Lecturers’ perspectives on interaction in online courses

Abstract

This study aims to investigate lecturers’ perspectives on online interaction. Qualitative data were collected from semi-structured interviews with 9 lecturers at a public university in Hanoi. The findings show that online interaction can either be verbal or written and that direct feedback from learners has significant impact on the lecturers’ affect and motivation. The research results also reveal two main ways for improving online interaction, which are to examine non-verbal communication and to use flipped classroom models. On that basis, recommendations for designing future online courses are put forward.