Yulia Grevtseva

Elena Zyrianova

DOI: https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch24   

ABSTRACT

Virtual and hybrid classrooms are venues for teaching and learning that became well-established in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, when this pandemic struck in 2020, such classrooms posed intimidating challenges for many teachers. Fortunately, evolving technological advances gradually allowed teachers to access new ways for teaching in virtual and hybrid classrooms. In this chapter, you will learn about differences between virtual classrooms, where all students participate virtually, and hybrid classrooms, where some students participate virtually and others face-to-face. You will learn about digital tools—including apps and websites—and, also, about communicative activities and practical strategies that can be done in virtual venues. You will also learn about the need for continually expanding your skills to teach English in virtual and hybrid classrooms so that you can more effectively meet the learning needs of your current and future students. 

Keywords: virtual classrooms, hybrid classrooms, digital tools, technological advances, virtual activities and strategies, online teaching and assessing

How to cite this chapter: 

Grevtseva, Y. & Zyrianova, E. (2023). Teaching in Virtual and Hybrid Classrooms. In V. Canese & S. Spezzini (Eds.), Teaching English in Global Contexts, Language, Learners and Learning (pp. 289-299). Editorial Facultad de Filosofía, UNA. https://doi.org/10.47133/tegc_ch24

INTRODUCTION

By the year 2000, technological advances had created platforms for teaching online courses. However, at that time, relatively few institutions seemed interested in teaching courses fully online because of scepticism related to attention, motivation, interaction, and honesty in virtual venues (Kirtman, 2009). Over the next two decades, many of us gradually incorporated online aspects into our instruction for providing additional support to students to strengthen their knowledge and reinforce their success in learning English as a foreign language (EFL). However, although we offered students increasingly more digital materials and online services, the overall scope of our teaching usually remained face-to-face (F2F). 

This changed with the onset of COVID-19. Suddenly we found ourselves teaching in virtual and hybrid classrooms. We discovered that virtual teaching is less complex than hybrid teaching because in hybrid venues we need to address the learning needs of virtual students concurrently with those of F2F students. We realized that both venues (virtual and hybrid) require us to further develop our own technology skills and to help students in developing theirs. We learned that hybrid classes usually require more time than virtual classes for planning lessons, monitoring instructional settings, and interacting with students (which includes supporting their emotional states). We also recognized that hybrid teaching requires more effort regarding classroom management given that two classes (F2F and online) are being managed simultaneously. Based on these experiences and our own research, we now offer insights for helping you better understand virtual and hybrid EFL classrooms and provide recommendations for ensuring quality online instruction.  

BACKGROUND

In the 1990s, online courses started being used for distance learning. However, based on the individualized nature of mail-in distance learning, online distance learning also tended to focus individually on each student. These initial online courses did not usually provide opportunities for students to establish ongoing interaction about course content with each other nor with anyone else (such as experts in the field). At the beginning of the 21st century, technology began assuming an increasingly greater role in our personal and professional lives. As online platforms and digital applications (apps) were created, newly emerging tools were adapted for instructional purposes. These constantly evolving tools were introduced in courses to vary content delivery and enhance student engagement. Efforts to ensure best practices with digital tools led to instructional design approaches for maximizing learner interaction in virtual venues (Garrison, 2017). 

In 2020, COVID-19 initiated a new era for virtual and hybrid instruction (La Torre Castillo, 2021). In response to the pandemic, aggressive measures were mandated for compulsory virtual and hybrid practices. Teachers worldwide found themselves converting former F2F instruction to fully online. Everyone needed to adopt virtual learning venues while considering their institution’s curriculum and their students’ learning needs. With little or no previous training, teachers selected online tools, services, and apps and then tried to match these with their students’ ages, language levels, and interests. As with other teaching fields, EFL teachers and institutions did their best to analyze, improve, and implement best practices for teaching in virtual and hybrid classrooms.

