lintner, 2021). The two teachers
were selected by the authors of this study to address the research question,
which is based around making lessons during ERT with active student
participation. The teachers had shared views on the importance of active
student participation in the classroom, but they differed in their views of
online teaching, their teaching practices, and the resulting student participation
in their lessons. Hence, the two cases make it possible to illustrate the
differences in teaching practices stemming from differing views of online
teaching and not from differing views of active student participation.
The two teachers occupy two opposite poles of the functionalist—authenticated
spectrum constructed in the previous study (Sed'ova et al., 2021). We refer to
the teachers by pseudonyms: Cora and Ben. Cora has seven years of teaching
experience, teaches education to a class of 27 master's degree students, and
is a functionalist replacing components of face-to-face teaching with new
tools with the priority of passing on knowledge to students in mind. Ben has
six years of teaching experience, teaches literature to a class of 32 master's
degree students, and is an authenticator prioriti2ing the idea of authentic
spontaneous teacher-student communication as a means of creating new
knowledge over a change in teaching strategies. Students in both classes are
predominantly C2ech and Slovak.
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 15
2.4 Data collection
First, we obtained video recordings of three consecutive 90-minute online
lessons from both teachers over the span of three weeks. The recordings were
obtained in the middle of the fall semester — in November 2020 — which was
marked by a transition from on-site and blended learning to fully online
learning. We decided to include lessons marked by the sudden mass transition
to online teaching to study the context when teachers did not have much time
to prepare for the online teaching. We included three consecutive lessons to
expand the validity of our findings. The recordings were collected in
accordance with the principles of the research ethics of Masaryk University
and the data collection was approved by the Masaryk University Research
Ethics Committee. The two teachers gave their written consent to the data
collection. All students were informed about the purpose of the study and
the scale of the data collection. All participants were able to withdraw their
consent at any time. All the participants' personal data were anonymized.
We next performed 90-minute interviews with the teachers in the middle
of the spring semester, in April 2021. The first part of the interview was
focused on the teachers' perceptions of the transition from face-to-face to
ERT and their view of online teaching. The aim was to identify: (1) the
challenges the teachers faced with the sudden transition; (2) teachers' views
of the role of active student participation in online lessons; and (3) what the
teachers considered effective strategies in bolstering student participation in
online lessons. The second part of the interview was a self-reflection of the
teachers' practices based on the recorded lessons. The teachers were shown
short excerpts from their lessons consisting of both highly interactive
moments with extended IRF structures and moments showing student
unresponsiveness and short question and answer sequences. The aim was to
see how the teachers perceived their actual practices in relation to their aims
for active student participation.
2.5 Data analysis
The first step of the data analysis consisted of analyzing the interviews with
inductive open coding identifying codes related to the categories of active
student participation in the classroom, online teaching, and teaching practices
aimed at maintaining active student participation — comparing and contrasting
the teachers' views on the three topics. Then, we analyzed the lesson
recordings, focusing on teaching practices and the resulting student
participation — we tried to identify how the teachers' practices related to active
student participation in their lessons. We transcribed the video recordings of
the lessons verbatim and edited them to distinguish the individual turns and
their speakers to prepare the data for a subtle qualitative analysis. We followed
16 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
the methods of linguistic ethnography (Maybin & Tusting, 2011) aiming
toward a description of social practices in specific contexts through a detailed
analysis of the use of language. All transcripts were subjected to a line-by-line
micro-analysis (Lefstein & Snell, 2014). We studied the video-recorded data
to see how and under what conditions students actively participated and
compared this material to the situations when students did not participate
even if they were invited by the teachers. Next, we synthesi2ed the results
from the interviews with the observed teaching practices — linking teachers'
perceptions of online teaching with their practices.
Afterward, we performed a series of quantitative analyses aiming at
objectively assessing active student participation in the teachers' lessons.
First, we calculated the basic metrics of student engagement — specifically,
how many students talked at least once in a given lesson — and the duration
of both student talk and teacher talk in the individual lessons. We measured
student and teacher talk as every utterance related to teaching/learning —
not including talk related to organizational issues — in seconds. We included
both absolute durations of student and teacher talk in each lesson as well as
relative durations by calculating percentages of student and teacher talk
relative to all measured utterances in a given lesson. We then coded discourse
moves as outlined by Hardman (2016), adding no answer as an additional
response category (see Appendix I in Hardman (2016) for detailed descriptions
of each conversation move). Each utterance was therefore classified as either
initiation (further divided into open, closed, check, and student question), response
(further divided into brief, elaborate, and no answer), orfollow-up (further divided
into acknowledge,praise, negate, comment, probe, and uptake). Next, we calculated
both absolute and relative occurrences of the discourse moves by lessons and
teachers. The absolute occurrence of a discourse move refers to the number
of times a given discourse move occurred in a lesson. The relative occurrence
of a discourse move refers to the percentage of a given discourse move
occurring in a lesson. Finally, we visualized the interaction patterns in the
individual lessons as social networks consisting of actors (teacher and students)
and links between the actors (discourse moves in a given lesson) in a ggraph
(Pedersen, 2021). The visualization of the interactions as social networks
makes it possible to see which students engaged in interactions with whom
and intuitively shows which actors the interaction was centered around.
