ENHANCING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN AN ONLINE EFL WRITING COURSE THROUGH AN E-MAGAZINE PROJECT

The new world shaped by COVID-19 has witnessed a sudden boom in online learning on an unprecedented scale, reigniting a long-standing debate on the effectiveness of in-person learning versus e-learning. For many EFL teachers, teaching writing has always been challenging as writing is one of the most cognitively demanding tasks for students to master. This has become more challenging during the pandemic due to the lack of in-person interaction in the virtual classroom and e-learning fatigue among students, urging teachers to adopt new digital tools and appropriate strategies to enliven the virtual writing class and enhance students’ learning experience. This study explores students’ response towards the e-magazine assignment in the online Writing English course designed for undergraduate students in the English Language - Fast-track Program at FELTE, ULIS. The data were collected via a questionnaire consisting of Likert scale and open-ended questions distributed among 20 (out of 25) students attending this course. The findings revealed students’ positive experience in completing the e-magazine assignment, which helped increase their interest and motivation in the course. Factors contributing to their satisfaction with the assignment include diversity of writing genres, application of online graphic design tools to digitalize written products, useful teacher’s assistance and peer feedback. The results indicated with suitable teaching strategies and contents, and the assistance of various online learning tools, the same level of learning quality and efficacy of the virtual writing classroom can be achieved compared to face-to-face instruction.