Week 4 9-

13 Sept. 2024

Ways of Making Online Teaching More Successful:

An Autoethnographic Study

By : Dat Bao

A. Introduction: The Rise of Online Learning

Online learning has been increasing rapidly. During the pandemic alone, 1.37
billion students and 60 million teachers moved from the classroom to the computer
screen (UNESCO, 2020). Ever since, online learning platforms have been reported to
rise consistently (Cooke, 2022). Unlike many animals that can migrate across enormous
distances innately without a compass, humans need to be taught to do so. Yet, not
everyone has the skills ready for the task. The sudden change has seriously troubled the
nature of interaction, collaboration, access to instruction, and the whole social
environment. If online education was a choice before the pandemic, that is not quite the
case anymore. When classes do not physically meet on a routine basis, there emerges
unpredictable delays in student learning, a constant sense of quietness, that may not be
easily interpreted. The article addresses this realistic concern by unpacking what has
been happening at an Australian university when students do not seem to engage
sufficiently during their course of study in a TESOL program.

Scope of the article

Drawn extensively from the research discourse on the occurrence and
absence of learner participation together with the author’s observation and self
reflection, the article outlines how poor engagement and repetitive boredom pervades
the digital educational environment. The work falls into two sections. The first section
explains why such problem occurs due to some inherent undesirable features of virtual
learning settings. The second section shares the author’s experiences in coping with
those features by offering a range of strategies and activities that teachers can try and
draw lessons from their own context.

B. Methodology
The study employs the autoethnographic approach to research, which combines
autobiography and ethnography. It involves the researcher reflecting on their personal
experiences, observations, and cultural context to understand a particular phenomenon
or culture. In this type of study, the researcher becomes a participant-observer, using
their own experiences as a primary source of data (Chang, 2008). Autoethnography
aims to provide insights into individual experiences while also shedding light on
broader social, cultural, or political aspects. The approach has been employed across
many disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, education, and cultural studies.
Denzin (2013) highlights the importance of reflexivity and subjectivity in conducting
autoethnographic research. Reed-Danahay (2011) advocates the intersection of
autoethnography and personal narratives, emphasising how autoethnography can
contribute to rewriting our understanding of the self and society. The procedure for this
study, which is inspired by ideas from Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2011), follows four
distinctive steps as explained below:
• Defining the concern, in this case challenges to online pedagogy and learning,
and the need to explore it through a self-reflective approach
• Engaging in introspection through self-reflect on your personal experiences,
knowledge, conceptualisation and ways of responding to many difficulties in
student learning
 • Gathering data through field notes (that is, working journal), student feedback,
informal conversation with both colleagues and students.
• Analysing the data, which includes searching for patterns, themes, and
connections between experiences and broader educational phenomena.
Through coding, thematic analysis, and narrative analysis, data are organised to
derive meaning and insights.

1. Research participants
The participants of this project cannot be easily defined because they are
teacher and student individuals whom the author have encountered on numerous
occasions during the past sixteen years of teaching and research at an Australian
university. The data in the study are the most updated body of information, simply
because sixteen years ago, online education was less trendy than it is today,
especially after the global pandemic has struck the industry to the extent that has
dramatically reshaped the landscape of education.

2. Data collection method

Tools for data gathering include mainly the researcher's work journal, student
feedback in the institutional system, and informal conversations with colleagues in
the same university. No audio or video recording was made and there was no
formal interviews with participants. All data were gathered to serve the author’s
reflective practice towards teaching improvement only. It was not until the recent
time that the author makes the decision to write up what he has learned over the
year. In other words, this project was not designed as a systematic project to begin
with but only take shape as a study for the purpose to sharing ideas in this article.