Since the teachers took part in most interactions, we used a star layout placing
the teacher in the center and the students equidistant around the teacher.
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 17
3. Results
The result section is organized as follows: first, we employed the results from
the interviews with the teachers to show how our teachers' views on active
student participation in the classroom matched, how they differed in their
views of online teaching, and how differently they approached teaching
in online settings; second, we employed the results from the analysis of the
lesson recordings to point out how our teachers' specific practices related to
student participation in their lessons; and third, we employed the results from
the quantitative analyses to show how the active student participation in our
teachers' lessons differed.
3.1 Teacher views on active studentparticipation, online teaching,
and teachingpractices in online settings
We utilized the data from the interviews to discuss how the teachers perceived
active student participation and to identify differences in teacher perceptions
of how online teaching should look, aiming to explain how their differing
perceptions influenced their teaching practices and led to their (in)ability to
maintain active student participation.
Both teachers seemed to value interaction and active student participation
as an organic component of their established teaching strategy. For Cora, it is
essential to let students discuss the topics raised in the lessons. She teaches
education to master's degree students and she wants them to build the
competency to practically deal with issues once they start their teaching careers:
It is not enough when they understand the content. I need them to take
a step forward to incorporate it. To link it with their own thinking and
experiences. ... Therefore, I try to give them space to let them reflect
on the content during the lesson. (Cora)
Furthermore, Cora expressed her intention to maintain student multivoicedness
(Mortimer, 1998) by not acting as a single authority providing the right answers
and by letting the students engage in discussion with others with contrasting
views:
With some topics, I let them (students) challenge others' opinions and
my opinions too. If I consider it enriching for the class, I want everyone
to figure out their right answers, share them with others, and make
everyone think about each others' answers. (Cora)
Ben teaches literature to master's degree students and focused his seminar
on interpreting selected stage plays. Before the lesson, all the students read
the assigned play and wrote a reading journal about it. The lesson was intended
to let students share and discuss their interpretations to grasp the piece more
deeply:
18 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
I usually have an idea what they want to talk about, as they have written
about it. So I follow up with some questions or introduce some theme
and invite them to express their thoughts. ... Actually, a major part of
the lesson, I am trying to be just a moderator of the discussion. (Ben)
These statements show that Cora and Ben appreciate the verbal participation
of students and that their instructional concept relies heavily on student
contributions to class discussion. Both teachers are therefore similar in this
regard.
Both Cora and Ben also identified the same barriers as accountable for
reduced active student participation in online settings. Primarily, they noted
the "incompleteness" of the online communication, specifically the absence
or imperfection of the non-verbal side of the matter. This had two important
consequences for the teachers. First, turn taking did not go smoothly — the
students hesitated to raise their voices or, by contrast, to interrupt each other.
Second, being spatially separated, students did not create personal bonds
and a sense of belonging to the group. On that account, they were less willing
to open themselves and share their personal points of view. Altogether,
online communication limited student engagement, according to both teachers.
While both teachers were aware of both the importance of active student
participation and the barriers of online space making interaction more
challenging, the teachers differed in their approaches to overcoming the
identified barriers and stimulating student participation and engagement.
Ben decided to maintain the methods he had formerly used in his face-to-face
teaching in the online setting:
My idea was to replicate the offline lesson, ok? I feel the creative
atmosphere of face-to-face seminars as an ideal and this is my
benchmark. ... Actually, I did not modify my teaching too much when
we moved online. (Ben)
In contrast to Ben, Cora perceived the necessity of transforming her previous
teaching methods:
Shortly after the transition to online, I reali2ed that synchronized
online teaching has to be conducted differently from contact teaching.
Different methods are needed to engage students and make them
work. I learned how to use Padlet, Jamboard, shared documents, etc.
These tools helped to hold student attention and interest and push
them to contribute to share their thoughts within the group. (Cora)
Cora adopted many tools to overcome the barriers that led to decreased
student engagement in smooth turn taking in the online environment.
Using these tools, she often invited students to share their opinions in a
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 19
written form in real time during a lesson and then she started the discussion
from their written contributions.
Cora also cared about belonging and community building in the study
group. She established a "cameras on" rule during the lessons in order to
maintain eye contact and visual signals within the group. Also, she started
every lesson with small talk to create bonds with the students:
It is a group of forty people with whom I spend the whole semester.
They are important for me; I want to see them, and I want to know
their moods to predict how our joint work will be that particular day.
