Addressing Key Challenges in Online Business English Teaching: Action Research

Online teaching has been beneficial for us as a teacher as well as a learner because we could be productive and active despite physical boundaries. While pandemic facilitated higher use of technology, it also helped us improve our skills for distance learning. A variety of possible modes of conducting distance learning are actively used now, like synchronous-asynchronous, flipped, hybrid and blended. Whichever of these modes suits the objective of a lesson is chosen by course instructor. For my course on Business English with a group of 25 students, I conducted action research to improve on these issues of online teaching with the help of needs analyses, diagnostic tests, formative/ summative assessments and course evaluation. While we find various study on learners’ engagement issues, fewer studies focus on integrating digital literacy, plagiarism prevention and fair assessment in online classroom for Business English. The issues of online teaching chosen for this study are: (a) Sense of space; (b) Social Connect; (c) Avoiding Plagiarism; (d) Fair Assessment The challenge of creating a comfortable sense of space (a) and the pace of developing a social connection (b) amongst students as well as with teacher varies every time for a cohort. Advent of AI platforms and their inclusion in classroom demands responsible teaching and requires the students to be equally aware to avoid any kind of plagiarism (c). Fair assessment (d) for a course plan has been used as a multi-assessment model. The aim of this action research is to identify, describe and find ways to overcome these challenges with the help of an improved course design. The results of action research and course evaluation suggest that these challenges can be overcome with open-mindedness and adept users of online tools to develop digital literacy.