Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, face to face classes were suspended in many parts of the world in 2020 and 2021. The change from face to face to online environments for educational practices was thus inevitable. The fact that the implementation of online classes was made in an urgent manner made these circumstances even more difficult. Global South contexts were some of the most affected ones by such change, given the difficulty that some students had in terms of material resources and pedagogical support. Additionally, the lack of preparation on the part of professors to address technological and educational challenges only added to the many other difficulties that were being faced in educational environments. While these issues have been addressed by researchers in different parts of the world, literature on how EMI professors and students felt during this scenario is still scarce. Therefore, the aim of this presentation is to report on the results of an ongoing research project that seeks to understand the perspectives of professors and students in a global South university (in Brazil) upon the affordances and challenges of migrating from face to face to online settings in EMI classes. In particular, we seek to understand how this change has affected pedagogical and linguistic practices, and perceptions about learning. The research is relevant because it adds to the growing literature on EMI in Brazil (Baumvol & Sarmento, 2016; Finardi & Guimaraes, 2020; Ramos, 2018), as well as to the literature on emergency remote instruction during the pandemic (Finardi & Sevilla-Pavon, 2021). It also brings the perspectives of both professors and students in relation to the affordances and challenges of planning and developing EMI classes in online environments, which may be important for the development of this type of instruction in the future.
References
Baumvol, L., & Sarmento, S. A internacionalização em casa e o uso de inglês como meio de instrução. Echoes, Florianópolis 2016.
Finardi, K., & Guimaraes, F. (2020). Internationalization and the covid-19 pandemic: Challenges and opportunities for the global South. Journal of Education, Teaching and Social Studies, 2(4), 1-15.
Finardi, K., & Sevilla-Pavon, A. (2021). Pandemic language teaching: Insights from Brazilian and international teachers on the pivot to emergency remote instruction. Journal of Language and Education, 7, 127-138.
Ramos, M. Y. (2018). Internationalization of graduate education in Brazil: rationale and mechanisms. Educação e Pesquisa, 44, 1-20.