... Sometimes I take a photo of the screen with their faces and share
the photo with them, sometimes I encourage them to wave to each
other. It is kind of childish, but they enjoy it. This creates the feeling
of community. (Cora)
By contrast, Ben not only did not adopt any of the new specific tools applicable
online, he even restricted the repertoire possible to be implemented within
Microsoft Teams. Most importantly, he did not insist on switching cameras
on during the lessons. Due to this, only a few students were visible for him.
Also, in contrast to Cora, he did not call on students by name. Instead of this,
he preserved the same mechanisms for student engagement that he used to
apply in face-to-face seminars:
I don't insist on anyone having their camera on and I don't insist on
specific people speaking, because it's the people who will then stop
joining the online lesson and will start making insane excuses instead.
Or they will suddenly start having technical issues and will log out.
(Ben) '
From Ben's comment, it is apparent that he does not see the online space as
enabling student talk, but rather as a space allowing students to avoid talking.
This mirrors Ben's view of online teaching as a substitute for face-to-face
teaching, but with reduced opportunities for active student participation.
Ben awarded student verbal participation with points included in their
final evaluation in the course. He kept this evaluation method in online
teaching during the ERT and he often reminded the students of this fact.
Furthermore, before the transition to ERT, during face-to-face seminars,
he used spatial proximity and silence as a way to push students to contribute.
After asking question, he would neither repeat nor rephrase the question, but
remain silent and physically come closer to his students. He believed this
created an awkward situation where someone would eventually start interacting
with him. Physically approaching the students was unfeasible in the online
environment, but Ben still continued to use silence as a part of his interactive
approach:
20 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
Awkward silences are part of my pedagogical repertoire. I do it
consciously and it is based on my personal experience. I think it makes
the student say something to end the silence. (Ben)
There are two apparent differences between the two teachers concerning
their view of online teaching. First, Cora was working hard to find new tools
for online teaching, while Ben tried to replicate his usual teaching in an online
setting. Second, Cora strove to keep interaction with the students as personal
as possible, while Ben did not. The data from their interviews indicate that
both teachers were aware of their outcomes. Cora was satisfied with the
interaction; Ben was frustrated and expressed strong discomfort with online
teaching:
My interaction with students during distant teaching was good quality
For me, the ideal lesson is still the contact lesson. On the other
hand, I can imagine that I will integrate some remote online elements
into my regular teaching, because it is effective and saves time. (Cora)
I did not succeed in activating the silent majority. ... The expectation
that we can deliver the same objectives as we can in contact teaching
is just make-believe. ... It is kind of a futile effort. (Ben)
These statements reveal that Cora coped with the abrupt change and even
capitalized on the situation for her professional development as a teacher.
By contrast, Ben did not see any professional enrichment.
The interviews with the teachers reveal that while both teachers valued
active student participation and both teachers were aware of the barriers
online teaching can pose to promoting active student engagement, the
difference came with their approach to the transition and teaching in ERT.
While Cora started perceiving online teaching as a practice requiring
different approaches, Ben perceived online teaching only as a substitute for
face-to-face teaching, complaining of its limitations, but not changing
anything from what he was used to doing in a face-to-face mode. We argue
that these different perceptions resulted in our two teachers employing
different teaching strategies.
3.2'Linkingteachers' views of online teaching with theirpractices
Building on the interviews revealing teachers' differing views of teaching
during ERT, we utilized the data from the recorded lessons to identify
differences in teachers' practices, aiming to explain what determined their
(in)ability to maintain active student participation. We provide excerpts from
both teachers' lessons illustrating distinctive exchanges. We discuss the
excerpts in connection with practices related to interaction in the classroom
in general and in connection with practices specific for online teaching.
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 21
We start with an excerpt from Cora's lesson for future educators aimed at
discussing the viability of differentiated assessment based on student learning
needs. Prior to this part of the lesson, several students had proposed that
students should be assessed differently based on their career aspirations and
interests.
1. Cora (teacher): You are now talking about a differentiated approach to student
assessment. Is there anyone who thinks it's not fair? That someone gets the same marks
for less work? There're usually some people who think it's not fair. Anyone want to
bring it up?
2. Lea (student): {starts talking spontaneously Well, I just want to say that if a teacher is
willing to do that, I really admire that, because at my school, nobody cared about
anything like a differentiated approach to assessment. We had a young, inexperienced
biology teacher — she wanted all of us to write seminar theses, even though most of us
were not aiming for biology A-Levels. She really had this feeling like she needed all of
us to do some extra work. And I must say her approach was absolutely mad and if
anyone considers student interests and career aspirations, it's great, and we should do
the same ourselves.
3. Cora (teacher): Right, you've mentioned two issues here — first, you know, she
could've had good intentions there. I mean, if she's young, she might not have been
aware of the consequences of such an approach. Then, you agreed with the guys before,
that differentiated instruction is an ideal you should aim for.
