impact of COVID-19 in an ESP course: An unforeseen adaptation to distance teaching

Abstract

The unexpected COVID-19 outbreak in the middle of the school year 2019-2020 and the subsequent declaration of the state of emergency by the Spanish government brought about a dramatic change in classroom structure along with digital innovation at all levels worldwide. Traditional classes inevitably needed to be shifted to an unprecedented as well as unexpected non-face-to-face model that both teachers and students had to use without prior training and which, consequently, required great effort and dedication. This article describes a case study of this adaptation process as it actually ensued in an eminently practical subject. On the other hand, it also examines the students’ perception based on an assessment survey on the methodology and activities implemented along the course. The results show the right and wrong choices made in the process, the students’ opinion about them together with potential solutions to correct the bad practices identified in the study. Finally, this article shows the extraordinary evolution of the use of new technologies in education as unforeseen one year ago.

Hybrid Learning of ESP in Agriculture Field: Students’ Perceptions and Learning Experiences

“…In several cases, the quality of Internet connectivity in one area is lacking or even insufficient, while other areas appear not to possess resources or equipment at all that are sufficient to support teleworking or tele-study at simultaneous times. University of Cádiz, for example, realized this fact and spent an incredible amount of funds to help its students, particularly in providing the availability of dependable Internet access (López-Zurita, 2022).…”

“…In the beginning, lecturers still had not become familiar with online platforms such as Google Meet, Teams, Zoom, Webex, and so on. All of these represent new terms that initially had not yet been commonly used in everyday life and became a matter that was hard to believe two years ago (Sahar, 2020;López-Zurita, 2022).…”