Rapid Response to the Needs of ESL Students of a Technical University in the Time of Emergency Covid-19 Transfer to Online Classes: ITMO University Case Study

The disruption caused by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic entailing a transfer to the fully online emergency remote teaching (ERT) put many teachers in Russia and across the globe in the role of facilitators, course designers, technical support specialists and psychologists. To address the new challenge, a group of instructors of St. Petersburg University of Information Technologies Mechanics and Optics (ITMO), Russia, attempted to adopt a blended ESL methodology piloted in 2017–2018 and calibrated in the intermittent period to build a Zoom- and LMS-based mostly synchronous upper-intermediate emergency remote General English course for 99 first and second year bachelor’s of science students (7 groups). To increase student satisfaction with the design and content of the course, learners’ needs were monitored during the fall 2020 semester through a series of surveys. To measure student satisfaction with the emergency ESL course, a summative cross-sectional survey, a series of semi-structured interviews and fall 2020 course completion rate were analyzed.