C. Data and Findings from Teacher and Student Voices

Data have been gathered over an extended period of over a decade from the
author’s field notes, colleagues’ thoughts, and student feedback. The researcher’s
fieldnotes based on conversations with colleagues reflect the challenge of coping with
online communication among many TESOL lecturers. Together, data reveal low-
frequency communication between students and lecturers, the lack of social touch
during every lesson in the virtual space, technology-related difficulties, and the
challenge in keeping track of students’ learning progress. Below are some typical
reflections from colleagues in the same program as documented from informal
interviews:

I cannot see what my students are working on. There is no way to tell if they are satisfied,
upset, confused, or diligent. I can only send messages, announcements, and suggestions on
the forum space, but when there is no response, I keep wondering what is going wrong.
I try to be cheerful during virtual lessons by occasionally telling personal anecdotes or
cracking a joke, but no one laughs or says much. I don't get to see facial expressions as my
students tend to show profile images of pets or flowers while most of them keep silent.
Tutorials become lectures, and jokes become dry. I wish I knew how to manage these
problems.
Sometimes, I find myself saying hopeless things that I normally would not say in a real
classroom, such as: Can you hear me? Excuse me, your microphone is mute. Oh, your
voice is breaking up. I’m afraid my network is not functioning. Mike, are you there? What
is that noise, somebody please mute your mic for a sec? Sorry, my break-out function
doesn’t work.
I think we have done quite a good job of going online. I try to keep my lecture to
maximum one hour with a break in the middle so that my students won’t feel tired.
However, it is hard to follow student progress when I don’t hear from them and don’t meet
them in person in the classroom.
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 In per-semester feedback at the university where the researcher works, students often
request more face-to-face classes after they experience emotional disengagement and
social miscommunication in online settings. Informal conversations with students
demonstrate several noteworthy scenarios which reveal what many students do and how
they feel when lecturers do not hear from them. This body of data reveals the limitation of
social rapport, the dullness of the self-study process, the pressure from lonely performance
of academic assignment tasks, and the discontinuity of vereyday learning engagement.
Below are students’ most representative reflections from coursework feedback and
informal conversations with the author:
I try to call, message, and video-chat with my friends when I cannot see them, and part of
the discussion is about how to cope with learning difficulties. It is hard to be disconnected
from your social circle.
Staying home is good too, as I can attend to my hobbies. But I no longer have the
excitement of going to school, move around, eat, laugh and network with people.
My learning world now has only one focus: assignment. Every morning, I wake up,
shower, get dressed, and go back to my room for assignments. Studying online feels like
constant homework. My productivity is not diverse anymore, so I easily get bored, tired,
and lose curiosity.
The best moment of online classes is when I show up early on Zoom and chat with my
classmates. But when the teacher shows up, the climate becomes tedious and unexciting. I
sometimes disable my camera and microphone to step out of the house and breathe fresh
air.

The actual bodies of data is infact far larger than what is presented above. They
have assembled and processed through thematic coding and analysis. Below are the
findings that arrived from such a process. They cover problematic areas of virtual
teaching and learning namely the absence of non- verbal cues, latency in student
response and participation, the pressure on teachers to perform multiple new roles, and
digital boredom.