4. Paul (student): {pushes the raise hand button}
5. Cora (teacher): I'm gonna pass this to someone else — Paul, you have the floor.
6. Paul (student): Well, I'd like to react to Lea. I also have my own experience — similar
to Lea's. The assessment was all very strict and everyone needed to know the same
things. Considering differentiated assessment, though, I can't really agree with that if
we are talking about academic high schools. I mean, they (students) should have very
strong general knowledge, not only specialized knowledge.
7. Cora (teacher): Paul, you are raising the problematic issue of finding a balance
between providing specialized and general knowledge at schools. Is that what you had
in mind?
8. Paul (student): Yes, that's the thing — where we should draw the line between what
everyone should know and what we should require only from some.
9. {many studentspush the raise hand button}
10. Cora (teacher): Right... I see Ann, Susan, John, and Alatthew want to react — you
will all get the floor. Let me just first ask everyone — how would you respond to Paul
concerning the line between specialized and general knowledge, and how should it be
reflected in student assessments?
Cora started this interaction by posing an open question referring to her students' own
experiences, which are thus taken as a legitimate entrance to discussion (line 1).
Immediately, student Lea contributed with a long utterance in which she appreciated
the discussed differentiated approach to student assessment and at the same time gave
a negative example of a past teacher who used a non-differentiated approach and had
a very high level of expectation from all her students (line 2). Cora did not evaluate
Lea's contribution. Instead, she highlighted the main themes (line 3) and gave the floor
to another student — Paul (line 5). Paul responded to Lea with disagreement. He
commented that in academic high schools all students have to be expected to meet high
academic standards (line 6). Cora again did not evaluate the student's contribution;
22 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
instead, she highlighted the main point and made sure she followed the student's
argument (line 7). Many students then wanted to enter the discussion (line 9) and Cora
made use of Paul's argument as a starting point for another round of student utterances
— engaging the students themselves to answer the raised question, instead of simply
providing the answer herself (line 10).
It is apparent from the excerpt that the students were willing to enter the
discussion; they were confident enough to express their personal positions
and supported them with examples. The student utterances were elaborate
and long. Moreover, students reacted to each other; multivoicedness was
present in the class, with many students presenting differing stands and views
(Mortimer, 1998), and the class talk was exploratory (Barnes & Todd, 1978),
as the students worked together to construct new knowledge. In this lesson,
almost all the students had their cameras on, allowing Cora to call on each
person by name and to maintain a personal approach.
Cora's lesson continued into a discussion on how future teachers should
communicate with their pupils about expected study outcomes. This excerpt
illustrates Cora's ability to maintain high student engagement utili2ing
Microsoft Whiteboard. During this activity, most student had their cameras
off and everyone was looking at the shared digital whiteboard. Students were
simultaneously asked to write their notes on the whiteboard and probed to
explain their notes and react to others.
1. Lea (student): I think it's important to explain to them (pupils) at the beginning of
each lesson what the lesson is based on, like previous lessons, and what they should
know at the end of the lesson. Kind of put it into context so everyone knows what the
lesson is about, {starts writing on whiteboard)
2. Cora (teacher): Lea, I'll let you finish writing now. What Doris said definitely applies
to all contexts. Also, it's usually a good idea to always give them (pupils) some time to
inquire if anything's not clear to them about that. I am now going to give the floor to
someone else.
3. {several students start writing on the whiteboard)
4. Mike (student): If I may.
5. Cora (teacher): Yes Mike, go on.
6. Mike (student): Well, we should think of communicating the expectations based
on differentiated assessment. I mean if we have pupils and we have different expectations
of them, it makes it harder to communicate that to everyone.
7. (two studentspush the raise hand button}
8. Cora (teacher): Well... Now I see Paul and Susan. Paul, would you mind?
9. Paul (student): What came to my mind is related to what Mike said and what Lea is
writing... I'd like to ask if we actually have time for that. And especially if we do some
differentiated assessment.
Here, Cora did not need students to have cameras on, she — along with the students
(Paul on line 9) — was drawing cues from the contributions on the digital whiteboard.
The whiteboard served as a space for students to share their thoughts with the others
as well as to prepare their reactions. As in the previous excerpt, Cora called on students
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 23
by name (lines 2, 5, 8) and she did not evaluate student contributions but instead
elaborated on them (line 2) or let others provide alternate views (line 8), which led to
multivoicedness in the form of Paul questioning the viability of the previous solutions
(line 9).
From the excerpts of Cora's lesson, it seems that her views of active student
participation and of online teaching — challenging, requiring different
practices than contact teaching, but doable — were aligned with the teaching
practices she employed — making use of cameras to maintain a personal
approach, to see all the students, and to call students by their names; using
software beyond basic videoconferencing tools to enhance interaction; and,
with many students actively participating, bolstering multivoicedness in her
lessons by welcoming students to express differing opinions.
A contrasting excerpt is from Ben's lesson, marked by student silence,
brevity, and teacher restlessness. This excerpt is from a lesson aimed at
discussing the play The Octoroon in relation to melodrama.
