Powerful Pedagogies in Times of COVID: An Online Pedagogical Collaboration Between EFL Students and ESL Teacher Candidates

Abstract

In the context of the global covid-19 pandemic, educators at all levels had to re-imagine their teaching practices to respond to the necessity of conducting all courses on-line. This article reports on the collaboration of two university instructors to create a trans-national model of learning in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. By virtue of this collaboration, the efl students based at a large public university in Colombia were engaged in four online sessions and paired with teacher candidates taking an esl endorsement course in the United States. This online collaboration afforded the Colombian efl students an authentic opportunity to practice their English learning and the us teacher candidates a meaningful context in which to conduct authentic language assessments. Using interview and questionnaire data, this qualitative case study explored the experiences of the efl students. The data demonstrate that online exchanges can afford students meaningful opportunities for language development. The results further show that online learning can be enriched through mutually beneficial collaborations across universities and transnational contexts.