A Study on Pre-service English Instructors' Cyberloafing Behaviors During Online Courses

Abstract

Student cyberloafing is a concept that has been mainly investigated in face-to-face educational settings and there are only a few studies that concentrate on this issue in online settings. Therefore, to contribute to the existing line of literature in this respect, the current study sought to explore the types of cyberloafing activities students engage with during online classes, their reasons behind these behaviours, and their views on the possible solutions to prevent these. The sample of the study consisted of 68 preservice English teachers from a foundation university in Central Anatolia, Turkey. A qualitative survey research design was adopted in this study and to that end, data were collected using an online survey instrument that included a demographic information form and three questions related to the research questions. To seek answers to the research questions, data were analysed using thematic analysis. The results showed that preservice English teachers engaged with a wide variety of cyberloafing activities. Moreover, emerging themes with respect to reasons for cyberloafing were instructor, student, course-content, learning environment, and technology-related reasons for cyberloafing whereas themes regarding possible solutions to prevent it were instructor, student, and institution-based solutions.