T2 did not provide any online feedback to the students’ postings. Her rationale was that since Moodle afforded the students the opportunity for independent learning, her provision of feedback on their online writing might undermine this potential. Moreover, as the students were expected to include content that had already been taught in class in their posting, there was no necessity for her feedback. This attitude reflected T2’s assumption that as the students were exposed to the content they were able to reproduce what was required in their online posting. She seemed to consider that her role as a teacher was to transmit the content to her students who were then expected to include it in their online posting. Such assumptions indicated T2’s lack of pedagogical knowledge. In sharing her assumptions, T2 explained,
So, at the start we thought that it would be more hands-off, more student- student interaction and I think it was but not in a way we expected….Yeah, for me I felt like that was an opportunity for them to contact more with each other but I think for some of them, that was not what they wanted. They wanted more comment on what they'd said or perhaps more correction of their work. So they had different requirements and different wants from the system…. (Teacher Two/Interview Two)
T2 acknowledged that her reasons for not providing feedback conflicted with some of the students’ expectations. They expected her to comment or to correct their language errors – as stated in the student focus group interview. In raising this issue, one student in the focus group interview explained,
I think one problem even if we write in the Moodle, there is no response from teacher because we don't know whether or not our writing is correct or not. It is very important for us. I'm just writing, don't know whether it's grammatically correct or not. So, if no correction, no suggestion, no improve in what's expect, no response from teacher, to say it's ok, correct, I agree or something like that. So my interest becoming down.
130
Since no online teacher feedback had been provided, the students were not convinced of the value of Moodle and gradually stopped contributing online.
T3 considered it necessary to give feedback to students’ online writing and did so by posing questions to their contributions. However, she found the practice of posing questions as a form of feedback to every student’s online posting was daunting. She spent considerable time reading through each piece of writing and posing a question related to their content. Although she admitted being overwhelmed with the task, she believed that providing feedback was necessary particularly as one of the other teacher participants was doing the same. T3 also wanted to avoid creating an impression that she did not value her students’ online work. T3 stated,
When I read the responses and I have replied to them which we haven’t done this week so I don’t think it’s been posted yet, that kind of reply and I said to them, I’ve just had a look at what you wrote and I’ve put a little reply to each of you…. I probably felt overwhelmed by the whole thing and then I realised that some people were like doing this, so I thought well I need to do that with my class as well, so I wanted to, you know do it for my class as well as other teachers were doing, you know I’d hate to think that my students were posting theirs and the teacher never bothered to look at it and yet the other classes you know, the teachers did. So it was like, well, ok I’ll do that as well, you know. (Teacher Three/Interview Two)
The sense of being overwhelmed likely influenced T3’s decision to provide the online feedback once and to only one forum. Providing feedback to every student’s response in the online learning environment is possible but the nature of such feedback is different compared to the face-to-face classroom learning environment. Particular strategies need to be implemented to enable not only the teacher but also the students to provide feedback to one another. T3 seems to lack knowledge about online pedagogy related to feedback.
To ensure that her students were aware that she had provided feedback to their postings, T3 informed them about it during classroom time. Her students reported that she provided feedback, which consisted of questions to probe their responses to the exercises. In describing the aspect that they liked about the use of Moodle, one student acknowledged that she appreciated her teacher’s feedback. However,
131
the feedback was provided only once throughout the use of the forums and did not concern their use of grammar. This student stated,
….because when you put the idea and your English and teacher corrected them ask the question. This is a good but she not to correct your grammar. But only one time she do it (ask question) on Moodle. After that never!
(Student/Focus Group (2) Interview)
To summarise, the use of Moodle to support the students’ classroom speaking reflected the teachers’ beliefs about whether feedback needed be provided to the students’ online contributions. While T2 believed that giving feedback was unnecessary, this view conflicted with students’ expectations and they then stopped posting. T3, on the other hand, considered online feedback to be necessary to ensure that students did not feel neglected. She also felt some peer pressure to provide feedback. However, despite this belief, she was only able to provide feedback once in the form of questions to her students’ contributions in one forum. It appears that these teachers’ reservations about providing feedback were most likely due to their lack of understanding that teaching online and in the classroom are significantly different.