Students' Perceptions of Interactions from Instructor Presence, Cognitive Presence, and Social Presence in Online Lessons

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns across the globe, many English Language Teaching (ELT) practitioners swiftly switched to teaching fully online. This paper explores students’ perceptions of the durations and types of interactions in online synchronous lessons that focus on teaching technical oral presentation and report writing skills, as well as the benefits and challenges that students experience. The data were collected from a group of 18 Computing Engineering students who completed a post-course survey approximately 3 weeks after the course completion. The results of this study reinforce the importance of instructor, cognitive, and social presences in an online learning community. Despite the challenges that students may encounter in online lessons, students still find online education beneficial if instructors support students before, during, and after lessons, and are able to use technologies to effectively scaffold materials with adequate instructorstudent and student-student interactions to engage students in learning.

Keywords

• online lessons
• student engagement
• teacher presence
• social presence
• cognitive presence