BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC BÀ RỊA – VŨNG TÀU --------------- NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO CHALLENGES OF ONLINE LEARNING ENCOUNTERED BY ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT BA RIA - VUNG TAU UNIVERSITY LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ Bà Rịa – Vũng Tàu, tháng 05 năm 2024 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC BÀ RỊA – VŨNG TÀU --------------- NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO CHALLENGES OF ONLINE LEARNING ENCOUNTERED BY ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT BA RIA - VUNG TAU UNIVERSITY LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ Ngành: Lý luận và phương pháp dạy học bộ môn Tiếng Anh Mã ngành: 8140111 CÁN BỘ HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS. NGUYỄN XUÂN HỒNG Bà Rịa – Vũng Tàu, tháng 05 năm 2024 STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis has not previously published or written by another person except references. Signature: Date: i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am honored and proud to be participating in this Master of TESOL course at Ba Ria - Vung Tau University.
This course has leaded me to improve not only my knowledge but also raise the awareness about the education field in general and the English language training in particular. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my research supervisor, Nguyen Xuan Hong, Ph., for his patience which supported and inspired me to complete this thesis. With enthusiasm, dedication, and a wealth of knowledge, he planted the seeds for me to grow up to achieve the quintessence of education. He taught me the methodology for conducting my research and guided me on how to present my research in a clear and coherent manner.
He also guided me from the first steps of conducting my research to complete writing the thesis. I am extremely grateful and respectful of him with all my sincerity. Furthermore, I am grateful to the Rector of Ba Ria -Vung Tau University and the teachers of all classes at this university for offering me the opportunities to do the survey and interview with their students. Especially, I would also like to express my deep gratitude to the English major students and the English teachers at Ba Ria -Vung Tau for taking the time to complete the survey and answer my interview questions.
I thank my fellow colleagues for their encouragements and useful comments. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for their spiritual support during my study and thesis completion. They are always by my side, encouraging, and sharing with me to get the current accomplishments. Nguyen Thi Phuong ii ABSTRACT This study focuses on exploring challenges of English major students in conducting online learning at Ba Ria – Vung Tau University.
Based on previous studies both in Vietnam and abroad, a conceptual framework was designed in five main factors that effected to online learning. The research results were found by analyzing quantitative data by introducing survey to 160 English major students and qualitative data by 15 English major students and 10 teachers from the interview. The scores were calculated to figure out factors causing difficulties for English major students during online learning. Besides, record of interviews was done to support analyzed statistics.
The results revealed that difficulties aspect of support is the highest while the lowest belonged to the challenges in aspect of the environment. Meanwhile, the challenges in aspect of collaboration were at the second position and the third position is about students’ attitude towards online learning. About challenges relating to equipment, the result was at the fourth position which higher than the environment factor. Additionally, further discussions and recommendations on challenges that English major students encoutered during online learning was done.
Key words: online learning, challenges, difficulties, English major students, Ba Ria – Vung Tau University iii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. viii LIST OF FIGURES.
ix LIST OF TABLES. Background to the study. Context of the study. Purposes of the study.
Scope and Significance of the study. Significance of the study. The organization of the thesis. Definition of online learning.
Types of online learning. History of online learning. Advantages of online learning in English language learning. Challenges of English major students during learning online.
Framework of the study. Procedure and timeline. 54 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Challenges in online learning of English major students.
Perception of English major students toward challenges during learning English online. Teachers’ perceptions to the challenges of online learning in teaching English. The challenges English major students face during English online learning. English major students’ perception of challenges encountered in online learning at BVU.
Teachers’ perception about challenges of English online learning/teaching. English major students and teachers’ suggestions during online learning program. Pedagogical implications for students, teachers and administrators. Recommendations for further research.
96 LIST OF REFERENCES. a Appendix 1: Questionnaires for English major students. d Appendix 2: Interviews for English major students. h Appendix 3: Teacher’s inteview.
j vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BVU: Ba Ria - Vung Tau University EL: Electronic learning/ E-learning LMS: Learning Management System F2F: Face to face MOOC: Massive Online Open Courses ICT: Information and Communications Technology viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure No. Figure’s name Page Figure 2. Equipment: One of online learning’s challenges 27 Figure 2. Perception: One of online learning’s challenges 28 Figure 2.
Collaboration: One of online learning’s challenges 29 Figure 2. Support: One of online learning’s challenges 30 Figure 2. Environment: One of online learning’s challenges 31 Challenges of online learning encountered by English major Figure 2. 37 students at Ba Ria - Vung Tau University ix LIST OF TABLES Table No.
