Exploring Student-Teacher Interaction and Learner Autonomy Through Writing Online Journals via Emails and Penzu: A Mixed-Method Analysis of Turkish Students’ Perceptions

Abstract

The prevalence of online education has raised concerns about maintaining student-teacher interaction and learner autonomy. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, these concerns have levelled up, so more studies have been called for. Therefore, this chapter presents empirical research on students’ interaction with their peers, teacher and content, as well as on students’ management and regulation of their learning. The study in the chapter investigated Turkish university-level students’ perceptions about their learning through teacher interaction and autonomous learning. The students first interacted with their teacher through writing dialogue journals via emails for 4 weeks and then kept personal writings in Penzu for 4 weeks. Data from questionnaires and interviews showed that the students had positive beliefs on writing dialogue and personal journals since they thought that they improved their language learning skills thanks to their experience in writing emails and Penzu journals. Also, they indicated that Penzu enabled them to regulate their writing process freely. The chapter ends by suggesting that studies should further explore language use and pragmatic features of student writings to understand students’ learning deeply; and that programme designers should consider integrating automated writing evaluation tools to enhance autonomous learning more.