1. Ben (teacher): How about positive and negative characters? What do you think their
relation is to melodrama?
2. *siknce*
3. Ben (teacher): You know, when you think about McClosky, what is his motivation
to be such an ass?
4. *siknce*
5. Aaron: Being in charge... Having money...
6. Ben (teacher): Okay, okay... But what about personality-wise? What can we say
about his personality?
7. *siknce*
8. Ben (teacher): In the moral connection... Anyone? C'mon, c'mon!
9. *siknce*
10. Ben (teacher): Does he have any good sides?
11. *silence*
12. Aaron: Well... He's ambitious; I mean, he's like goal oriented. He's like, I'm gonna
do this, I'll get that, because of his reasons...
13. Ben (teacher): (interruptsAaron) What are the reasons?? What are the reasons?? I'm
asking about the reasons...
14. Aaron: Well, he wants to get back at people. Like, he wants revenge.
Like Cora, Ben started the interaction with an open question asking the students what
they thought about the characters depicted in the drama they read (line 1). Unlike in
Cora's lesson, however, the students resisted contributing and stayed mostly silent
(lines 2, 4, 7, 9, 11), even when the teacher strove to reformulate the original question
(lines 3, 6, 8, 10) and emphatically invited students to participate (line 8). The only
student willing to talk was Aaron, who repeatedly attempted to answer (lines 5,12,14).
When giving feedback to Aaron, the teacher did not comment on what the student said.
Instead, he indicated that his question was meant to be answered differently and Aaron's
answers were skewed (lines 6,13). Ben repeatedly invited students to give their opinions,
but the students remained mostly silent. When the student answers did appear, they
were not utilized to create new knowledge.
24 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
The excerpt from Ben's lesson also includes what Ben referred to as an
"awkward silence" (lines 2, 4). Here, Ben remained silent for around
20 seconds after asking a question. While Ben was expecting the question to
lead to elaborate answers, it only led to a brief utterance from Aaron after
reformulating the question. The reason the "awkward silence" did not lead
to the expected outcomes was presumably due to the fact that most students
had their cameras off, did not feel like part of the conversation, and therefore
did not feel the social awkwardness otherwise felt if they had been together
in person in close proximity or if they had their cameras on. Only one person
in this lesson had their camera on — Aaron — who was also the person most
often interacting with Ben. Ben did not call on anyone by name, did not see
anyone apart from Aaron, and never attempted to invite any specific student
into the discussion by explicitly calling on them. As we discussed in the
previous section, this was Ben's conscious decision as he believed that
pressuring students to have their cameras on and calling on them by name
would cause students to stop attending his online lessons.
From the excerpt from Ben's lesson, it seems that his view of online
teaching limited his teaching practices, which then did not match his views
on active student participation — the lessons did not develop into smooth
turn taking and spontaneous interactions allowing the creation of new
knowledge. Ben perceived the online mode of teaching as limiting, a poor
substitute for contact teaching, and, believing that the online mode was only
a substitute, he did not change his approach to teaching. His employed
teaching practices did not bring his desired level of active student participation.
3.3 Measuring active studentparticipation
In the previous section, we indicated some differences in student participation
between the lessons of the two teachers. We now provide quantifiable
measurements of active student participation in our teachers' lessons aiming
to link the two teachers' teaching practices with their success in promoting
active student participation. The quantitative part provides evidence that the
two teachers' lessons differed in the length of student talk as well as in the
number of actively participating students. The quantitative part further breaks
communication in the lessons down into the discourse moves described
by Hardman (2016) and allows for a comparison of the active student
participation between the two teachers' lessons from the point of view of the
initiation moves employed by the teachers, the resulting student response
moves, and the follow-up moves. Finally, the quantitative part shows active
student engagement in the observed lessons in terms of interactions.
The two teachers differ in terms of the output of their efforts to maintain
active student participation. Cora was more successful than Ben both
in activizing a larger number of students and in maintaining higher ratios
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 25
of student talk time. Table 1 shows the verbal engagement rate of the students
in the lessons as well as a breakdown of both teacher and student talk.
The engagement rates in both teachers' lessons were consistent across the
three observations. However, in Ben's lessons, only around a quarter of
students engaged at least once during the lesson; in Cora's lessons, it was half
of the students. In Each lesson, approximately twice as many students engaged
with Cora as with Ben. Similarly, the student talk in Cora's lessons was over
twice as frequent as in Ben's lessons, with an average 25.4% of the time in
Cora's lessons spent on student talk, compared to 11.7% in Ben's lessons.