D. Discussion of Findings: Some Unattractive Characteristics of Online Learning

Data from this project reveal some inherent conditions of online learning that are
likely to diminish learner engagement. An extended body of literature indicates that
online education is more physically isolating and resisant to interaction, engagement,
and bonding (Dyrud, 2000; Angelino, Williams & Natvig, 2007; Glazier, 2016). The
discourse also highlights that e-learning seems easier for independent learners with a
strong sense of self-efficacy who know how to manage their responsibilities (Diaz &
Cartnal, 1999; Blocher et al., 2002; Bell & Akroyd, 2006; Ryan & Deci, 2017).
Let us look at a few features that make e-learning more demanding than
conventional classrooms. Containing many challenges, however, does not necessarily
mean low effectiveness but simply implies that digital education requires different skills
from face-to-face education. As far as efficacy is concerned, research shows that both
modes of learning can reach equally ideal outcomes (Robertson, Grant & Jackson, 2005;
Maki & Maki, 2007). Although the literature has identified a wide range of benefits of
e-learning such as increasing access to education and expanding students’ global
experiences, among many others (Bell & Federman, 2013; Dixson, 2015), researchers
can hardly find any evidence to suggest that online learning enhances verbal
participation. Instead, digital learning is known for triggering a lack of speech. In this
regard, there are at least four areas of challenge that frequently provokes silence. They
include the absence of non-verbal cues, the inherent delay in student participation, the
pressure on teachers to perform multiple new roles, and the occurrence of digital
boredom.
The absence of non-verbal cues
From the researcher’s observation, body language on the screen does not work in
the same way as in real life. In the physical world, someone being stared at for a few
seconds will notice and attend to what is going on. In a virtual class, however, someone
being intensely observed for an hour would have absolutely no idea. Such obscurity of
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 non-verbal cues prevents teachers from recognising nuances of student behaviour such
as levels of interest or boredom. One cannot tell if students are taking notes or simply
listening. Posture, eye contact, and facial expression are not easy to read. Disenabled
cameras and muted microphones make it impossible to notice student attention.
Many subtle gestures that enrich communication now vanish: a giggle of
amusement, a throat-clearing sound for attention, a humming tone for a speaking turn,
hand clapping for support, or a marvelling ‘wow’ to show surprise. Other sounds
associated with the human mood are also absent: the rustling sound of turned pages, a
marker running on the whiteboard, a breeze blowing through the open window
signalling pleasant weather. All these problems contribute to what Mico-Wentworth
(2014) refers to as a ‘lack of presence’ (p. 3). The gathering of people in a virtual room
often looks like a GIF image with only basic animations. Some students take advantage
of this feature to get out of fully attending the class. I had a student who used a
screenshot of him sitting in front of the screen listening attentively to my lecture as his
profile image. Not until I called on him to answer a question did I realise I was merely
communicating with a portrait while the real person was elsewhere, probably eating
breakfast or watching a movie.
Online communication is also subject to less intimacy. The teacher cannot walk
around and exhibit personal chemistry. Dramatic improvisation seems hard to achieve.
For example, students cannot exchange looks of mutual understanding or
bewilderment; they can neither whisper private, playful thoughts to adjacent peers nor
celebrate awesome ideas with a cool high five. I have seen some of the most humorous
teachers make the most hilarious puns during a virtual class, yet nobody seemed to
laugh, except one or two who gave a faint smile or smirk. When all bodily cues
disappear, the social atmosphere is stamped with a plainness that one must learn to
accept and get used to.
Without physical expressions, the interpretation of online silence becomes so
difficult that some teachers cannot help developing a negative impression about it.
Because of this, online silence is often internalised by teachers as poor engagement,
lack of personal connection (Mico-Wentworth, 2014), and a cause of misunderstanding
(Agyekum, 2002; Betts, 2009). According to social pres- ence theory, online
communication has a depersonalising nature whereby ndividuals struggle to build
personal relationships with each other (Dania and Griffin, 2021). This hypothesis,
however, does not have to be true in all kinds of digital education but is conditional
according to contexts and teaching abilities.
In practice, both support and disapproval towards online education continue to
exist side by side. While some scholars perceive computer-mediated communication as
inferior to face-to-face communication (Walther, 2011; Keller, 2013), others point out
the benefits of virtual settings as supporting conventional classes (Furlich, 2013); a
catalyst for further education research (Betts, 2011); a way of renewing social presence
(Turner, 2011; Walther, 2011); increased connection (Gautreau, 2012); and a tool for
learning absorption, reflection, and respect (Fivush, 2010), among others. Along this
line, Zembylas and Vrasidas (2007), who research different meanings of online silence,
discover that not all instances of silence carry an undesirable connotation. There are, in
every class, students who employ silence strategically, alternating between
participating and observing according to their changing needs. To sum up, a major
difficulty confronting most teachers is the capability to decipher when student silence is
an integral part of task performance and when that is not the case.

