Teaching Speaking to Enhance Interactional Competence in Digital

Learning Environment: Challenges and Opportunities

Dian Misesani

1,2 a

, Slamet Setiawan

and Syafi’ul Anam

English Education Postgraduate Program, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Jl. Lidah Wetan, Surabaya, Indonesia

English Education Study Program, Universitas Nusa Nipa, Jl. Kesehatan, Maumere, Indonesia

Keywords: Digital Learning Environment, Virtual Exchange, Teaching Speaking, Interactional Competence, Teacher’s

Technological Competence.

Abstract: The widespread technology utilization in language learning has created a digital learning environment in

language classrooms in the past decade. The virtual exchanges alter such significant dynamics of online

interaction at higher education in Indonesia. The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ experiences

on how they created a digital learning environment in the teaching of speaking to enhance interactional

competence. It is a preliminary study seeking teachers who teach speaking. Open-ended questionnaires were

spread via Google form to 19 English teachers of higher education. They were from universities in seventh

different provinces in Indonesia, such as; Central-Java, East-Java, East-Kalimantan, NTT, South-Sulawesi,

and West-Papua. The questionnaires result showed that each teacher has different challenges and

opportunities in creating a digital learning environment for teaching speaking. One of the challenges

experienced by teachers in these seventh provinces in Indonesia was an unstable internet connection that

influenced the quality of online synchronous interaction. However, some teachers viewed opportunities for

their technological competence improvements. In addition, online interaction allows students with shy

personalities to speak more fluently and confidently than that in face-to-face interaction where they might

experience anxiety. Motivation is also one of the most influential internal factors to create successful learning

in digital learning. In conclusion, education in the digital era can be successful by creating a digital learning

environment shaped by innovative teachers with good technological competence. Supportive internet facilities

provided by the institution and parents’ roles, certainly, are included as crucial in supporting the digital

learning environment.

1 INTRODUCTION

Interaction is an essential part of face-to-face English

language classrooms. Advancements in

communication technology in the past decade have

transformed face-to-face into a digital culture as well

as supporting tools in the educational process.

Moreover, the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic

since 2020 has forced educational institutions in most

countries around the world to alter the teaching and

interaction modes through virtual exchanges

(Moorhouse et al., 2021). Teachers’ technological

competence is required to conduct online learning by

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utilizing virtual applications, platforms, or software

for real-time virtual exchange or conferences.

Despite the force of using technologies during the

pandemic, most, language teachers show many

efforts to become innovative-21st-century teachers

by utilizing technology and bringing a digital learning

environment to their classes. The use of digital

technology in education has been considered one of

the themes of innovative pedagogies (Herodotou et

al., 2019; Kukulska-hulme et al., 2021; Long & Shi,

2019).

However, virtual teaching and learning have brought

attached challenges for tertiary English teachers in

Indonesia, particularly in the way how the target

language is activated through new applications for

Misesani, D., Setiawan, S. and Anam, S.

Teaching Speaking to Enhance Interactional Competence in Digital Learning Environment: Challenges and Opportunities.

DOI: 10.5220/0012196600003738

Paper published under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Innovation in Education (ICoIE 4 2022) - Digital Era Education After the Pandemic, pages 61-72

ISBN: 978-989-758-669-9; ISSN: 2975-9676

virtual conferences. Teaching in the digital learning

environment is complicated, and it requires teachers

to upgrade their technological competence aiming at

creating a good digital learning environment to

support students’ learning. The complexity of digital

teaching and learning includes the requirement of

teachers’ ability to communicate across a screen,

engage using a two-dimensional image, facilitate

active online interactions, attend to students’

emotional needs across distance, maintain the sense

of students’ presence as not being physically

gathered, and overcome troubleshoot on technical

problems. They are all become challenges faced by

teachers in the digital era.

In a positive vibe and for a sustainable educational

process, teachers should overwhelm the challenges of

digital teaching-learning with its complexity. The

challenges in teaching online themselves should

become a problem to be solved which teachers may

transform into opportunities to create innovations in

language teaching. The constraint of integrating

technology for education during the pandemic is an

asset toward ‘momentous innovation.

(Peters, 2000) of digital pedagogy. It has to be

admitted that Covid-19 pandemic bring a great shift

on pedagogy and advantages for innovations

particularly educational context. A purposive training

program was conducted in a city in the middle part of

Indonesia aiming at enhancing teachers’

technological competencies (Misesani, 2021).

Teachers who previously had less knowledge of skills

on technology for teaching-learning were

endeavouring to upgrade their technological

competencies through the training program.

