Sessions /
Zoom or Room: Investigating Interactive Differences On- and Offline #1020

Since the onset of the coronavirus, EFL teachers have turned to videoconferencing applications such as Zoom and WebEx, which enable a wide range of interactive classroom activities. These apps have features called "breakout rooms" that let students do small-group activities and tasks. The hope is that (assuming good internet connections) the interactive processes will be the same or similar to offline classrooms, implying that overall task performance will be similar, and therefore, learning opportunities will also be similar. This study questions this assumption. Recordings from four university classes across two semesters of groups doing tasks on Zoom were compared to those of groups working offline. In general, the online learners (using Zoom) had different interaction patterns: they engaged in more task-organizing talk, had more and longer pauses, and engaged in fewer language-related episodes (LREs) than did the offline learners. The implications for teaching and learning are discussed.