Latency in Student Response and Participation

Data allow the researcher to look at responsiveness norms in the TESOL course
of study at his university. Jumping out from the sub-theme during thematic analysis is
the question of how much silent time students in a specific context expect to have when
responding to tasks, such as forum posting or assignment submission. Latency is then
identified as the time students take that stretches beyond such expectations and causes
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 anxiety to the teacher for not knowing why students are so slow. For example, a large-
scale project by Kalman et al. (2007), which explores long response latencies during
email communication, recognises online silence as a violation of the average waiting
norm.
Arguably, the length of waiting in asynchronous discussion is highly context-
dependent, being contingent upon the preparation time needed and on the respective
deadline or the challenge level of every task. Based on such needs, silence can be
reasonable or unreasonable. Zembylas and Vrasidas (2007) through ethnographic
observation point out that silence can be a built-in part of social presence rather than a
lack of it. In synchronous discussion, however, it is noticed that non-participation or a
delay in communication might arise from students’ insecurity or misunderstanding for
not receiving as clear visual clues as they would find in traditional classes (Vonderwell
& Zachariah, 2005). For this reason, if materials originally developed for face-to-face
settings are now placed on virtual platforms, they must be modified to suit the online
dynamics. For example, task requirements must be elaborated in detailed written
instructions for students to read whenever they want. Students must be given time to
develop a strong relationship with learning materials, as recommended by Querol-
Julián and Arteaga-Martínez (2019) through research on student learning needs.

The pressure on teachers to perform multiple new roles

Compared with face-to-face settings, the current online modules taught by the
author have witnessed more learner reliance on the teacher. This is because teaching in
digital space pressurises the instructor to expand their roles, serving not just as a
pedagogist but also as an administrator, a technician, a digital task designer, and a
counsellor. This insight goes well with what has been as drawn from studies of many
e-learning programmes (Bawane & Spector, 2009; Baran & Correia, 2012), a
community leader, and, ideally, an online entertainer. All these responsibilities demand
considerable amounts of extra hours, enthusiasm, thoughts, and management skills. If
some of these roles remain unfulfilled, students might struggle to learn and become
less responsive. One common example of such extended commitment is when the
teacher needs to make a video recording of a lecture. If the lecture is supposed to last an
hour, the recording task with its preparations and rehearsal (including lesson planning,
visual illustrations, and multiple recordings to repair errors) might take several days.
Depending on their individual experience and skills, teacher workload may increase
enormously to facilitate easy learning and to keep student satisfaction from dropping.
Data from the current study show that many teachers suffer from low tolerance of
students’ withdrawal from class participation. By the same token, the relevant
discourse has recorded similar phenomena whereby teachers do not feel satisfied with
the degree of engagement in their virtual classes (Kozar, 2016; Querol-Julián &
Arteaga-Martínez, 2019). In many cases, learner silence does not mean a refusal to
participate but comes from a struggle in trying to cope with course requirements without
timely support. The discourse has documented scenarios where teachers who lack
technological skills and online teaching experience fail to cope with silence in learning
and teaching (Lenkaitis, 2020; Cheung, 2021). McBrien, Cheng, and Jones (2009)
contend that activities displayed on a computer screen are qualitatively different from
physical experiences, demanding different abilities from both teachers and students.

