Emergency remote teaching and learning in a language and intercultural communication program during the “new normal” in Thai higher education

Abstract

This paper aims to explore how and the extent to which faculty staff and postgraduate students perceived and responded to the transformation from face-to-face to emergency remote teaching and learning during the “new normal” circumstances in higher education due to the unprecedented impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic globally. This case study focused on a group of ten faculty staff and fourteen postgraduate students in a Master of Arts Program in Language and Intercultural Communication at a research-based university in Thailand.  Drawing upon the data from the open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews conducted virtually, the findings, informed by Akabana et al.’s (2021) emergency remote teaching (ERT), revealed four key components, including faculty staff, postgraduate students, instructional practices, and institutional support. Faculty staff put efforts into adapting themselves to the “new normal” teaching environment without hesitation to upskill themselves in educational technology in order to meet the postgraduate students’ learning needs.  Although these four components of ERT are interlinked and overlapped with one another, they play a crucial role not only in postgraduate studies, but also research in the fields of language and intercultural communication studies. The “next normal” future for higher education in a post-pandemic era is to consider the positive solutions of the “new normal” experience during the emergency response period as a basis for reimagining and redesigning curriculum and instructional practices, as well as institutional support in terms of academic, social, and psychological dimensions for faculty staff and students. This study benefits curriculum designers, policymakers, teacher educators, and educational researchers to navigate the current crisis and prepare for the “next normal” higher education at national and global levels in the post-pandemic future.