Several types of research on English Language

Teaching recently connected the use and integration

of technology to students’ interactions (Ahmed et al.,

2020; Moorhouse et al., 2021; O’Rourke & Stickler,

2017) and interactive practice in terms of online

collaborative dialogue (Dooly & Vinagre, 2021;

Strawbridge, 2021). They have studied the

importance of classroom interaction in a synchronous

online learning context. It is important to remark that

this paper refers to virtual English classes conducted

in the digital learning environment. The focus of this

paper is on the teachers’ technological competence,

particularly how they expand their digital ability and

make the best use of technology to create learning

opportunities despite the problem of online learning

they face. In simple words, what challenges are faced

by English language teachers in Indonesia related to

virtual exchange for language learning? How the

teachers transform the challenges into opportunities

to create a digital learning environment effectively in

the post-pandemic?

2 TEACHING INTERACTIONAL

COMPETENCE

The concepts of interactional competence have been

proposed and conceptualized by some scholars like

Kramsch (1986), Hall (1999), Young (1999, 2008),

Walsh (2012). The term interactional competence is

defined as teachers’ and learners’ mutual

employment of linguistic, interactional, and identity

resources in classroom interaction for mediating and

assisting in learning of English language

. Walsh (2012) conceptualized interactional

competence in the classroom context and termed it as

classroom interactional competence attributed to

Kramsch’s (1986) and Young’s (2011; 1999). In the

complex process of linguistics interaction, Walsh

(2012) suggested that joint competence that is

interactional competence rather than solo

performance in the teaching of speaking. Teachers

who teach speaking skills should know the concept of

interactional competence and promote a dialogic

interaction approach to students.

Walsh (2012) assured that interactional

competence is needed to endure communication

encounters. L2 speakers should not only have the

ability to produce accurate and fluent utterances but

also the ability to understand the context, to listen and

understand others' utterances, to clarify meanings, to

repair and so on which refers to interactional

resources. Having a concurrent view with Kramsch’s

(1986) that a push for interactional competence could

give students an ability to participate in real-life L2

interaction, Walsh (2012) perceived that interactional

competence requires extreme mental and

interactional ability.

Giving students rich opportunities to interact in

classroom collaborative dialogue is crucial to shaping

and strengthening their mentality and confidence to

speak in English. However, this doesn’t mean that

teachers just provide some topics and then let students

choose freely after which they have a conversation or

dialogue without purpose. There should be, still,

teachers’ interventions to make the teaching of

interactional competence possible in a classroom

context. Waring (2018) argued that teaching

interactional competence should involve the teaching

of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar as

linguistic resources. Teaching linguistic resources is

extremely supportive of the existence of interactional

ICoIE 4 2022 - The Fourth International Conference on Innovation in Education

resources such as turn-taking, sequencing, overall

structuring, and repair. The complexity of teaching

speaking skills reveals in the way students are

required to be aware of their knowledge and skill.

Therefore, teaching speaking explicitly is ultimate in

language classrooms (Burns, 2019). Along with

giving models of natural conversations, the teaching

of various resources for speaking and communication

strategies that is context-specific enables the

implementation of real-world ELT.

2.1 Teachers’ Roles and Competences

in Digital Learning Environment

The educational research field was introduced to a

theoretical framework named Technological,

Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPaCK) by

Mishra and Koehler (2006) to give an insight into the

teacher’s knowledge and, thus, competence needed

for effective technology-integrated teaching. The

digital transformation in the educational context has

also impacted the teacher’s role in classrooms and

affected their competencies. The teacher should

consider taking into account more on their content,

pedagogical, and technological competencies

(Kebritchi et al., 2017) particularly for online

teaching-learning. Moorhouse et.al (2021) found that

in the digital learning environment, teachers need

technological, managerial, and interactional

competences in the teaching of interactional

competence. Huang (2019) comparing the role of

teacher in face-to-face and online classroom. Among

teachers’ cognitive, affective, and managerial roles

being compared, it was found that in online learning,

teacher’s managerial role was at the highest mean.

The teaching qualification of a good teacher and

lecturer in Indonesia has been formulated by the

Minister of Education Number 16 in the year 2007,

comprising Pedagogical, Personality, Professional,

and Social Competence. A teacher’s personality is

attached to their professional identity which

inevitably influences his or her identity. It represents

the teacher’s attitude, self-image, perceived roles, and

commitment concerning the use of technology

(Shafiee et al., 2022) for the teaching and learning

process. The enactment of personal and professional

competence, particularly, teachers’ perspectives

regarding their roles and the challenges faced in

technology integration for learning constituted a

major theme in this study.

