Teaching Presence During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

While a number of studies have explored the challenges faced by teachers, little has been known about how they navigated the teaching presence in online remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present investigation explores how two English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teachers in a university in Thailand facilitated online language teaching and supported students' language learning in an online environment. Findings from the online classroom observations and interviews revealed that classroom pedagogical skills, knowledge of the online teaching and learning platforms, and teaching presence played a crucial role in an emergency remote and online teaching environment. Despite the lack of training for online language teaching, teachers' ability to strategize the transition to online teaching and their strong sense of resourcefulness and focus on the use of online platforms allowed them to mitigate the issues and face the challenges of the sudden shift to online teaching. The authors discussed the limitations and offered suggestions and implications for future studies.