This so-called “emergency online education” (Marinoni et al., 2020, p. 6) was hasty and compelled by circumstances. Yet, it was productive in generating “appropriate infrastructure and technological platforms, solid servers that can sustain the virtual workload, and methodological training of professors and students” (García-Morales et al., 2021, p. 2). It also demonstrated that, regardless of venue (F2F, online, hybrid), effective teaching presupposes well-designed lessons. Hence, when teaching virtually, we must continue to consider critical aspects for effective learning and ensure that our EFL lessons entail the following characteristics (Solovova, 2006):

• Each lesson educates students and develops knowledge and skills. 

• Lesson objectives are clear and concrete.

• Each lesson is part of a larger block of lessons.

• Tasks and activities are well-organized and support a lesson’s aim.

• The atmosphere facilitates communication.

In this chapter, we describe virtual and hybrid classrooms based on the digital reality of the early 2020s. While acknowledging that this digital reality will continue to evolve, we also address technological challenges and offer ways to use digital tools in EFL classrooms.

MAJOR DIMENSIONS

Before planning online lessons, decide how to establish and maintain teacher-student communication in a virtual learning community. Design your online classroom within a learning management system (LMS) that can nurture sense of community, support ongoing feedback, and monitor time management. Also, systematically dedicate your time and effort to update your own digital literacy such as by using a new digital tool (instead of just webcam).

Learning Management System

When classes went virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic, most institutions hosted an LMS to manage communication, information, documents, and student data. These institutions expected teachers to use the LMS for communicating with students, posting instructional materials, delivering lessons, receiving student assignments, and conducting assessments. Though some of these LMSs might have been developed for other purposes, such LMSs were adapted to meet the unique needs of an educational institution. Upon entering the post-pandemic era, most educational institutions continued hosting an LMS (e.g., Google classroom) for us (the teachers) to use for managing all types of classrooms—F2F, virtual, and hybrid.

Sense of Community

Students need to feel a sense of community in all classrooms—F2F, virtual, and hybrid. If students do not feel a sense of community, feelings of isolation can occur. To establish community in your virtual and hybrid classrooms, follow the Community of Inquiry framework (Garrison, 2017). This framework entails social presence (the learners’ sense of belonging by socially engaging in academic endeavors), cognitive presence (the learners’ process and result of learning), and teaching presence (the teacher’s course design, facilitation, and direction of the learning process). 

To promote social presence and sense of community in your virtual and hybrid classrooms, incorporate frequent meetings, online communities, group chats, on-demand consultations, and regular news sharing (e.g., Facebook groups and Miro boards). Developing and nurturing students’ social presence can vary depending on course design, communication technology, and teacher presence. A strong correlation exists between students’ social presence and teacher presence (Shea et al., 2010). Because of this, increase your virtual classroom’s collaboration capacity to establish and nurture group cohesion. Cohesiveness is achieved when students identify with a group and, thus, perceive themselves as belonging to a community of inquiry (Garrison, 2017). Help build this sense of community by addressing students with their names, using inclusive pronouns (we/us/our) when both speaking and writing, and asking your students to also do the same when interacting with each other.

Ongoing Feedback

In online environments, we cannot easily interact with our students in a spontaneous manner immediately before or after class, such as for sharing comments, news, or ideas. Reduced spontaneous interaction can make students feel isolated and unsupported; it also reduces our ability to provide ongoing personalized feedback to students between classes. To create opportunities for spontaneous feedback and interaction, regularly enter your virtual classroom 15 minutes before class starts and then stay in this virtual space 15 minutes after your class ends. Ensure frequent feedback and quality online interaction by establishing multiple communication channels via chats, consultations, and other spaces. This way your students can use their preferred means for communicating not just with you but, of even greater importance, with each other. When grading student work, provide personalized feedback by writing or recording detailed comments. Because feedback often takes more time in virtual classes, plan wisely to create a comfortable balance between your teaching time and your personal time.