Digital learning boredom

A case study by Cheung (2021) on secondary ESL teachers in Hong Kong shows
that student silence stems from didactic teaching approaches, heavy syllabuses, and
unresolved technological issues. A large-scale study by Derakhshan et al. (2021) of
Iranian Zoom classes reveals student frustration with the poor flow of communication
due to the abrupt transition from face-to-face to digital learning during the pandemic.
Although in some Asian cultures, it is advised that learning must persist in the face of
boredom (Hess & Azuma, 1991), dullness does not have to be accepted as an inherent,
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 natural part of education but can be confronted.
While some students can tolerate monotony and willingly carry on, others switch
off from learning when they experience discomfort in it. A study by Sharp et al. (2019)
of 179 university students in the UK confirms that academic boredom can cause
irritation and depression, in the end damaging motivation, effort, and learning outcome.
While online silence has been acknowledged as reflective practice (Hu, 2021), research
by Derakhshan et al. (2021) and Wang, Derakhshan, and Zhang (2021) indicates that
low engagement in many cases demonstrates learner resistance to unbearable
dreariness.
Low engagement is also caused by the heavily theoretical nature of online
materials and the distracting conditions of students’ at-home environments during
virtual classes. Research by Adedoyin and Soykan (2020) reveals that individual
learning sites with intrusion from housemates, children, or pets can interfere with
student concentration and induce low participation. Dullness also arises from the lack of
authentic dialogue during asynchronous discussions. Many teachers employ a question-
reply pattern that tends to make learning mechanical rather than creating a vibrant
dialogue environment (Anderson, 2004). Because of this, students become more
responsive than proactive, when they are compelled to cope with teacher initiative
rather than learning to think independently and formulate their inquiries.

E. Strategies for Making Online Learning More Engaging

This section presents a range of pedagogy strategies for maximising students’
engagement in online learning.
To minimise negative silence requires replacing it with either productive silence
or participation. Productive silence includes activities such as preparation for
contribution, vicarious learning, reflection, and mental engagement. Participation
includes activities such as gathering resources, reading academic works, sharing
thoughts on discussion forums, engaging in academic dialogue, and responding to peer
postings. The rest of this chapter shares a set of ten strategies drawn from data, namely:
1. making learning content interesting and useful
2. personalised communication
3. clear participation protocols
4. mediation of student workload and participation
5. scaffolding online learning
6. shared responsibilities and distributed roles
7. organising choices
8. diversifying approaches to tasks
9. encouraging student voices
10.collaboration with non-teaching staff
The strategies above are developed from three main sources: suggestions from
students, methods experimented with by researchers, and my observation of innovative
online teaching practice. Below is an explanation of how each strategy can be deployed
to take students out of resistant silence and move them towards productive learning.
Strategy 1 - Making learning content interesting and useful
One way to bring enjoyment is by focusing on quality rather than quantity.
Some lecturers provide students with extensive theoretical content without
allowing them time and space to digest it through reading engagement, reflection,
applying, and preparing for in-depth discussions. Empirical evidence supports the
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 excessive, the latter will drop. When course materials seem cumbersome, students
not only panic but also withdraw from participation. Those who are subject to
overloading content easily lose learning interest.
One typical example of uninspiring transmission of knowledge would be the
use of PowerPoint slides with masses of text to be read out loud by the teacher.
Many students find this delivery approach pointless as it neglects both cognitive
processing and emotional engagement. Among ways of remedying such boredom
are the use of functional visuals to represent words, colourful words for
emphasis, long sentences being replaced by keywords, theory connected to