Addressing the pedagogical endeavors to link

knowledge and skill for a successful and effective

technology-enhance language teaching is the most

role of a teacher. Professional roles of teachers in

higher education include teacher-educator,

researcher, and community service practitioner. The

teacher-educator incorporates the role of instructional

designers by creating a socio-cultural context of

language classes in which teachers facilitate

interpersonal communication in online learning

environments which encourage collaboration,

dialogue, negotiation, and critical thinking. This

instructional design is tied to the notion of a learner-

centered approach in the Indonesian curriculum that

has been most associated with collaborative learning

among peers and teachers.

A digital learning environment can be created

mostly by the role of the teacher as an instructional

designer which requires pedagogical and

technological competence. The endeavor to deal with

technological challenges such as malfunctions during

online platform use also contributes to the creation of

a digital learning environment. Many researchers

found that teacher’s perspectives and attitudes toward

digital learning challenges influence the decision of

selecting appropriate instructional approaches, digital

tools, strategies, and evaluation in teaching (Hakeem

Barzani et al., 2021; Hill et al., 2009; Nazil Iqdami,

2016; Peters, 2000; Romero Archila, 2014; Shafiee et

al., 2022; Su & Zou, 2020; Wang & Huang, 2018). In

this way, in the digital learning era, teacher’s

professional development deals with gaining

knowledge, confidence, and experiences regarding

their values and perceived roles of management and

decision making in technology integration (Shafiee et

al., 2022). Particularly, in understanding that

collaborative dialogue is for sure possible to speak

online, teachers should decide to choose the available

interactional tools for video conference. This decision

is crucial to create digital learning environment where

teacher has mastered the chosen online interactional

tool.

The teacher should also concern with students’

knowledge and skills on online interactional tools. It

is unavoidable that sometimes, teaching online is not

only teaching the material content or skill but also

includes teaching students about how to operate

features in online interactional tools. It means that the

role of the teacher is still needed even though the use

of technology may enhance students’ learning. In the

digital learning environment, the mediation of

technology and the teacher’s role are complementary

to each other.

Teaching Speaking to Enhance Interactional Competence in Digital Learning Environment: Challenges and Opportunities

2.2 Virtual Exchange as Collaborative

Dialogue in Language Teaching

and Learning

The term virtual exchange has been widely used to

refer to communication through the use of technology

which also termed as tele-collaboration, e-tandem or

synchronous communication. Dooly and Vinagre

(2021) viewed that virtual exchange is a pedagogical

approach that can be considered as an alternative for

communicative language teaching approach. The

concept of online interaction here is synchronous or

real-time class interaction where students practice

their English speaking. Many researchers grew their

attention to the effectiveness of technology-enhanced

collaborative dialogue to improve students’ language

skills (Chang & Windeatt, 2016; Mahmud, 2018; Su

& Zou, 2020). Virtual exchange in language

classrooms which is carried out synchronously has its

growing trend of the use of communication software

such as Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams, or Google

Meet. Some applications also may become online

media for virtual exchange such as language

exchange apps like Hello Talk or Tandem, or

numerous websites with conversation exchange

options like LiveMocha which, however, is outside of

the classroom context and beyond the teacher’s

control.

Learners’ exchanges in L2 speaking practices are

displayed through interactional resources which is

done regularly over time, eventually, show

developments of their interactional competence in an

online task-based learning environment. Balaman and

Sert (2017); Su and Zu (2020); and Zeng (2017)

investigated the role of collaborative dialogue

through synchronous interaction for language

learning. They found that technology-mediated task

design has an impact on the development of learners’

L2 interactional competence. It showed the positive

role of interaction and the effectiveness of teachers’

design with the basic goal was providing an online

task environment to enable participants’ engagement

in multiparty interaction.

Young adult students have possessed self-

regulated learning autonomy including the learning of

new technologies useful in digital learning

environments. Therefore, teaching them how to

operate some programs or online applications does

not need great effort. The main point of speaking

class through a virtual exchange is to give students

rich opportunities to be active in the dialogue using

English. Ha Le et.al (2018) found that one obstacle

that teachers faced is students’ lack of collaborative

skills. Therefore, as mentioned previously in this

paper, teachers should facilitate students’

collaboration in online learning particularly in the

context of higher education. It means that the

student’s active participation in virtual exchange also

becomes a supporting factor in creating a digital

learning environment. Opportunities to have dialogue

would make such a lively virtual exchange that it is

beneficial for students’ use and development of

linguistic and interactional resources.

Being an interactive speaker means also

becoming a good listener who understands what

other’s speaker intention and the context to give

feedback or respond appropriately (Ha Le &

Wubbels, 2018). The successful collaborative

interaction is signified by the conception of

reciprocity, mutuality, alignment, and shared

understanding (Arvaja & Hämäläinen, 2021).

