Teacher Role in Tandem Learning

I finished my first round interviews with two lecturers at my universities. There were many emerged topics during the conversation. I’m thinking about finding some frameworks for guiding the interview to get more in-depth information from the participants. Today I searched for more recent articles from Asian EFL Journal and I found an interesting article. It is a case study about teacher role in Tandem learning or email-based instruction.
The article is “The Discourse of an English Teacher in a Cyber Writing Course: Roles and Autonomy” by Chi Yen Chiu
The researcher conducted the content analysis and discourse analysis to identify teacher role in terms of teaching and counselling from a teacher’s email correspondence with two adult students.

The result suggests that different teacher roles affect the learners’ opportunities of language learning. Counselling roles create supportive learning environment for the development of learner autonomy in language learning. The findings from this research give me some interview guidelines when looking into teachers’ roles in web-based language learning. These are teacher role categorizations.

Indicators for Teaching Roles
1. Setting objectives
2. Determining course content
3. Selecting materials
4. Deciding on time, place, and pace
5. Deciding on learning tasks and allocating homework
6. Dominating class interaction
7. Monitoring learning situation
8. Presenting grammar and vocabulary
9. Using teaching technique
10. Providing right answers or right ways of doing things
11. Marking and grading
12.Rewarding and punishing
13. Keeping records


Indicators for Counseling Roles
1. Eliciting and fulfilling learner aims, needs and wishes.
2. Clarifying and giving information for course content
3. Suggesting materials and other sources
4. Suggesting time line and organization procedures
5. Suggesting learning tasks
6. Being willing to listen and respond
7. Interpreting learning situation
8. Presenting learning materials
9. Analyzing learning technique
10. Offering alternative procedures and choices
11. Suggesting self-assessment techniques and tools
12. Supporting and being considerate
13. Giving positive or negative feedback

After I read the article, I want to explore how Thai tertiary teachers participate in online learning, how they interact with students in electronic medium, and how they perceive their role in the online learning environment. These are things for taking into consideration when I interview lecturers about their teaching. It is likely that nobody has asked the IT teachers these questions before...asking them these questions may encourage them to think about their own teaching practice and may lead to professional development.