An exploratory study on college professors’ nonvoluntary on-line-only teaching. Korean journal of english language and linguistics

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic universities have been forced to become a vast experimental ground for using technology for online classes. Despite the decades’ research on the use of technology in the field of English education, these online classes, which were suddenly and involuntarily administered to both teachers and learners, puzzled everyone. Considering a crisis can work as an opportunity, this unfamiliar non-face-to-face situation can be an opportunity to look at the teachers’ response to the crisis more clearly than the usual face-to-face situation. This study explored the experience of the college instructors, facing unprecedented challenges. In-depth interviews were conducted for four university professors who managed on-line-only English classes during the pandemic in 2020, asking the difficulties, emotions, solutions, and any changes while they were facing challenges this time. All interviews were recorded and transcribed to generate initial codes for each participant. The concepts with similar attributes were categorized through the process of integrating and reducing the codes. As a result, the challenges experienced by the participants were broadly categorized into two levels—individual and institutional. Participants’ emotions along with the obstacles they perceived; the ways they dealt with those obstacles; and any internal or external changes were further explored. The implications are discussed based on these results.