Therefore, a successful virtual exchange for language

teaching learning, particularly in teaching speaking,

is characterized by productive interaction through

collaboration between peers and also with the teacher.

With the intention of achieving successful

collaborative dialogue in virtual exchange, teachers

should explicitly mention the collaborative goals. In

addition, teacher’s immediate feedback, correction,

and motivation are needed during the virtual

exchange. Such a way would make students active in

the turn talk and shape their interactional competence

whether it is face-to-face or virtual exchange. The

mediation of technology is really important to keep

students gathered in virtual classes during and after

the pandemic.

3 METHODS

This was a qualitative research employing thematic

analysis as a method for describing qualitative data

which also involves interpretation in the processes of

selecting codes and constructing themes (Braun &

Clarke, 2008; Kiger & Varpio, 2020). The thematic

analysis enables the development of knowledge that

is constructed through interactions between the

researcher and the research participants which shows

that meanings are socially constructed. Six phases of

thematic analysis including 1) Transcribing data, 2)

Generating initial codes, 3) Collating codes into

potential themes, 4) Reviewing themes, 5) Defining

and naming themes, 6) Producing a report. (Braun &

Clarke, 2008).

The instruments of this study were questionnaires

and interview questions. The questionnaires were

formulated in two parts including closed-ended and

open-ended questionnaires. The closed-ended

ICoIE 4 2022 - The Fourth International Conference on Innovation in Education

questionnaire consisted of 3 items that were adapted

from Jin (2021) applying yes-no questions which

were done to obtain whether technology integration

was used before, during, or/and after covid-19

pandemic. Open-ended questionnaires were

administered through Google form, followed by

semi-structured interview questions via Zoom

conference. These two phases were conducted in

rapid time. The questionnaires and interview topics

were related to issues or challenges that the teachers

encountered during online learning which came from

internal and external factors. The internal factors

were from the teachers themselves including

technological, pedagogical, social, and managerial

competencies. (Kebritchi et al., 2017). The external

factors were technological issues in creating digital

learning environment (Fernando et al., 2020).

The participants of this research were 19 English

teachers of higher education. They were from

universities in seventh different provinces in

Indonesia, such as; Central-Java, East-Java, East-

Kalimantan, NTT, South-Sulawesi, and West-Papua.

The teachers-participants were coded from T1 to T19

with these details: T1, T2, and so forth until T19.

Teachers who had not integrated technology in

teaching and learning were T2, T3, T12, T13, T14,

T15, T16, T18, and T19. There were 84% of all

participants were considered senior teachers who

have more than 5 years of experience in teaching

English. Most of them have been teaching students at

second-year and third-year levels who regarded as

having intermediate linguistic and interactional

resources.

Table 1: Teachers-Participants Background (∑n = 19 in

each category).

Category Sub-category n ∑n

Institution Region Central-Java,

East-Java,

East-Kalimantan,

NTT,

South-Sulawesi,

West-Papua

Course(s) Taught in

2019-2022 Periods

First-year

Second-year

Third-year

Fourth-year

Others

Experience in

Teaching English

< 5 years

5-10 years

> 10 years

The qualitative data obtained from open-ended

questionnaires and interviews were used to generate

initial codes and collate them with some themes. The

participants who have chances to be interviewed were

eight teachers to get confirmation and further

explanation from the questionnaire results. However,

other data resulting from the open-ended

questionnaire were clear and complete enough to be

analyzed in the coding phase, thus, further interviews

were not necessarily done.

4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The results of this study comprised of three sub-

sections which is in the first presents the challenges,

the second presents the opportunities, and the third

discusses how teachers transform challenges into

opportunities and summarizes those into several

themes. It is important, here, to provide the closed-

ended questionnaire results as a prelude to wider

results of open-ended questionnaire results. They are

presented in Table 2 as follows:

Table 2: Technology Integration for Teaching (before,

during, and after COVID-19 pandemic).

Technolo

for Teachin

Yes (n) No (n)

I integrated technology for

teaching before covid-19

andemic

10 9

I integrated technology for

teaching during covid-19

andemic

19 0

I integrate technology for

teaching after covid-19

andemic

17 2

The first table row presents the result of

technology integration in language teaching before

the outbreak of covid-19 pandemic. It means the time

bound was before December in the year of 2019. It

can be seen that 10 teachers-participants had already

integrated technology which refers to both

synchronous and asynchronous internet modes for

learning. Particularly, in synchronous mode 5 of 10

teachers (T1-T5) had used zoom for online meetings

outside of the official scheduled. The online meetings

via zoom were done for discussing students’ home

assignments. Other than those were used to replace

missed-class or make missed-class up. There 4 others

of 10 teachers (T6-T7) who integrated technology

through asynchronous mode by using Google

classroom. Meanwhile, WhatsApp was generally

used by all 19 teachers-participants for class

communication on daily basis.