Table’s name Page Table 3. A summary of study procedure and timeline 50 The overall results of challenges in online learning of English Table 4. 55 major students Table 4. Challenges in aspect of equipment 56 Table 4.
Challenges in aspect of attitude 57 Table 4. Challenges in term of collaboration during online lessons 59 Table 4. Challenges in term of supports during online lessons 61 Challenges in term of the learning environment during online Table 4. 63 lessons English major students’ perception toward challenges of online Table 4.
66 learning x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview to the current research including background, statement of the problem, research objectives, scope of the study, research questions, significance of the study, definition of terms mentioned in the research and organization of the study. Background to the study Online learning was known as a new educational institution in 1967 by British government (Moore & Kearsley, 2011). At first, it was the use of television and radio to direct access for higher education. Two years later in the UK, the Open University began to take shape with a role in supporting the development of the new institution that was the world’s leading national distance education university.
This Open University enjoyed economies of scale by having more students than any other universities. It’s having a strong level of funding, and makes full use of communication technologies to teach a full university curriculum to any adult who wants such an education. The UK Open University emerged a world class university as a model of a total systems approach to distance education. According to Moore and Kearsley (2011), in the part due to those achievements, online learning has been widely emulated in other countries because of the large scale needed to achieve both quality and cost effectiveness.
There were many other open universities in the world such as at the Asia area is Al Quds Open University in Jordan, the Andra Pradesh Open University in India, the National Open University in Taiwan, the Open University of Israel, the University of the Air in Japan; at the Americas: Athabasca University in Canada, the Universidad Estatal in Distancia in Costa Rica, the Universidad Nacional Abierta in Venezuela; at the Europe: the Open Universiteit Heerlen in the Netherlands, the Fern University in Germany, the Universidade Aberta in Portugal and at the Australia: the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. Despite of differences, these institutions had important similarities in that they were all single-mode distance teaching 1 institutions. The organization focuses exclusively on this method of teaching and learning, recruiting teams of experts to design courses with large enrollments. Online learning in higher education has only recently been introduced to Vietnam.
However, there were only a few fully functional online universities in Vietnam (Do, 2017; Le, 2018). Among them, Funix University was the first online university in Vietnam, officially opened and put into operation in November 2015. Funix University organized and managed teaching and learning activities with a new method called Funix Way. Funix University has cooperated with other universities and educational institutions to update expertise and acquire leading experts.
Another online university in Vietnam was Topica University which opened for higher education in March 2016. Topica Edtech Group is the leading online education provider in Southeast Asia. This organization has cooperated with 16 universities in many places in the United States, Philippines and Vietnam. On 31st December 2019, one historical coronavirus named as COVID-19 appeared in Wuhan, China (World Health Organization, 2020a).
At first, the humans simply assumed it as a common flu as ever. After that, the infection rate increased and the infection rate spread rapidly, seriously affecting the health of people in Wuhan. The situation at that time was that the hospital was overloaded. There was a lack of medical equipment and were not enough doctors causing the number of deaths increase continuously.
At this time, the WHO pointed out that COVID-19 is a worldwide pandemic from March 11th, 2020. Since then, it has had a serious global impact on human health, the global economy and education cannot avoid of influence. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused to the imposition of strict methods to prevent the spread of the disease on a large scale. Social distancing and blockade measures have changed people routine, at the time that the internet plays an important part in assisting work-from-home, online learning, collaboration, social media, entertainment, videos,… (Favale et al.
Along with creativity and adaptation to living in conditions affected by COVID-19 disease, humans have transferred from face-to- face (F2F) formality to other channel such as online learning to support human educational development in the time of social distancing. Higher education in many countries around the world was undergoing a transformation since the COVID-19 pandemic occurred. The education sector had to face 2 to a situation of sharply increasing enrollment with relatively reduced resources, while still ensuring educational quality (Harvey & Knight, 1996). As this innovative field of education strived to foster active, autonomous, and lifelong learners (Candy, 1998); that required learners be equipped with the essential knowledge to achieve the potential of technology.
Therefore, it was necessary for educators to deeply understand who the learners are and how they learn in this changing situation (Byrne et al. The transformation was especially relevant when educators concentrated to the issues of improving student learning, rather than racing to meet school or government goals (Kirkwood & Price, 2005). Another highly appreciated driver of educational transformation was advances in digitalization. Those advantages included words, sounds and moving images that can be stored, integrated, transmitted and presented as digital media.
By being able to store data, both teachers and learners can use and reuse them more easily as communication via computers and telecommunications becomes increasingly popular. Aspects of education were increasingly mediated through information and communication technology (ICT), both in and out of school. On the one hand, this was driven by changes in student characteristics.