Envisioning Online English Teaching in Indonesia: A Digital Autoethnographic Account

Authors

Muhalim Muhalim, Universitas Negeri MakassarFollow

Abstract

The onset of the global pandemic has become a radical turn of brick-and-mortar schooling to online distance learning. In this respect, continuous dialogue, and evaluation around the issue of online learning should be nurtured, particularly from actual pedagogical practices. Drawing on a digital autoethnographic account of the author, this article explores everyday online English teaching in tertiary education. I collected data using textual, visual, and aural experiences, corroborated by Zoom auto-recorded chats and screenshots as the artefacts of my online learning and teaching activities. The data were analyzed using the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework that focused on social, cognitive, and teaching presence of online learning. It is found that social presence, mainly caused by unstable internet connections, has been severely impacted, which was detrimental to class interactivity, learning goals, and learning assessment. The autoethnographic account in the current study depicts micro-level pedagogical activities that were then reflected to identify some concerns at meso-(institutional), and macro-level (governmental/national) that need to be addressed. The study implies that collaborative works and assessments of online learning shall be sustained by teachers and pertinent stakeholders. Eventually, the significance of this article lies beyond the explication of everyday disrupted pedagogy, as it echoes wider socio-economic-political realities in Indonesia.

Keywords

online English teaching, distance learning, digital autoethnography, educational technology

Author Bio(s)

Muhalim is an English lecturer at Universitas Negeri Makassar, Indonesia. He earned his doctoral degree in TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) at the Faculty of Education Monash University, Australia and previously worked in a private university in Indonesia. Please direct correspondence to muhalim@unm.ac.id.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Mrs Jacky-Lou Maestre for reading the early draft of the manuscript.

Publication Date

3-5-2023

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2023.5117

Recommended APA Citation

Muhalim, M. (2023). Envisioning Online English Teaching in Indonesia: A Digital Autoethnographic Account. The Qualitative Report, 28(3), 700-716. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2023.5117

ORCID ID

0000-0003-2775-5203