One teacher (T10) was considered as remarkable

on using technology for language learning, since this

Teaching Speaking to Enhance Interactional Competence in Digital Learning Environment: Challenges and Opportunities

teacher has been consistently using Skype for

conversation with foreigners who know and speak

English. They could be students, teachers, tutors, or

professionals of English language. Here, the dialogic

approach in teaching speaking has been used. T10’s

students were given opportunities to have

conversations with other speakers of English from

many countries via Skype video conference. The

topics were provided by this teacher that students

might choose one to be brought into conversation

with native or foreign English speakers. This was a

program held every two weeks in speaking class

started at third semester level.

The second row of table 2 shows that during the

outbreak of covid-19 pandemic, all the 19

teachers-

participants utilize technology and integrated it to

teaching language. In Indonesia, this pandemic was in

its outbreak from March 2020 until September 2021

when so many people suffered and died from covid-

19 virus. The government of Indonesia, through The

Minister of Health and the Minister of Education,

issued a lockdown situation where students should

learn from home and employees work from home too.

The 9 teachers realized there was no other way to

have class meeting online to reach out students from

distance. This distance learning had made them

learning new apps and/or software for teaching-

learning process during the social distancing.

The third row shows the result of technology

integration after the pandemic or post-pandemic

period. There were 17 teachers who consistently

integrating technology for classes in combination to

face-to-face learning which is usually called as hybrid

learning. However, 2 others went back on

implementing face-to-face class meetings and no

longer used online asynchronous and synchronous

platforms. They were 1 teacher from West Papua and

another from NTT. The reason for not conducting

online class was due to the bad internet connection

and low students’ engagement during online learning.

Particularly, the internet facilities in a university in

Papua did not support digital learning environment.

The teacher had her own great efforts and internet

costs to keep in touch with students during remote

learning with low students’ presence. Thus, in the

post-pandemic period, face-to-face meeting was the

best choice for all students.

4.1 Challenges in Teaching

Interactional Competence Through

Virtual Exchange: Internal Factors

A higher education teacher, also called a lecturer, has

a wide range of responsibilities such as teaching,

researching, assessing students, writing-publishing

research, and serving community service. In digital

learning, preparing a technology-integrated

pedagogical approach give teachers a significant

additional workload. One of the most online learning

issues during the pandemic outbreak was teachers’

lack of digital skills or technological competence,

students’ participation, and bad internet connection.

One way or another, this might influence the

effectiveness of teaching and learning which resulted

in students’ learning loss.

Teachers’ perspectives on those challenges are worth

researching by analyzing their sentences, wordings,

or utterances. Here are the challenges faced by some

teachers-participants in this study:

Table 3: Challenges of Technology Integration for

Teaching related to Teacher’s Technological Competence

(during COVID-19 pandemic).

Partici

ant Challen

T3,12,14,16,

18,19

I never knew or used online platforms

before, but because of the pandemic

and ….

I used WA to share information

T2, T13

I only used WhatsApp to

communicate with my students, I

really had to learn a lot about

technolo

for teachin

T15

I tried to have an assistant beside me

during online meeting, but then I got

used to it. WA was the only social

media I know

T14

It is time-consuming work to think

the concept of teaching online,

maintain user-friendly classes and

load materials to a di

ital

latform.

The requirement for all education stakeholders to

utilize technology during the pandemic was keep the

learning process going. For these 9 teachers, this was

a force because they had not used it prior the

pandemic. Online teaching and learning became the

most popular option during the pandemic that they

had to learn how to apply applications and software

others than WhatsApp. The sudden adaptation of

online learning during the pandemic seemed to be a

big challenge for teachers who had not put technology

integration into their teaching practice. This was

because many technologies are available on the

internet. Each has different features, methods, and

protocols that these teachers should have learned as

beginners, then, they had to master those immediately

in such rapid time.

The prior perception about teacher’s

technological competence was that it relates only with

how to create power point for class presentation, and

this was a good opportunity for them to learn new

ICoIE 4 2022 - The Fourth International Conference on Innovation in Education

internet-based technology for remote learning. From

further interview results, two of them had to take

certain training for using platforms or application

while the rest managed to learn by them-selves. They

learned from their colleagues and YouTube, while

some were trained by trainers from their institution

purposefully. By experiencing this, teachers’

competences were developed with multimodal

technologies. In the view that dialogic interaction is

crucial to foster students’ interactional competence,

synchronous virtual exchange was important. These

teachers did not give up with their lack of

technological competence. As a matter of fact, they

could just assign students to make recording of their

English speaking and submit them on due date. Real-

time interaction through virtual exchange is so

important, that the teacher should give direct

feedback about their linguistics and interactional

competence although sometimes they could not see

each other through cameras.

