Understanding EFL university teachers’ synchronous online teaching belief change

Abstract

To sustain students’ continuous learning in a Covid-19 pandemic context, schools and universities have shifted traditional classroom teaching to synchronous online teaching. However, there is limited understanding of acceptance and adoption of synchronous online teaching by university teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). This study, therefore, examined EFL university teachers’ synchronous online teaching beliefs before and after the outbreak of Covid-19 in China drawing on Davis’s technology acceptance model. A total of 257 EFL university teachers participated in this study. Data were collected through a questionnaire which was designed to measure participants’ actual use (AU), attitudes toward use (ATU), perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEU), facilitating conditions (FC), social norms (SN), and self-efficacy (SE) in two synchronous online teaching conditions: before and after the Covid-19. The study showed that in-service EFL university teachers’ actual use of synchronous online teaching was subject to social (i.e. social norms), institutional (i.e. facilitating conditions), and individual (i.e. perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, self-efficacy, and attitudes toward use) levels. The main change of teachers’ synchronous online teaching beliefs, due to the Covid-19, was that perceived usefulness became a significant predictor of teachers’ actual use of synchronous online teaching, whereas perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness changed to be insignificant predictors of teachers’ attitudes toward use of synchronous online teaching. Implications for teacher training and service were discussed to better support EFL university teachers’ synchronous online teaching in the future.