The Indonesian Academic Writing Lecturers’ Perceptions, Issues, and Strategies Toward Teaching Writing at a Distance

Abstract

This study is aimed to investigate the Indonesian academic writing lecturers’ perceptions toward teaching academic writing at a distance. Moreover, this current study also provided data about the issues during conducting virtual classes and followed by the strategies that were used by the Indonesian academic writing lecturers in outgrowing those issues. The objective of this study is to fill the gap in the previous studies that still did not provide the perceptions, issues, and strategies from academic writing lecturers’ points of view. With five Indonesian academic writing lecturers as the participants who were still teaching writing classes online fully from Universitas Islam Malang, IAIN Pontianak, and Universitas Graha Nusantara Kota Padangsidimpuan Sumatera Utara, the data were collected. The data are in the form of qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative data were collected from the questionnaire with twelve closed questions to dig into the participants’ perceptions towards teaching academic writing at a distance. Besides, the qualitative data were gathered through semi-structured interview guidelines including four core questions to get detailed information about the issues and the strategies in teaching academic writing at a distance. To get the data validation, this study uses member checking to ensure the questionnaire data and triangulation of the interview results. This study revealed that the Indonesian academic writing lecturers perceived positively about academic writing courses at a distance. However, the participants had several problems while conducting the online writing classes that related to each other. The first issue was the unstable internet connection which can be solved by substituting the class into the assignment that can be submitted several days later. Also, the asynchronous model teaching helped them to diminish these issues. Secondly, the student’s motivation is hindered thus the students showed negative attitudes such as did not have enough encouragement in doing their task, the unwillingness to consult their writing product, the tendency to turn off their camera, and doing the class with another activity or even skip the classes. Consequently, the Indonesian academic writing lecturers did numerous activities to minimize these issues such as encouraging them to do their tasks, decreasing the task, being flexible about the submission time, and creating the strict rules that were communicated at the beginning of the class. The last issue was the students’ lack of knowledge in writing which can be solved by making a group discussion and re-explaining the materials. Unfortunately, this study is limited by the unwillingness of the two participants to do detailed interview sessions lively. Hence, there were only three of them that have the willingness to do the interview. Thus, the researcher suggests for the next study have more participants and really do deep interview sessions. To make better academic writing classes at a distance, the suggestions came from the participants. They mentioned that teachers should be more creative and work harder to engage the students in online classes. The way to convey the materials matter to the students and it is hoped to be one of their motivation to attend online classes. The findings of this current study are hoped to be one of the references in helping other academic writing teachers to teach their online classes. Also, to anticipate or minimize the issues that would be faced by them. Besides, the strategies to cope with the issues in this study may be solutions too in their academic writing online classes.