The Problem of Comparing Achieved Proficiency While Teaching English Online vs Face-to-Face Without Formal Assessment

There are innumerable ways to relate technology with education. Online learning which consists of web-based learning, online journals and educational movies is all associated to the technology in education. With only a few keystrokes, students are able to explore the world of wisdom and obtain various resources related to what they are seeking. There should be no excuse for not being able to discover the world because the information is “at the tip of their fingers”. Currently, many pedagogic approaches implement technology in education. Some of the examples are project-based, web-based and online-based learning. All of these approaches are either student centered, where the students have to do self-access learning; or teacher-centered, where the teacher plays the main role in delivering knowledge. As for online-based learning approach, the teacher only acts as an instructor of the language subject by guiding the students to look for information on the Internet. Hence, the teacher will no longer become the main source of knowledge because his role is being replaced with the instructional technology.

Utilizing technology can generate many benefits for people especially in online learning. Yet, both students and teachers are still learning to incorporate it as part of the teaching and learning process because of the different teaching approaches required compared to the conventional classroom teaching. E-Learning is about students’ learning. By using online learning, both students and teachers should have equal opportunity to sharpen their skills.

Online learning is a growing educational alternative for adults who, due to time and space constraints cannot attend face-to-face classes on a regular basis. Since its beginnings, online education has maintained a crescent demand and it has evolved as technology itself has more to offer in terms of educational tools. Another reason why online education has become popular is because it offers the possibility to attend remote universities without having to move to new cities or countries. More and more colleges and universities are going beyond their physical frontiers to offer quality education to distant learners. Despite all the advances, however, there are many who are still skeptical about the quality and the outcomes of online education.

Based on years of experience and research, entities such as Quality Matters (QM) have developed models and standards for the design and implementation of online courses that meet the minimum quality requirements in terms of educational attainments and goals. Courses that follow these standards are thought to be comparable to face-to-face courses of the same subject matters (Martin, Ndoye & Wilkins, 2016) and can, therefore, guarantee comparable educational outcomes.

In Ukraine, learning English as a foreign language has become one of the national educational goals. It is believed that learning English will allow Ukrainian citizens to participate in the global economy and will make them competitive in other countries. In order to fulfill this national requirement, higher education institutions are focused on achieving high results in teaching English. Some institutions are working on broadening their course offerings by introducing online classes as an option for those students who cannot attend face-to-face sessions due to time constraints or location; however, little evidence is found to support that the outcomes of online courses are comparable to those in the face-to-face courses. In fact, one of the common conceptions is that they are not (York, 2017).

Offering quality online English courses has become a challenge and a necessity for universities. These programs should be aligned with the standards of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001), which are the standards used in Ukraine for the teaching and evaluation of foreign language learning. Any English program would have to comply with these standards and is expected to produce learning outcomes based on them.

Research studies about online language learning in higher education have reported that the outcomes are comparable and sometimes slightly superior to the ones from face-to-face courses (Blake, Wilson, Cetto & Pardo-Ballester, 2008; Chenoweth & Murday, 2003; Despain, 2003; Isenberg, 2010).

According to Lin and Warschauer (2015), “most studies measuring language learning in online environments focus on achievement, not proficiency” (p. 395). The authors suggest that one reason may be the cost and organizational difficulties to perform standardized proficiency tests. Most proficiency tests are expensive and usually students must pay for them. Using these types of tests to evaluate the results of instruction is ideal, but it costs money. Research studies not using proficiency tests (Chenoweth, Ushida, & Murday, 2006; Despain, 2003; Isenberg, 2010; Ushida, 2005) focus on what was taught rather than overall proficiency and this can be seen as a limitation. This is consistent to what Deusen-Scholl (2015) reports about assessing outcomes in online foreign education. She states that few data are available on standardized proficiency assessments and most studies rely on more subjective outcome measures such as learners’ self-perceptions and different studies have evaluated the impact of certain technological tools but have not addressed language proficiency.