Time Management

Online teaching requires conscious use of time. That’s because we frequently conduct online teaching from our own homes without the usual breaks associated with F2F classes, such as walking down the hallway between class or leaving campus after class ends. This undefined spatial boundary tends to blur the distinction between our instructional time and our personal time. Furthermore, when immersed in online teaching, we easily lose track of time. To better manage our time with online teaching, we need to develop organizational skills. For example, when reaching a stopping point in teaching tasks and before starting personal tasks, consider signalling a transition by doing something physical for 10 minutes such as walking or exercising. Try taking a visual approach to time management by using personal apps such as growing a virtual garden or caring for an imaginary pet. When juggling your online teaching and personal activities, conscientiously take breaks from the screen. For example, turn off your screen each hour for about five minutes (Densberger, 2020). Consider sharing these time management tips with your students.

Digital Literacy

To be successful with online teaching, develop a functional level of digital literacy and systematically dedicate time and effort to keep your digital skills as updated as possible. Instead of always using the same tool (e.g., webcam), learn to use new digital tools among the wide array of constantly emerging products. In this way, you can be efficient and effective at organizing and managing virtual lessons. The quicker you can solve an unexpected problem, the more productive your lesson will be. Unless your students have already acquired functional skills related to information technology, they will seek help for all types of apparent obstacles in your virtual classroom. Consequently, to prepare for answering students’ technology questions, learn the basic functions for each of the platforms and apps that you plan to use in a lesson. Write clear, step-by-step instructions to help students understand tasks and to address their potential needs. Also, provide instructions for students to transition smoothly between tasks. In case a task does not meet your expectations or perhaps even fails miserably, have a contingency plan with backup platforms and apps.

PEDAGOGICAL APPLICATIONS

When planning and using pedagogical apps, help your students assume responsibility in virtual and hybrid classes as seriously as in their F2F classes. In your online classroom, create an effective learning environment by implementing interactive activities, addressing possible challenges, conducting assessments, and providing feedback.

Implement Interactive Virtual Activities

Plan each online lesson with different types of activities, such as individual in-class tasks (e.g., reading, listening, writing) as well as pair and group tasks (e.g., brainstorming, discussing, interviewing). When students are completing well-defined individual tasks and, especially, when participating in organized activities requiring social interaction with classmates, they will be less likely to become distracted by social networks and multimedia sites. To increase interaction among students, divide them into groups for doing activities in virtual breakout rooms. For example, in a class of 12 students, create four groups with three students per group. After sharing group configurations with your students, describe the activity that they will be doing in each group’s breakout room. Explain that you will be visiting each of these virtual spaces to monitor interaction and see if help is needed. After providing these explanations, admit students into their respective breakout rooms. 

Even if students live at great distances from one another (e.g., different cities, regions, or countries), they can create their presentation projects collaboratively by using interactive online tools such as on Miro, Canva, and Google. Similarly, they can conduct surveys collaboratively by using a tool such as Mentimeter, which is also highly effective at generating online results. Some tools are interactive but do not lead to collaborative projects. For example, Kahoot, Wordwall, Quizlet, and Rebus.club are competitive tools for learning new vocabulary, grammar, and other language forms in an entertaining way but without producing a final product.

Consider monitoring student engagement within each group by having groups display their emerging collaborative work in real time. For example, we usually have our student groups use the Miro app and display their respective projects on a single virtual board as shown in Figure 1. 

Figure 1

Collaborative Groupwork in the Miro App. 

Note. From authors’ personal archive

During the lesson illustrated in Figure 1, the Miro app allowed four student groups to display their work while still in progress. Each group brainstormed companies for seeking employment and typed their ideas into a frame. These frames were positioned far enough apart so that the groups could not copy ideas initially posted by one of the other groups. When we used this app, we were able to see students collaborating and, therefore, knew that all were contributing to their group’s collaborative project.

