Assessing attitudes of university students toward online classes of Icelandic as a foreign and second language during COVID-19

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the on-campus teaching mode at local universities in Iceland changed to distance teaching and synchronous classes online. This rapid and unexpected change also affected the learners. Although videoconferencing was used as the main point of reference, this method turned out to be less suitable for synchronous online classes with instant feedback. Therefore, a new format of synchronous classes online was adopted. This enabled the teacher and the learners to interact with each other during the online classes. The present article describes a case study of international and foreign students attending regular online classes of Icelandic as a foreign and second language (L2) at a local university in Reykjavik during fall 2020. Attitudes of 26 students toward a changed teaching mode were examined. Data were collected using an online questionnaire at the end of the course and answers analysed based on responses to 72 questions in ten different themes that guided the construction of ten research questions. The results suggest that the teacher’s approach to online class organisation could be improved to achieve a better wellbeing among students and create a more effective online teaching environment.