Teachers also needed money to buy the quota

because they used the quota to communicate and

share materials from home. The available connection

provided in their campuses was at low quality, since

all teachers used it for synchronous online classes.

Thus, teachers still needed asynchronous way to keep

students in touch and shared materials. Even though

they were given internet quota from the government,

it could not cover all of the online teaching activities.

Following, the challenge of online learning was

related to teachers’ concern with their students’

during virtual exchange. Students’ attitude and

behaviour toward and during online learning were

also included as challenges faced by teachers. One of

the teacher’s responsibilities in virtual exchange to

create such digital learning environment that made

students become active, interactive, and enjoy in

speaking activities. However, in the early practice of

online learning due to the pandemic, the teachers

found challenges from students where they made less

eye contact, gesture, and spontaneity. Although

communication was still possible in virtual exchange,

but the teachers felt that body language, gesture, and

eye contact were more limited that those in direct or

face-to-face meeting.

Teachers from the Centre and the East part of

Indonesia, those were T14-T17, T18, and T19

observed that some students did not enjoy practicing

speaking online. It was seen that in the virtual

exchange, they could not express themselves using

English with ease. The new method of virtual

exchange might seem awkward to them that they felt

uncomfortable. From the teachers’ perspectives, it

happened because the contagious cases of Covid-19

in these regions were not as many as those in the West

part of Indonesia. In addition, most students had

problems with the provision of cellular data and

compatible gadgets. The low internet connection they

have became the reason they turned the camera off all

the time during the whole class sessions. Thus, the

teachers could not control the students and see

whether they were in front of or around their devices.

However, some students were still willing to take

their cameras on when it was their turn to talk.

Another challenge experienced was students’

attendance at the beginning of remote or distance

learning. Some of their students could not adapt to the

platforms used for online classes which affects the

students’ attendance. Other students who had

supporting devices and internet connections managed

to handle the way to use the platform without the

teacher’s guidance. Many students live in the rural

area where the signal was poor even if they have

sufficient facilities. However, it was found that a

teacher wasted time by calling out each student’s

name during the online attendance checking. Then, he

realized that such a practice was not suitable for

online learning. Teachers should have strategies to

use the limited time and online resources effectively

so that the online classes could be filled with

significant knowledge transfer and language

practices.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly, the

lack of teachers-student interactions was in slow

progress because of the lockdown situation in every

institution. The teachers considered that students’

social and interactional skills could not be elevated

through virtual exchange. One way or another, it

needed the teacher’s role to motivate students to keep

on joining online classes and complete the tasks

given.

4.2 The Challenges from External

Factors: Parents and Institutions

Difficulties in all aspects of human life occurred

during the spread of the contagious Covid-19 virus.

Parents’ economic conditions and educational

institutions have also been affected by the pandemic.

Lack of financial and technological infrastructures

become a major problem, especially in those

frontiers, outermost, and least developed regions in

Indonesia. The issue of parents’ low income has been

challenging in NTT and Papua. They prefer their

children to go face-to-face classes at their campuses

because going online would take so much cost like

supportive cellular phone, laptop, and internet

connection.

Teaching Speaking to Enhance Interactional Competence in Digital Learning Environment: Challenges and Opportunities

Table 4: Challenges from External Factors in Online

Learning (during COVID-19 pandemic).

T 18; T13-T17

Parents living in the city spend so

much money for online learning.

But how about those who live in

remote areas?

Parents were complaining because

their children could not learn well

and it consumed much money for

internet

T13-T17

Institution chose platforms that are

based on cultural, social, structural

and limited economic situation.

Institution is required to provide fast

internet connection for teacher and

students

T19

Parents’ low income is one of the

obstacles here. The institution

facilities did not support online

learning. The online learning was

rarel

done durin

the

andemic.

In Table 5, it can be seen that students coming

from low-income families were common in these

regions. Previously, students may access free internet

connection from their educational institutions, but

because of the movement of learning from home,

students had to buy internet connections on their own.

The lack of internet access at home has made learning

lost because students could not attend the online

classes set by their teachers.

The transformation from traditional face-to-face

education to digital learning has brought challenges

for universities and institutes. For the stakeholder of

every institution, the pandemic situation has been

very problematic as complaints came from parents

and students. They have to decide what platform

should be adopted for their students that suits the

surrounding economic condition.