Address Possible Challenges

When teaching online and hybrid classes, some teachers experience challenges with incomplete assessments, late assignments, and cheating. Teachers can effectively address such challenges without necessarily seeking help from information technology specialists. Of greatest importance is establishing and publishing clear submission deadlines. Consider addressing other possible challenges by

• asking students to turn on their cameras and look at the screen, 

• scheduling just enough time for students to do a test by thinking about questions (and not doing internet searches),

• increasing the number of questions with open-ended responses and decreasing those with closed answers, and

• using special platforms (e.g., onlinetestpad or Google) to create timed tests with built-in restrictions that can prevent students from listening more than once to a recording (or from trying to redo a test response).

Conduct Assessments and Provide Feedback

When you are teaching in virtual and hybrid classrooms, be sure to conduct assessments and provide feedback. To assess your students’ online work, consider using some of the tools mentioned earlier, such as LMS platforms, Google classrooms, Facebook groups, and Miro boards. First, create a place to provide your feedback to online written assignments and tests. Next, help students access your feedback. Finally, guide students with revising their work as an integral part of ongoing improvement and help them self-assess their own progress. Different ways for providing feedback to online essays are illustrated in Figures 2 and 3.

Figure 2

Providing Feedback in the Miro App.

Note. From authors’ personal archive

In Figure 2, we used the Miro App for providing feedback to student writing. As feedback, we highlighted errors and wrote comments. We also inserted emojis to signal something well done. 

Figure 3

Providing Feedback in Google Docs

Note. From authors’ personal archive

In Figure 3, we used Google Docs, which is a somewhat different way for providing feedback to students about their online essays. Here we commented about the quality of student work and explained ways for students to improve their writing.

In this chapter, you learned about teaching in virtual and hybrid classrooms. You learned about teacher-student communication and the role of an LMS for nurturing a sense of community, supporting ongoing feedback, and monitoring time management. You also learned about using digital tools and pedagogical apps to implement interactive virtual activities, address possible challenges, conduct assessments, and provide feedback. By continually updating your digital skills and using the most appropriate apps to meet a lesson’s learning objectives, you will be able to maximize the learning success of your students in virtual and hybrid classrooms.

Here are some key concepts and suggestions about teaching in virtual and hybrid classrooms:

• Help your students adapt to virtual and hybrid formats. 

• Manage your time when working online and, also, teach your students to do the same. 

• Monitor the amount of time spent on online platforms and be aware of any potential decline in your concentration and your students’ concentration.

• Refrain from spending much time trying to understand the online resources mentioned in this chapter. These resources provide instructions on using their respective features and, also, have interfaces that are quite intuitive.

• Constantly solicit feedback from students and analyze their needs. 

• If you get stuck, consider asking your students for help. They are often quite knowledgeable about online resources. 

• Avoid paying for digital tools because of how all online resources mentioned in this chapter have free options for classroom use. 

Based on this chapter about virtual and hybrid classrooms, answer these questions:

1. What contents, strategies, and media are the most common for teaching EFL? How can these be adapted to online teaching?

2. How can you best incorporate digital tools and techniques when teaching EFL in virtual and hybrid classrooms?

3. How should teachers react if students refuse to turn on their cameras during a virtual class and then justify their refusal as not feeling well?

To practice what you have learned about virtual and hybrid classrooms, do the following:

1. Design a lesson plan (40-45 minutes) for teaching an advanced beginner EFL class with students 15-17 years of age. These students possess basic English and are not novices at English lessons. Because most of them like Star Wars, design an introductory online lesson about cinema. In your lesson plan for virtual teaching, include online platforms, digital tools, and other materials.

2. Select online platforms, digital tools, and other materials for teaching a writing lesson in a virtual EFL classroom with students at a high intermediate or low advanced level. Your students have written an opinion essay. Conduct an anonymous peer assessment activity where writing tasks are seen by you and all students. However, be sure that your students cannot identify whose work they are reading and reviewing. The aim of this activity is identifying common mistakes to be discussed as a group.

3. Think about ways to help yourself and your students adapt to online learning. Generate some tips to share with students to facilitate online work.

