English-Medium Instruction Lecturers’ and Students’ Perceptions about the Transition from in-Person to Emergency Remote Education

Abstract

Due to the COVID-19 emergency lecturers and students had to become familiar with online education and had to interact and communicate digitally to replace face-to-face interaction. In this context Emergency Remote Education (ERE) emerged, a branch of distance learning concerning the unplanned response to an educational emergency. This task was particularly challenging for students and lecturers involved in English-medium instruction (EMI) degree programmes, which are completely taught in English, have a diverse student population and are often characterized by issues relating to English proficiency, interaction and communication.

This paper, in which EMI merges with ERE, addresses how lecturers and students of EMI courses in “Medicine and Surgery” and “Nursery” from several Italian universities have coped with the sudden changes in the teaching mode due to the passage from classroom to screen. Both quantitative and qualitative data are collected through questionnaires filled in by lecturers and students of EMI degree programmes taught in 14 Italian universities. On the one hand, they show the changes EMI courses of “Medicine and Surgery” and “Nursing” underwent during the lockdown and the lecturers’ and students’ satisfaction concerning interaction and ERE classes. On the other hand, they help identify key elements and strategies, which can contribute to improve EMI remote education so that it is promoted from ERE to quality distance learning.