Reflections of Turkish Instructors on a Six-Week Online Professional Development Course in the Work-from-Home Era

Asian Society of Open and Distance Education. 80-4 Minou Yamamoto Machi, Kurume City, Fukuoka, 839-0826, Japan. e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://asianjde.com/ojs/index.php/AsianJDE

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20

Foreign Countries; COVID-19; Pandemics; School Closing; Faculty Development; Online Courses; Second Language Instruction; English (Second Language); Language Teachers; College Faculty; Teacher Attitudes; Program Effectiveness; Distance Education

1347-9008

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the urge it created at schools across the world, seismic changes in education have not only resulted in a sudden transition in the way of instruction but the way of teachers' personal growth. Hence, this qualitative case design aims to examine the experiences of Turkish EFL instructors affiliated with foreign language units in higher education context partaking in a six-week professional development course based on asynchronous distance learning. To that end, their posts on the platform, reader discussions, and assignments uploaded onto the system besides individual semi-structured interviews were exploited as data gathering tools. The results speak to the positive impression of online course takers in terms of establishing interpersonal synergy, achieving personal growth, and promoting their content knowledge. Moreover, their post-training perspectives disclosed the support they sensed the need for professional and institutional issues. Though instructors detected some problems to be addressed in the course, their criticism functioned as suggestions to best shape similar further practices in addition to reforming the current training. Finally, some recommendations have been provided for scholars concentrating on studying within this field to create their future directions.

As Provided

2024

EJ1410087