To expand your knowledge about virtual and hybrid classrooms, visit these websites:

• Collaboration superpowers. https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Cameras-on-Full-Article-tips.pdf?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=motivate_your_team_to_turn_their_cameras_on&utm_term=2022-01-25  

• Gamification in multiplayer classrooms. https://www.coursera.org/lecture/gamification/2-1-gamification-in-context-MUt1B  

• Google classroom app. https://edu.google.com/workspace-for-education/classroom/  

• Miro. https://miro.com/ 

• https://go.miro.com/webinars?utm_source=product&utm_medium=learning_center  

• Online educational games. https://teambuilding.com/blog/online-classroom-games  

• Tests. https://onlinetestpad.com 

Aspects related to online teaching and classroom management are addressed by the following chapters in this book: 

Chapter 11 Using Social Media to Enhance Language Acquisition by S. Terol and J. Amarilla

Chapter 13 Designing Learner-Centered Classrooms to Promote Active Learning by H. Kaiser

Chapter 17 Providing Feedback on Learners’ Language Output by C. Cristóful

Chapter 18 Teaching English in Different Contexts by R. Díaz

Chapter 21 Connecting Student Interaction With Classroom Management by G. Mendoza

Chapter 23 Integrating Technology in Language Classrooms by H. Hubbard, A. Foss, and C. Strawn

Chapter 27 Implementing Actionable Gamification Design in ELT by O. Esquivel

Chapter 49 E-Portfolios to Assess Language Learning by B. Jiménez

Densberger, K. (2020, March 12). Distance learning help: Success as a work-from-home student. University of Virginia Total Advising. https://advising.virginia.edu/resources/coronavirus-homestudy 

García-Morales, V. J., Garrido-Moreno, A., & Martín-Rojas, R. (2021, February). The transformation of higher education after the COVID disruption: Emerging challenges in an online learning scenario. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.616059 

Garrison, D. R. (2017). E-learning in the 21st century: A community of inquiry framework for research and practice (3rd ed.). Routledge. 

Kirtman, L. (2009). Online versus in-class courses: An examination of differences in learning outcomes (EJ858508). Issues in Teacher Education, 18(2), 103-116.

La Torre Castillo, C. C. (2021). Virtual classroom usage and user perception for English learning as a second language at universities in Lima, Peru. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning, 16(8), 261–269. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v16i08.19221 

Marinoni, G., Van't Land, H., & Jensen, T. (2020). The impact of Covid-19 on higher education around the world. IAU Global Survey Report. https://www.iau-aiu.net/IMG/pdf/iau_covid19_and_he_survey_report_final_may_2020.pdf 

Shea, P., Hayes, S. Vickers, J., Gozza-Cohen, M., Uzuner, S., Mehta, R., Valchova, A., & Rangan, P. (2010). A re-examination of the community of inquiry framework: Social network and content analysis. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(1-2), 10-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2009.11.002

Solovova, E. (2006). Методика обучения иностранным языкам: базовый курс лекций: пособие для студентов пед. вузов и учителей [Foreign languages teaching methodology. Basic course of lectures]. Prosveshcheniye 

Yulia Grevtseva is a visiting lecturer and an international affairs specialist in the School of Foreign Languages at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) University in Moscow, Russia. Yulia is an EFL teacher with a master’s degree in linguistics and 13+ years of experience educating students online. She has been involved with adapting several disciplines to online and hybrid formats at the HSE and has also delivered workshops on how to make distant learning classrooms more engaging.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2952-9576 

Email for correspondence regarding this chapter: yulia.grev38@gmail.com

Elena Zyrianova is a visiting lecturer and an international affairs specialist in the School of Foreign Languages at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) University in Moscow, Russia. Elena is an EFL teacher with a degree in linguistics and ESL from the Moscow State Pedagogical University and one in translation from the Moscow State University of International Affairs. She has ample experience with training EFL teachers and with creating syllabi for diverse disciplines.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0109-8009 

Cover Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash