The Impact of a Debriefing Strategy in Online ESL Classrooms

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of debriefing in online English as a second language (ESL) classrooms in an urban national primary school. Self-evaluation is essential to enhance teaching and learning. This paper pursues the impact of a debriefing strategy using an exit ticket to assist successful learning in online ESL classrooms. Fifty Year 5 students and eleven ESL teachers participated in this study. A mixed methods approach was implemented to investigate the impact of a debriefing strategy and to gauge teachers’ perceptions on debriefing in an online ESL classroom in the learning process. The students were divided equally into two groups. The group that had a debriefing session scored higher (mean = 19.64, min = 18, max = 20) than the control group (mean = 13.72, min = 9, max = 16), which did not have debriefing. The average test scores from the two groups were significantly different from each other. The teachers gave sufficient explanation related to their understanding on debriefing and its importance in the classroom. To understand teachers’ perceptions of debriefing as a tool in an online ESL classroom, data were generated from a semi-structured interview and analyzed by using chi-square analysis. The p-value was 0.0004226; therefore, there was a significant association or relationship between the answers in this interview. Debriefing proved to help the students with collaboration, reflective thinking, critical thinking, and ease of understanding. Teachers in schools should consider including a debriefing time in their lesson plans since this strategy has the potential of improving the efficacy of the teaching and learning process.