DEVELOPING STUDENT AGENCY THROUGH ONLINE DIDACTIC STRATEGIES IN HIGHER EDUCATION. SMALL GROUPS VERSUS LARGE GROUPS

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers and students were relocated in the digital space. In this study, we focus on two groups of students and two types of courses: electives on Romanian as a Foreign Language in Germany and seminars on the Grammatical Structure of the English Grammar in Romania. We analyse the role that student agency plays in the online teaching process. For this purpose, we applied a survey to analyse the effectiveness of the didactic strategies used with small groups in comparison with large groups. The findings of this study show that remote instruction at the university level during seminars/elective courses for small groups can be as efficient as on-site instruction for the learning process and, implicitly, for student agency development. Regarding large groups, the study shows that remote instruction can, at times, be even more efficient than face-to-face teaching, especially regarding student agency development.