Abstract:

The typical modes of teacher-student communication were disrupted in 2020 with the move to remote teaching and learning (RTL) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to foster teacher-student relationships (TSRs) by evincing care and concern with students and their learning while distanced, the instructor/researcher (I/R), who is also the author and presenter, created the multifunctional Attendance Record Sheet, or ARS, for use with his English as a foreign language (EFL) students at three Japanese universities. As its name suggests, the ARS was used to take student attendance remotely, as students were to submit an ARS to their teacher each week. However, it was also meant to function as a positive TSR-development tool during RTL. Via the ARS, students were provided a reliable means by which they could share their questions, problems, and remote learning experiences with their teacher weekly as they engaged in their studies remotely in this new online environment. The I/R would then inspect each student's ARS, assess what students relayed about their course progress and any other information they conveyed through it, and show his interest and concern in students’ learning by not only responding to any questions, requests, comments, or difficulties that they wrote on the ARS, but also by offering encouragement and praise (often on an individual basis) as they learned new concepts and gained new skills in their courses, as appropriate.

The first part of this research (which is currently in press) examined students’ spring (i.e., first) semester ARS responses in the 2020 academic school year. Analyses revealed that students engaged with and communicated via the ARS in such a positive manner that they went far beyond expectations and provided more information than had initially been requested. The goals of this second part of the research, which examines fall semester ARS submissions, were the same as the first, that is, to determine:
(a) if students were engaging with the ARS as instructed and
(b) what they were communicating via their ARS submissions.

With this additional information, it had the further goal of examining students’ ARS responses across the entire remote 2020 academic school year. Analyses of students' fall semester ARS responses revealed that students continued to communicate an unanticipated yet welcome amount of feedback. It was found that they remained positive with respect to their distanced learning and had become ever more familiar and adept with their new remote style of learning. The results of this research, which include analyses across both 2020 academic school year semesters, indicate that the ARS worked as intended, both as a method for taking attendance and as a tool to create and foster positive distanced relationships between the I/R and his EFL students during mandatory RTL.

Discussion of this research will include background information about attendance, the importance of teacher immediacy behavior displays that can foster TSRs, and ARS creation, layout, and implementation. Conclusions, implications, and future research directions will also be proffered.

Keywords:

COVID-19, emergency remote teaching, remote teaching and learning, teacher-student relationships, communication.