practice, teacher sharing of personal anecdotes, humour, thinking space, as well
as experiential and personalised learning. All these require imagination,
creativity, passion for new ideas, and the avoidance of routine, boring tasks.
Along this line, a survey conducted by North and Pillay (2002) on English
teachers in a secondary school setting reports the common practice of giving
students the same task repeatedly out of habit rather than usefulness. There was a
time when people in some countries, such as Japan and Korea, were concerned
that someday language instruction robots might replace English teachers. This
scenario, however, does not need to happen at all, simply because some teachers
have already acted like robots in their work.
Strategy 2 - Personalising communication
Efforts to initiate bonding with students can be made at an early stage when
administrative staff begin to communicate with students to bring them into a
study programme . The teacher can make a welcome video to establish a sense of
community. I know a lecturer who, being also a musician, created a song and
performed it in the first video of a course to boost learning morale and make a
personal connection. After watching it, students looked forward to meeting this
interesting teacher and being inspired further. Another lecturer introduced her
lesson recording by dancing to the soundtrack of rock music, not hesitating to
‘embarrass’ herself for a more humanistic style of inspiration. In another incident,
two colleagues paired up and improvised a series of video recordings in which
their dialogue involved humour and anecdotal examples for every weekly topic.
Students find these pedagogical varieties refreshing and memorable as they
confront routine and breathe new energy into e-learning.
Throughout a course of study, communication every week is essential to
maintain a helpful learning culture. Such communication involves, for example,
answering students’ online questions, summarising and commenting on weekly
posts, acknowledging student effort and progress, offering add- itional resources
in response to arising interests, providing feedback, organis- ing reading groups,
and so on. There is a logical relationship between teacher care and student
engagement in online settings. That is, the more support students receive, the
more willing they are to contribute to the learning process. Without such a
connection, the online climate would be filled with unproductive silence. Even
after graduation, staying in touch with alumni is a way of showing care and
keeping track of how effective education has been in assisting students’ career
paths.
Teacher presence with a social meaning
Some teachers do not seem to be concerned with the social dimension of
student learning. In one incident, I overheard a lecturer informing the class,
accentuating every word: ‘Do not bother me on the weekend with email
inquiries.’ Although not being available during holidays is understandable,
drawing a resolute boundary to keep students away might turn the teacher into an
unsympathetic character who exerts a negative impact on students’ learning
inspiration. As I later learned at student events, some internalise a mental wall
between them and their lecturer, viewing the latter as a functional authority rather
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 than a social human being. Although the purpose of the rule was to keep some of
their time free for other work commitments, this could lead to such lecturers
having no relationship with their students beyond an instrumental one. One
student shared: ‘I cannot connect with my teachers, who are always too busy with
other things.’ Another explained: ‘I’m basically teaching myself. There is not
much opportunity for lecturers to answer my burning questions.’
Building a social environment is not just about having students talk to each
other during the lesson, but involvement might need to go the extra mile. For
example, at Monash University, my colleagues and I sometimes organise
additional meetings with students who share an interest in a similar research topic
or a discussion issue, which could be within the course or even beyond it and into
a future career pathway. We build an optional dialogue, not only to show care but
also as a way of staying in touch both within and beyond the course. Students
enjoy this process as they feel that they are not simply learning from the course
content but also from real life in a climate of social trust and individualised
mentoring.

