The Rise of Webinars as Professional Development Modality: Investigating the Opinions of Teacher Educators of English

Abstract

Professional development is the essential part of education. Rapid development globaly, technology dominated our life. Language teaching and learning was mainly shaped by the digital mode and this necessiates teacher educators to relay on webinars to maintain professional exchange and networking during pandemic. Even after, it seems that webinars continue to be a part of professional lives. However, not many studies have been conducted about its impact on teacher educators. Given that a great amount of time and effort is invested in preparing and attending professional webinars, it is a good time to hear the participants’ voices. With this in mind, a total of 115 English language teacher educators were requested to evaluate their webinar-attending experiences. The data were collected through an online survey and focus group interviews. Participants mentioned that webinars generaly are male keynote-speaker dominated, need improvement and propose some implications to increase the effectiveness of future webinars.