Table 1
Student engagement and talk
B E N (32 students) lesson 1 lesson 2 lesson 3 average
engaged students 8 (25.0%) 8 (25.0%) 7 (21.9%) 7.67 (24.0%)
teacher talk
80:35 mm
(90.6%)
37:30 min
(84.6%)
47:35 min
(83.4%)
55:13 min
(88.3%)
student talk
8:20 min
(9.4%)
6:50 min
(15.4%)
6:50 min
(12.6%)
7:20 min
(11.7%)
CORA (27 students)
engaged students 13 (48.2%) 14 (51.9%) 16 (59.3%) 14.33 (53.1%)
teacher talk
60:15 min
(78.5%)
56:35 min
(61.4%)
74:00 mm
(85.1%)
63:37 min
(74.6%)
student talk
16:30 min
(21.5%)
35:35 min
(38.6%)
12:55 min
(14.9%)
21:40 mm
(25.4%)
Both teachers provided comparable and ample opportunities for students to
actively participate, yet they greatly differed in the response rates and the
number of students engaging with them. Furthermore, the two teachers greatly
differed in the use of the follow-up moves. Table 2 gives a breakdown of the
discourse moves seen during the observed lessons. Both Ben and Cora
employed comparable numbers and types of initiation moves — predominantly
open questions — however, in Cora's lessons, student questions were more
prevalent. A remarkable difference comes with the response moves. Ben had
34.0% of his questions left with no response, while only 11.1% of Cora's
questions were unanswered. Cora (68.4%) also received elaborate answers more
often than Ben (44.7%). Differences between the two teachers also appear
with the follow-up moves; while Ben most often employed uptakes (30.9%) as
a move following student response, Cora mainly employed comments (50.9%).
Since uptakes — compared to comments — give students opportunity to actively
participate, it becomes even more surprising that Ben had a much lower number
of engaged students and a much lower ratio of student talk than Cora.
26 TOMAS LINTNER, KLARA SEDOVÄ
Table 2
Breakdown ofthe discourse moves
B E N (32 students) lesson 1 lesson 2 lesson 3 average
initiation 36 (25.4%) 5 (13.2%) 8 (18.2%) 16.33 (21.9%)
open 21 (58.3%) 4 (80.0%) 7 (87.5%) 10.67 (65.3%)
closed 6 (16.7%) 0 (0.0%) 1 (12.5%) 2.33 (14.3%)
check 9 (25.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 3.00 (18.4%)
student 0 (0.0%) 1 (20.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0.33 (2.0%)
response 58 (40.9%) 16 (42.1%) 20 (45.5%) 31.33 (42.0%)
no 25 (43.1%) 2 (12.5%) 5 (25.0%) 10.67 (34.0%)
brief 16 (27.6%) 1 (6.3%) 3 (15.0%) 6.67 (21.3%)
elaborate 17 (29.3%) 13 (81.3%) 12 (60.0%) 14.00 (44.7%)
follow-up 48 (33.8%) 17 (44.7%) 16 (36.4%) 27.00 (36.2%)
acknowledge 7 (14.6%) 2 (11.8%) 2 (12.5%) 3.67 (13.6%)
praise 2 (4.2%) 2 (11.8%) 0 (0.0%) 1.33 (4.9%)
negate 1 (2.1%) 0 (0.0%) 0 (0.0%) 0.33 (1.2%)
comment 14 (29.2%) 2 (11.8%) 6 (37.5%) 7.33 (27.2%)
probe 12 (25.0%) 4 (23.5%) 2 (12.5%) 6.00 (22.2%)
uptake 12 (25.0%) 7 (41.2%) 6 (37.5%) 8.33 (30.9%)
CORA (27 students)
initiation 20 (22.7%) 11 (10.8%) 16 (17.4%) 15.67 (16.7%)
open 11 (55.0%) 6 (54.6%) 8 (50.0%) 8.33 (53.2%)
closed 4 (20.0%) 0 (0.0%) 3 (18.6%) 2.33 (14.9%)
check 3 (15.0%) 3 (27.3%) 0 (0.0%) 2.00 (12.8%)
student 2 (10.0%) 2 (18.2%) 5 (31.6%) 3.00 (19.2%)
response 37 (42.1%) 43 (42.7%) 37 (40.2%) 39.00 (41.5%)
no 6 (16.2%) 4 (9.3%) 3 (8.1%) 4.33 (11.1%)
brief 8 (21.6%) 5 (11.6%) 11 (29.7%) 8.00 (20.5%)
elaborate 23 (62.2%) 34 (79.1%) 23 (62.2%) 26.67 (68.4%)
follow-up 31 (35.2%) 48 (47.1%) 39 (42.4%) 39.33 (41.8%)
acknowledge 5 (16.1%) 0 (0.0%) 5 (12.8%) 3.33 (8.5%)
praise 2 (6.5%) 0 (0.0%) 1 (2.6%) 1.00 (2.5%)
negate 1 (3.2%) 0 (0.0%) 1 (2.6%) 0.67 (1.7%)
comment 16 (51.6%) 27 (56.3%) 17 (43.6%) 20.00 (50.9%)
probe 4 (12.9%) 15 (31.3%) 7 (18.0%) 8.67 (22.0%)
uptake 3 (9.7%) 6 (12.5%) 8 (20.5%) 5.67 (14.4%)
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 27
The lessons of our two teachers also differed in the ways interaction took
place — while Ben's lessons were heavily teacher-centered with student
participation taking place mostly with exchanges between Ben and his
students, Cora managed to move toward a student-centered instruction
model with student participation taking place also with exchanges between
the students. To put the active student participation into the context of who
interacted with whom, we visuali2e the interaction patterns in the lessons
in the form of social networks (Figure 1). During Ben's first two lessons,
all communication was teacher-centered, with communication going from
teacher to students and back. In Ben's third lesson, a spontaneous interaction
between four students appeared; however, most of the interaction was still
teacher—student and student—teacher. Student—student interactions were
present in all three of Cora's observed lessons; it was most prevalent during
the second lesson, when eleven students were engaged in some form of
student—student interaction.