Strategy 3 - Clear participation protocols

Participation protocols refer to a well-articulated task procedure that guides
students through contribution. This would include a clearly stated topic or set of
questions, the aim of contribution (e.g., for grades or shared perspectives),
requirements or expectations (e.g., an opinion, an experience, a critical
comment), rules for interaction (e.g., exchanging individual voices, reporting the
outcome of group discussion), the size of contribution (e.g., time duration or
word count), a deadline, stages of development (e.g., work in progress, summary
of output), and a follow-up plan (e.g., peer response, teacher feedback students
may not contribute when they feel uncertain about the requirement and method of
participation. A Compared with discussion events without clear expectations,
protocol- based tasks significantly increase student engagement.
Protocols also entail the management of online courses to ensure that every
course is explicitly mapped out and logically sequenced, with clarity about
student workload and responsibility. In practice, if the teacher seems too busy to
respond to postings, it would be helpful to let the class know how often to expect
feedback. The depth of communication at both task and course levels exerts a
bearing on students’ learning success. Along this line, teachers need to make
conscious efforts to involve less engaged students and respond to their learning
problem when it arises. To make this possible, on the learning website there
needs to be a suggestion box for students to express their needs, share problems,
and raise questions when their study requires individu- alised support.
Strategy 4 - Mediation of student workload and participation
Teachers need to mediate the learning process by making it manageable for
all students. Along this line, the negotiation between workload and participation
is important to consider. Some inexperienced teachers tend to expect too much
from students in both quantity and quality of their contributions, not realising that
when the former is too ambitious, the latter will decrease. According to cognitive
load theory, there is a need to distinguish between information overload and
cognitive overload (Paas & van Merrienboer, 1994). While students can cope
with the former by selecting what they wish to learn the most, it is the latter that
can damage their learning system if students are forced to contribute past the load
that their brain can process. Once the quantity of study is reasonable, learner
participation can be further facilitated by giving frequent responses to students’
posts. Many students feel that their voice is unheard or even silenced when their
writing seems to fall into oblivion. To remedy this, teachers need to make
comments on student contribution content and organise for peers to provide
feedback to each other. It would also be helpful if the teacher provided a
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 summary of the discussion thread after it has evolved to a meaningful extent to
bring students' ideas together in some connection.
Strategy 5 - Scaffolding online learning
Unlike scaffolding in a conventional classroom where teacher support is
mainly academic work, scaffolding in a virtual setting requires academic,
administrative, and technical assistance to ease learning challenges. Scaffolding
improves student life as it helps elevate standards, communicate expectations,
and facilitate student agency. Students also need help to develop original ideas,
without which they would not be able to participate. The relevant discourse has
acknowledged student familiarity with learning content as an easier way to
become verbally open. Duran's (2020) study, for example, reveals that a
combination of a positive social rapport and an interesting topic can help students
connect easily and can make online discussions feel like real-world conversations.
Strategy 6 - Shared responsibilities and distributed roles
Students in small groups can be given a problem to solve together and
prepare to report their collective solution to the rest of the class. When a group
leader is assigned to report the outcome, participation is bound to happen.
Research by Zhou (2021) on student experience also indicates that reticence
often results from a lack of rehearsal or preparation. In addition to this, the
teacher can allocate leadership roles to class members. In every break-out room,
learners take turns at leading the conversation and verbally reporting its outcome
to the rest of the class. Such peer-facilitated dialogues allow a stress-free
atmosphere for genuine exchanges of ideas. A study by Rourke and Anderson
(2002) on Canadian university students’ experience with peer-led online
discussion groups shows that this model is favourably received by students for
being well- structured, mutually responsive, and enjoyable.