4.3 The Opportunities of Teaching

Interactional Competence in

Virtual Exchange

Teachers who put great efforts to overcome

challenges that might come from internal or external

factors were worth researching. The identification of

challenges in integrating ICT technologies in higher

education should be done with care, because the

challenges occurred may be different from one to

another campus. It is crucial to see how teachers or

lecturers use particular strategies and improve their

competencies for effective online learning. The next

section presents how the teachers-participants cope

with the challenges and transform them into

opportunities to retain technology integration as

innovative pedagogy in the post-pandemic period.

The results obtained from the interview sessions

showed that on technological competence, the

teachers perceived that the forced use of technology

for learning during the pandemic was the chance for

them to gain more knowledge and skill to operate the

existing software, platforms, or applications.

T4,T18 :

should know how to apply online learning

applications and platforms to keep on

teaching my students from home. I also

learned to make contents on YouTube.

These teachers realized that they should have

good knowledge and skill to enter such digital

learning environment. In a more positive way,

teachers become more digital literate who can operate

various existing online applications and platforms.

They become more creative and innovative in their

pedagogical competence. This result highlights the

importance of teachers’ technological competence to

ensure their professional identity and security. They

have become more confident that a 21

century

teacher is an innovative teacher who has

technological-pedagogical competence.

Some teachers saw that virtual exchange is an

opportunity for shy students to speak up more during

the class activities in compare to face-to-face class in

which shy students might have got nervousness while

they were speaking. These teachers found that shy

students were more confident in practicing speaking

through virtual exchange. One lecturer with a belief

that language learning as a collaborative activity had

set events to provide students opportunities to interact

in online learning by collaborating with his English

speaking friends from many countries. Other teachers

assigned students into groups to have interaction in

English through break-out-rooms. Another lecturer

focused on students’ fluency rather first, because

sometimes students had to deal with bad internet

connection that caused loss voices.

T2-T19:I make them work in groups to interact and

collaborate in break-out rooms. I found that

shy students were more fluent in speaking,

despite their errors in grammar use.

T15: Let them interact with each other as long as

they use English and understand the meanings.

I only give feedback after they finish the

conversation. The feedback is usually about

inappropriate grammar and vocabulary they

use in the conversation.

T8: I have been using Skype in my speaking

program. I set the online session for online

interaction between my students and my

foreign friends. I can manage my time and

ICoIE 4 2022 - The Fourth International Conference on Innovation in Education

schedule easier by using an online meeting

platform to teach speaking skill.

A teacher also used pictures and written textual

hints to support student discussion which was done as

preparation before discussion in English. During the

discussion, there might be only three or four students

engaged in the turn-talk. However, this was an

opportunity for other students to be active listeners

who would be asked about the discussion when it was

over. One of the characteristics of someone with good

interactional competence is that he or she is an active

listener understanding the topic being discussed and

later, giving a reaction to the speaker/s. In this process

of taking action and giving re-action through spoken

language here means having interactional

competence.

There was also a possibility seen by a teacher to

develop online teaching materials by making pdf

flipped books which can be linked with YouTube

videos relevant to the learning topics.

T9:

Era digital become teaching online platform is quite

interesting because the lecturer easier to access some

resources as a teaching materials. I can make a

module with pdf flipped book now.

The responsibility for preparing and planning

materials for online courses is on teachers. Adjusting

from face-to-face material content to an online setting

could be very challenging. With this result, it shows

that incorporating multimedia into online course

design might be needed by some teachers and it is an

opportunity to develop teacher’s technological

competence. It is important to note that multimedia

options allow students to master the material content

independently. The developed materials can be

accessed by students through platforms that are

available in the universities.

Online platforms for education may have not been

used in many universities before the pandemic.

However, the emergence of remote learning during

the outbreak of the contagious covid-19 virus became

an opportunity for a university in NTT to implement

Microsoft Teams as its official online learning

platform. Four teachers from NTT were in the same

university in which this platform was purposefully

applied for online learning during the pandemic. This

online program was started in April 2020 where all

administrators, students, lecturers, or teachers were

trained for a couple of days. This platform is still used

currently for all the hybrid learning courses.

4.4 Themes on Challenges and

Opportunities Encountered by

English Teachers

The themes related to challenges and opportunities

encountered by the teachers in teaching speaking

through the virtual exchange to enhance interactional

competence are divided into four. Figure 1 shows the

result of collating codes of challenges and

opportunities encountered by teachers-participants of

this research. The first is about the digital

transformation in which there are challenges faced by

the teachers during the transformation from face-to-

face learning interaction to online learning

interaction. Teachers had to cope with the challenges

of ‘being forced’-intention to adopt online teaching,

mastering new technologies, and creating a digital

environment for students during the pandemic. Then,

there are opportunities to conduct hybrid or blended

Figure 1: Themes of Challenges and Opportunities in

Digital Learning.

