Vaida Misevičiūtė

ABSTRACT

Teacher-student relationships and students’ interaction in the classroom is regaining attention among researchers due to the particularities of virtual learning environment. Looking at the previous studies, multiple researchers seem to agree that positive teacher-student and student-student relationships greatly influence students’ learning outcomes. Unfortunately, when the learning moved into online platforms, student and teacher interactions got diminished for various reasons from technological ones (poor Internet connection or lack of camera) to personal ones (unwillingness to be on display, discomfort hearing your voice through headphones). The aim of this study is to examine and understand how students’ evaluation and value of teacher-student and peer relationships change along with changing learning environment. The study has been carried out in 4 different semesters— pure face to face environment before pandemic (Fall 2019), half face to face and half online semester (Spring 2020), full online semester (Fall 2020) still a novelty, and another full online semester (Spring 2021) where everyone feels zoomed out. C1 level English language students at the university level have been participating in a collaborative process assignment, at the end of which they were asked to evaluate teacher’s feedback and peer collaboration based on a questionnaire. Even though the teacher has been employing student engagement into online learning methods, the results show a slowly increasing distrust in teacher’s feedback and peer evaluations suggesting that student attitudes towards the teacher, peers and motivation towards learning are also slowly decreasing.

Keywords

Teacher-student relationships, evaluation, virtual learning

References

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