Learner Reticence at the Time of the Pandemic: Examining Filipino Students’ Communication Behaviors in Remote Learning

Abstract

Between the uncertainty of a global pandemic, the unfamiliar territory of fully remote education, and the detrimental effects of related crises on the educational system, emerging research on pandemic pedagogy have underscored the universal presences of 1) anxiety in students and teachers, 2) decreased communication opportunities, and 3) challenges with communication technologies –all of which have been found to affect students’ communication behaviors in their remote classes. Learner reticence –students’ inadequate ability in self-expression usually manifested in reluctance to engage in classroom discourse– remains one of the biggest instructional communication challenges most teachers face today. Recent pandemic-related changes in learning delivery have put students at an even bigger disadvantage in terms of self-expression, participation, and discourse since the majority of the difficulties they experience in remote learning involve and are affected by their resources’ capacities to sustain communication with their teachers and classmates. This study investigated the self-perceived experiences of learner reticence of Filipino higher education students. With phenomenology as the main method of inquiry, all participants disclosed experiences of reticent behaviors in their remote classes during the pandemic; individual and personality-based factors were found to contribute the most to the students’ experienced reticence. The participants’ narratives also gave rise to insights on teacher immediacy and interpersonal communication in remote classes.

Malaysian ESL Teachers’ Challenges in Implementing Home-Based Teaching and Learning (PdPR)

“…As shown in Table 1.0, the three respondents of this study agreed that the lack of satisfactory student attendance was a challenge that led to other problems such as lack of bilateral communication between teachers and students and also difficulties for teachers to conduct evaluations of students. This is similar to the findings of past research (Mahalingam & Jamaludin, 2021;Stewart & Lowenthal, 2021;Sumilong, 2022) that have indicated how remote learning tends to decrease communication between educators and students while findings of other previous studies (Cheng & Nasri, 2022;Noorbehbahani, 2022) have also discussed the difficulty of conducting assessments during remote learning. The students' attendance is often affected by the lack of access to the internet or the absence of devices.…”

“…Mahalingam & Jamaludin (2021) explained that the difficulty in establishing bilateral communication between teachers and students was one of the challenges to teachers that caused a flawed remote learning. Multiple research has shown how remote learning often results in a decrease of communication opportunities for teachers and students (Stewart & Lowenthal, 2021;Sumilong, 2022). Although there are applications like Google Meet and Zoom to facilitate virtual communication, the absence of students caused a decrease in active two-way communication since PdPR was implemented (Hamzah et al, 2021).…”

The Effect of Cognitive Load on Learning Memory of Online Learning Accounting Students in the Philippines

“…Studies have identified specific ways to refine their investigations of online learning effectiveness (Fox et al, 2023;Elalouf et al, 2022) [28,29], acknowledging that engagement, perception, and satisfaction are separate constructs leading to different implications in pedagogy (Coman et al, 2020;Dubey, 2023;Sumilong, 2022) [25,30,31]. Research has investigated the logistical support required (Alammary, 2022; Assadi & Kashkosh, 2022) [32,33] with government interventions to improve online education to improve supporting infrastructure (Daher et al, 2023) [34].…”

“…Research Investigation of Online Learning Davis (1989) [15] Ease of Use and Acceptance of Information Technology Ehlers and Pawlowski (2006) [23] Quality of online learning. Quality is more highly perceived than face-to-face learning Dhawan (2020) [5] Importance of Online Learning as a Learning Platform Mukhtar et al (2020) [7] Advantages, limitations, and recommendations Almahasees et al (2020) [20] Facebook as a Learning Platform Al-Salman and Haider (2020) [24] Staff perceptions of Online Learning Coman et al (2020) [25] Student perspectives on Online Learning Almahasees et al (2021) [17] Usefulness of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, offering online interactive classes, and WhatsApp as online platforms Pokhrel and Chhetri (2021) [21] Must innovate and implement alternative learning platforms, such as online learning Elashry et al (2021) [26] Adolescent Perceptions and Academic Stress Zalat et al (2021) [19] Staff Acceptance of Online Learning as a tool Alammary (2022) [32] Toolkit to support blended learning degrees Daher et al (2023) [34] Government intervention and leadership to promote online learning among students and teachers Assadi and Kashkosh (2022) [33] Strategies used by teacher trainers to address the technological, pedagogical, social, and emotional challenges of student-teacher interactions Asif et al (2022) [27] University students' perceptions Elalouf et al (2022) [29] Student perception of learning structured query language through online and face-to-face learning Sumilong (2022) [31] Students' self-expression, participation, and discourse Zhang et al (2022) [22] A metaverse for education that includes online learning for blended, competence-based, and inclusive education Fox et al (2023) [28] Efficacy of online learning for degree studies: Mental health recovery for carers Dubey (2023) [30] Factors behind student engagement in online learning Giesbers et al (2014) [35] Student Engagement with synchronous and asynchronous online learning Dargahi et al (2023) [36] Student satisfaction with synchronous and asynchronous online learning…”