The quantitative part of the study shows several striking differences in
active student participation between the lessons of our two teachers. First,
it shows that even comparable invitations for students to actively participate
may result in dramatically different student engagement. Both teachers
provided predominantly open questions, yet the results differed. Twice as
many students verbally engaged during a lesson at least once in Cora's
lessons compared to Ben's lessons. Furthermore, on average, the student talk
in Cora's lessons covered twice as much time as in Ben's lessons. Despite
Ben employing more uptakes than Cora — in theory, this should have led to
higher student participation as it explicitly gives students space to enter the
discussion — it did not have the desired effect. This elaborates what we saw
in the lesson excerpts — Ben posed many open questions and he used uptakes
and probes when he received answers; however, the students were mostly not
receptive, lessons were often filled with silences, and only a small number of
students were willing to enter the discussions. The data show that the two
teachers also differed in the occurrence of student—student interaction despite
providing quantitatively equal opportunities for students to actively participate.
This resulted in Ben's failure to achieve his idea of the ideal lesson in which
he would be only a moderator of the discussion, while knowledge would be
constructed by the students spontaneously engaged in discussions with each
other.
28 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
Ben's course
lesson 1 lesson 2 lesson 3
Cora's course
lesson 1 lesson 2 lesson 3
0 60 10
Figure 1
Interactionpatterns
Discussion and conclusion
Our study shows that even if a teacher has rich teaching experience, provides
ample opportunities for students to participate, and, apart from having no
experience with online teaching, possesses all the necessary knowledge and
awareness of how to have discussion-rich lessons, it does not mean that the
teacher will be able to maintain active student participation in the online
mode during ERT. We illustrate this with the cases of two teachers — Cora
and Ben — differing in their ability to create online lessons with active student
participation. We show that both Cora and Ben had the necessary knowledge
of the importance of active student participation, and we show that active
student participation in their lessons was a priority for both teachers, as they
considered it essential for an effective teaching process. Both teachers also
perceived ERT conditions as challenging. However, while Cora saw the
necessity to alter her teaching practices in the online mode, Ben saw online
teaching only as a deficient substitute for face-to-face teaching, and was
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 29
unwilling to change any practices from what he was used to in the face-toface
mode. Our two teachers' views of online teaching reflect the wider
functionalist-authenticator spectrum of teachers outlined by Seďová et al.
(2021), with Cora falling into the functionalist and Ben falling into the
authenticator side of the spectrum. The two differing views of online teaching
influenced our two teachers' practices: Cora decided to change her pedagogical
approach and saw the transition as an opportunity for professional development;
Ben decided not to change anything, saw online teaching only as a substitute
for face-to-face teaching, and considered the idea of online teaching serving
as a substitute for contact teaching to be futile. Cora adopted the use of new
online learning tools beyond the required Microsoft Teams; by asking the
students to have their cameras on and taking pictures of the group, she
simulated a face-to-face environment and built a sense of community among
the students; by calling on students by name, she tried to keep interaction
with her students personal. Ben did not make use of even the most basic tools
available — e.g., the cameras — and employed methods that might work in
contact teaching but are uncertain in an online setting (such as the awkward
silences). The resulting active student participation in the lessons of our two
teachers then differed dramatically, with Cora being successful in activizing
twice as many students, maintaining twice as high ratios of student talk time,
and stimulating student—student interactions much more often than Ben.
Our results concerning teachers' views of online teaching during ERT
mirror previous research. Analogously to the statements of the teachers
included in the studies by Ferri et al. (2020), Le and Truong (2021), Petillion
and McNeil (2020), Shim and Lee (2020), Thurab-Nkhosi et al. (2021) and
Walker and Koralesky (2021), both of our teachers perceived student
engagement and interaction with students to be more challenging in the
online mode than in contact teaching. Also, in accordance with the statements
of the teachers included in the study by Mishra et al. (2020), one of the biggest
challenges in online teaching for our two teachers was the inability to read
student faces. Our results therefore support the condition extensively reported
in the previous literature — during the mass transition to online teaching,
teachers mostly perceived the online mode as challenging and feared that the
online mode would be detrimental to active student participation.