• Intention to Adopt Online

Teaching

• Learning New Technologies

for Teaching

• Creating Digital

Environment

• Integrating F2F and Online

Teaching

Transformation

from F2F to

Online Teaching

• Pedagogical: As a Teacher-

Facilitator-Content/Designer-

Motivator

• Technological: Integrating F2F and

Online Teaching

• Social-Interactional Competence:

Connecting and Collaborating

Teachers-Students-Parents-

Institutions

• Managerial: Timing and Secheduling

Lesson & Materials

Teacher’s Roles

and Competence

• Students’ Wellbeing on

Digital Learning

• Students’ Interactions /

Collaborative Dialogue

• Students’ Linguistics and

Interactional Resources

Students’

Interactional

Competence

• By Institution: Buy fast

internet connection and

Adopt Platform for Hybrid

Learning

• By Government: Attention

to Universities in 3T

Regions in Indonesia and

Providence of financial

support for students from

low-income families.

Internet

Connection

Security,

Financial,and

Infrastructure

Support

Teaching Speaking to Enhance Interactional Competence in Digital Learning Environment: Challenges and Opportunities

learning by integrating both face-to-face and online

teaching. The second theme is categorized based on

theoretical themes such as teachers’ technological,

pedagogical, social, and managerial competencies

along with technological-infrastructure issues. They

are presented sequentially from the most repeated

pattern or theme to the least apparent theme in the

collected data. The first and most challenging was

related to teachers’ pedagogical competence in which

they have complex roles in online learning as a

teacher, a facilitator, content and instructional

designer, and a motivator to students. Teacher’s

technological competence was in the second order

because only two teacher participants that hardly

adapt to new technologies while others had already

familiarized themselves with online learning. Yet,

technological competence is crucial in online

learning.

The teacher’s social competence deals with their

role of connecting and collaborating with other

teachers, students, parents, and institutions. In this

study, it is connected to interactional competence,

since this role aims at gaining mutual understanding

and thus, collaboration with all aspects that leads to

successful language teaching and learning. Carrying

out online courses also needs a managerial role in

which teachers create timelines and schedule for their

students. It all deals with the preparation of

instructional course design. Timeline and schedule

deal with when the uploaded online materials can be

seen by students before the scheduled synchronous

virtual exchange. Here, the students have to learn

from the available materials before the speaking

practice. It is crucial for effective and fruitful

interaction through the virtual exchange as students

have already possessed background knowledge of the

topic.

The students’ interactional competence per se

became the challenge faced by teachers. Teachers

could not control the students as they often turned off

cameras during interaction in virtual exchanges.

While linguistic and interactional resources still could

be observed in virtual exchange, teachers need to

assess students’ facial expressions and gestures.

Teachers’ presence during collaborative activities in

virtual exchange and their attention to the linguistic

and interactional resources employed are vital for the

completion of collaborative activities and the

achievement of inter-subjectivities. Finally, poor or

bad internet connection is commonly a cliché

challenge in the digital learning environment.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The challenges of online learning can be transformed

into opportunities. Teachers, students, parents, and

universities acquire insight into how to prepare and

cope with pandemic situations that could happen

anytime in the near or far future. Integrating

technology for education during the pandemic is an

asset towards ‘momentous innovation’ (Peters, 2000)

of digital pedagogy where innovative teachers

transform or turn challenges into opportunities.

Teachers who previously had less knowledge of

skills on technology for teaching-learning were

endeavoring to upgrade their technological

competencies through experiencing during the covid-

19 pandemic, then, committed to integrating

technology after the pandemic. Here, opportunities

arose from challenges in terms of teachers’

competence and professional development. Identity

as a teacher is supported and strengthened through the

development of technological-pedagogical

competence.

It is affirmative that Interactional Competence is

teachable through collaborative virtual exchange

(Moorhouse et al., 2021; Zeng, 2017) where teachers,

students, parents, and educational institutions are

supportive of the digital learning environment.

However, physical face-to-face interaction is

consistently needed by learners, therefore further

investigation of learners' slides is suggested. Face-to-

face and online interactions are not to be compared in

the post-pandemic era, rather they can be combined

which is vastly known as hybrid learning. Giving

immediate feedback (on linguistic-interactional

resources) in teaching speaking is crucial for

students’ development particularly to enhance

interactional competence.

Students’ perception and subjective well-being

regarding the effect of virtual exchange to enhance

their interactional competence are needed to be

investigated for further results. They would be

supporting factors in the advancement of interactional

competence, in terms of extra-linguistic factors. Last

but also important is that about internet connection,

the Indonesian Minister of Information and

Technology should pay attention and support more to

upgrading the Internet-based facilities for education

in the Centre and East Regions of Indonesia.

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