Strategy 7 - Organising choices

Allowing students to select their favourite modes of contribution is another
useful strategy to adopt. For example, a balance must be created between task-
oriented activities and self-generated topics, also known as controlled and free
debates. The former refers to teacher-led activity, such as a question or an issue
raised by the teacher to start a forum thread. The latter means students select
issues of personal interest from course readings, from which a thread is initiated
by students. While some students are contented with teacher management and
guidance in course requirements, others only find satisfaction in autonomy and in
connecting lesson content with their thinking. The second type of student needs a
different kind of support from the teacher, which goes beyond management and
more into inspiration.
Choices of technology are also important in online education. Students can
be allowed to select their favourite digital tools. For example, when it comes to
sharing a group document, some students feel comfortable accessing it on Moodle
space, others want the document emailed to them, while some prefer to use
Google Docs. Consider what works best for everyone rather than holding on to
what the teacher feels most familiar with. Sometimes, when students voice
different preferences, the same documents can be shared at multiple locations, or
the class may vote for the best location and method to edit a document. Another
example would be the choice of tools for group presentations, which can be
PowerPoint, Prezi, Keynote, Slides, Slidebean, Zoho Show, Google Slides,
Canva, and Visme, or beyond these templates, such as video recordings and
poster expositions. Research by Quinton (2010), Dahlstrom et al. (2011), and
Burton et al. (2015) reveals that students are involved in a task more effectively
when they can rely on tools that suit their tastes.
Strategy 8 - Diversifying approaches to tasks
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 Discussion methods can be varied to cater to different learning styles. This
is made possible through diverse grouping, locations, durations, challenges, topic
contents, formats, and leaders. The overuse of any single discussion method
might favour some students and discourage others. For example, it is observed
that brainstorming, while supporting a democratic climate of idea sharing, may
marginalise learners with a reflective style who often prefer in-depth scrutiny of
issues that require more thinking time than spontaneous contribution. Some
scholars find brainstorming demotivating to highly introverted and creative
students (see, for example, Smith, 1995; Hermasari, 2018). This is because this
strategy tends to yield a superficial collection of themes with little analysis. To
improve the situation, the teacher might create a follow-up task that arranges for
every small group to unpack a theme of their own choice. Another task type, as
recommended by Takagi (2013), is brain writing, that is, brainstorming ideas in
written form. Working at their own pace, learners not only develop themes but
can also unpack them with more content or arguments.
Strategy 9 - Encouraging student voices
Student voice can be spontaneous or prepared before class time. Sometimes,
instructors must withdraw from their teaching role and authority and invite every
student to plan a three-minute presentation of their views on selected issues. The
ideology of learners as co-creators of knowledge, which has been increasingly
promoted in education (Bates, 2004; Rovai, 2004), needs to be experienced in an
online learning environment as much as in the physical classroom. Contributions
can be organised through individual consultation with the teacher to enhance
shared ideas' quality and ensure learning commitment. It is also essential that the
teacher keeps track of student contributions to provide a summary and comments
on them. When students' ideas are fully acknowledged and become part of the
lesson, the experience becomes more pleasant and meaningful and allows
momentum for more interaction in future lessons.
Strategy 10 - Collaboration with non-teaching staff
Involving students in proactive online learning should not be the sole
responsibility of teachers. In an ideal online and blended programme, the role of
support staff and online learning design is equally essential to that of the teacher.
At Monash University, ICT support staff also conduct research, as they are not
only administrators. Every semester, online designers find ways to present
materials in more attractive and user-friendly ways. They hold meetings with
lecturers to hear suggestions before the updated looks are launched and gather
end-of-semester feedback from lecturers again to see what else can be improved.
One example of such research outcomes includes being allowed to personalise
the online learning space by creating customised icons, choosing a favourite
background colour, and selecting any template from options provided by the ICT
team. There is a continuous dialogue between lecturers and technicians in making
student learning easier.

F. Concluding Insights
Sometimes, a teacher who may be a highly articulate person might create the
impression of absence when they fail to respond to students' evolving needs. Some
examples of teacher silence include not making students feel welcome at the beginning
of a course, not showing enthusiasm throughout the course, not answering student
questions promptly, not providing helpful feedback to assignment tasks, not keeping
track of student progress, not supporting students adequately when they are lost,
performing a teaching role without much of a social role, criticising more than praising
students' work, sending reminders and warnings more than expressing love and care,
responding superficially to student postings, acting out that they are too busy or tired,
and (this is the worst on the list) indicating that students must not bother them.
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 Behaving in any of these ways would amount to pushing students away. When a teacher
fails to be a lovely, helpful mentor in students' eyes, that teacher disappears in their
thinking and reaction. Consequently, students resort to silence as a form of resistance to
the invisible teacher.
Like face-to-face silence, online silence is culture-bound. Learners from cultures
where silence is an integral part of everyday communication might continue to respect
silence in a virtual environment as a tool for deep thinking, attentive listening,
reflection, respect, and harmony. Meanwhile, those from a culture where silence does
not have a great significance but words tend to dominate in showing connection and
enthusiasm might wish to maintain more verbal connection with the class.
It is observed that teachers with extended experience with virtual classrooms tend
to tolerate and manage silence more efficiently than those who are relatively new in this
area. The less familiar they are with online education strategies, the more they connect
silence with negative connotations (Plank, 1994). To navigate digital teaching and
learning well already requires a specific set of pedagogical skills such as knowing
students as individuals, establishing rules of communication, and following up on
student work. To a great extent, teacher imagination and diverse strategies play an
essential role in responding to learning challenges among students who suffer from not
communicating as comfortably as they would in a traditional classroom.

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Source: Teaching English as a Foreign Language Journal Vol. 2, No. 2, September 2023,
pp. 73-84 ISSN 2961-9963

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