Investigating Factors Contributing to Online Language Learning Success: Student Teachers’ Perspectives

The objective of this study was to explore student teachers’ views of teaching factors which make online learning success possible. It was a mixed-methods research with concurrent design in which the qualitative and quantitative phase were used simultaneously. The participants were 107 MA students of TEFL at IUST. The instrument was a questionnaire with 19 items followed by an open-ended question. The findings of the quantitative phase indicated that ‘information seeking’ as one of online learning success category, gained the highest agreement, while ‘constraint recognition’ received the lowest agreement of student teachers. In details, the quantitative results indicated that student teachers held the view that improving communication skills and maintaining good rapport between the teacher and students can be the most important factors which lead to online learning success, whereas using web-conferencing technologies to gain insights about class concepts may not be effective. Given the qualitative phase and in response to the open-ended question, student teachers believed that good quality and high speed of Internet, teacher’s technological knowledge, learners’ engagement, and good rapport between the teacher and students play the most important role in students’ achievement and success in online classes.