Teacher's Roles in the Online Teaching

Abstract

Internet has particularly revolutionized the teaching and learning process as the spread of the Coronavirus 19 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought the disruptions to education across the world. Vietnam is not an exception. The lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have interrupted conventional schooling with nationwide school closures. Face-to-face teaching and learning turns into online process which leads to significant changes in teacher’s roles; such demands of online teaching and learning during the pandemic crisis push teachers to raise intensive awareness of their roles as implementing this kind of teaching. Thus, this research is tremendously significant as online learning is a trend of education now. Apart from online teacher’s challenges, this study intended to identify changes in teachers’ roles towards the online teaching process during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study also examined the most important role that online teacher should play in the online teaching process.  This research used a qualitative approach because the researcher describes teacher’s roles toward online teaching. The participants of this research were 15 English teachers working in the University of Information Technology (UIT). To achieve the aim, the study utilized a questionnaire with 12 open-minded items included. The findings of this research revealed 8 dominant roles to the online teachers: researcher, content facilitator, assessor, adviser, process facilitator, manager, designer and technologist. Meanwhile, content facilitator is agreed to be the most prominent role for the online teacher. Hence, this study concludes that online teacher plays a lot of roles in the teaching process in which content facilitator is highlighted.