A Survey On EFL Students’ Perception Toward Teachers’ Roles In Online Learning Environment

Abstract

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, public schools have been obliged to switch from face-to-face instruction to online or distance learning only. Teachers may have a more challenging time dealing with the pandemic since they were used to working offline before. This study aims to determine how EFL students perceive instructor roles in an online learning environment. To measure the students’ perception, Huang’s (2019) Scale of Teacher Role Inventory (STRI) was utilized. The current study utilizes an instrument comprising of three dimensions, each consisting of 27 questions. The first dimension, cognitive role, includes question items 1-10, which aim to assess the students’ perceptions of the teacher’s cognitive role. The second dimension, emotional role, includes question items 11-20, which aim to assess the students’ perceptions of the teacher’s emotional role. The final dimension, managerial role, includes question items 21-27, which aim to assess the students’ perceptions of the teacher’s managerial role. The participants were English language education students from a university in Yogyakarta. From the findings, it is found out that in the cognitive role component, students generally appreciated teacher’s roles in developing their cognitive skills. The overall mean of the scores varied from 4.50 which is cognitive role (highest) to 3.95 which is emotional role (lowest). In the emotional role, the lecturer has offered good help to support students’ emotional development. However, it appeared that the teacher should implement game based learning approach more in the learning process to support engagement, as this item had one of the lowest scores. The last component is the managerial role of the teacher which showed that the teacher needed to improve the controlling pace when teaching since it earned the lowest score among all which is 4.18. Nevertheless, besides those items that require improvement, the teacher’s role has been well implemented in this context.