On the other hand, our results concerning the degree of active student
participation in university lessons stand in contrast to previous findings.
While Borte et al. (2020) reported university lessons to be mostly teachercentered
with little space for student active learning and engagement, we found
that both of our teachers provided ample opportunities for students to actively
participate, with both teachers posing large numbers of open questions to
students in each of the observed lessons. Similarly to Borte et al. (2020),
Hardman (2016) found university lessons to be dominated by teacher closed
30 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
questions, student short answers, and teacher acknowledgements. However,
we found both of our teachers posing mainly open questions, students reacting
mostly with elaborate answers, and teachers following up with discourse
moves (uptakes, probes, and comments) trying to expand the ongoing
discussion. The difference between our teachers and teachers from the studies
by Borte et al. (2020) and Hardman (2016) may be the result of both of our
teachers having robust knowledge of the importance of active student
participation and their strong willingness to make their lessons open to active
student participation.
While both of our teachers provided ample opportunities for their
students to actively engage — both teachers posed many and mainly open
questions — Cora was much more successful in activizing her students than
Ben was. This suggests that the key guidelines for teachers on how to provide
lessons with active student participation (e.g., Fischer and Hanze, in press)
based on actively posing questions and incorporating student contributions
into teaching may not be sufficient. Quite the opposite: while actively posing
questions and incorporating student contributions into teaching are necessary
prerequisites for active student participation, our findings suggest that,
in the context of online teaching, further teaching practices are necessary
to maintain active student participation.
Our study therefore has several implications for educators seeking to have
students actively participating in their online lessons. To maintain active
student participation, it is useful to promote multivoicedness by incorporating
contrasting student views into discussions. Furthermore, it is important to
maintain interactions with students that are as personal as possible, e.g., by
calling on students by name or by incorporating activities aimed at building
a sense of community among the students. However, maintaining personal
interaction is difficult when the students' cameras are off. We therefore suggest
that teachers aiming to have interactive online lessons ask their students
to have their cameras on, which also makes it possible to read students'
non-verbal cues, an issue mentioned by both of our teachers. We also find
the use of teaching tools beyond the videoconferencing tools to be useful
in promoting active student participation.
Our findings further imply that asking teachers to simply shift contact lessons
into an online space — a prevalent approach during the COVID pandemic —
does not automatically result in teachers having the same effectiveness
in delivering interactive lessons as they may have had in contact teaching.
We therefore suggest abandoning the idea of online teaching serving as a
substitute for contact teaching. Instead, universities forced to transition into an
online mode should perceive online and contact teaching as two distinct entities
requiring different teaching practices to achieve the same outcomes, and this
view should be shared by the teachers. It is natural that when people find
AIMING FOR ACTIVE STUDENT PARTICIPATION IN ONLINE UNIVERSITY LESSONS 31
themselves in situations they had not experienced before, they transfer practices
from situations they are familiar with. However, the notion of online teaching
being a substitute for on-site teaching was detrimental to active student
participation in Ben's lessons. Ben relied on practices he employed during contact
teaching, and this limited his ability to create lessons with active student
participation as oftentimes these practices were just not effective in online setting.
While our study is based around the ERT during the COVID pandemic,
the findings of our study are relevant for any situation in which educators
need to shift their teaching into online mode. It is unclear what higher
education will look like once the pandemic is over, but with online teaching
on the rise even before the pandemic, it is plausible to say that online teaching
will continue to play a substantial part. Many teachers' perceptions of online
teaching will fall close to those of Ben. Understanding how teacher perceptions
influence their teaching practices and ultimately affect active student
participation in their lessons will therefore be crucial to ensure quality
university education in the future.
Our study is limited in its design — a case study with a sample of two
teachers. While we attempt to grasp the problems of active student participation
in synchronous ERT at a university from two contrasting viewpoints and
suggest what may or may not lead to the desired online active student
participation, we cannot generali2e. Also, while we link teachers' attitudes
toward the online teaching during ERT to the active student participation
in their lessons, we do not know how to change teacher attitudes to potentially
influence pedagogical outcomes during ERT. Further research would therefore
benefit from studies investigating synchronous online interaction on a large
scale and from studies investigating how teachers' negative perceptions of
online teaching can be changed to influence their teaching practices.
Acknowledgements
Preliminary results of this study were presented at The Future of Education
2021 conference (https://doi.org/10.26352/F701_2384-9509) and at ECER
2022 conference (https://eera-ecer.de/ecer-2022-yerevan).
Funding
This work was supported was supported by the Internal Grant Agency of
Masaryk University under Grant MUNI/IGA/1350/2020 and by the NPO
"Systemic Risk Institute" number LX22NPO5101, funded by European
Union — Next Generation E U (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports,
NPO: EXCELES).
32 TOMÁŠ LINTNER, KLÁRA ŠEĎOVÁ
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