An investigation of teachers' perceptions about the benefits of video classes at Osmangazi University Foreign Languages Department

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This study investigated the perceptions of teachers about the benefits of video classes at Osmangazi University Foreign Languages Department (OGU FLD) Preparatory School. The study also investigated whether teachers at one level perceived the material to be more beneficial than teachers did at another level, how teachers thought they used the video materials in video classes, and how teachers connected what they were doing in the video classes to the main course. The data was collected through a preliminary questionnaire and interviews with the teachers. The questionnaire was distributed to fifteen teachers who were teaching video classes at the time of the study and it consisted of three parts. The questions in the first part asked for background information about the teachers, while the questions in the second and third parts requested information about the teachers’ current experience and reactions to the video classes. The results of the questionnaire were used to select teachers for interviews. Two teachers with differing views from each level (elementary, pre-intermediate, and intermediate) were selected. The interviews were divided into two main parts, each of which consisted of 10 questions. The questions in the first part were related to the first and second research questions, which were about the perceptions of the teachers in OGU FLD about the benefits of video use in the current program and whether teachers at one level, as a group, perceived the materials to be more beneficial than teachers at another level. The questions in the second part were asked to get information to answer the third and fourth research questions which were about how teachers thought they used the video materials in video classes and how the teachers connected what they are doing in the video classes to the main course. The data collected through the questionnaire was recorded in charts for each part. The data was then analyzed in order to select the six teachers, attempting to find two at each level with differing views. The data collected through the interviews were analyzed by categorizing the responses to the interview questions under common themes and response patterns. The results of the study revealed that all the teachers perceived the video classes at OGU FLD to be beneficial for their students in several ways. They considered video classes beneficial particularly for the improvement of students’ listening, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar skills. The results showed that the way the teachers used the video materials was quite similar, as the core video material and the supplemental material were guided. However, the way the teachers used the movies was completely up to the teachers; there were not any suggested procedures in the curriculum. The results also showed that the core video material was internally connected to the main course book. The supplemental video material was used to compensate for missing points in the core material such as particular grammar points. There was no connection between the movies and the main course.Güldaş (Akalın), MineM.S