When online learning and cultural values intersect: Indonesian EFL students’ voices

During the COVID-19 pandemic, all lecturers had to replace their physical classroom teaching mode with online learning, albeit with challenges experienced by students and lecturers. Drawing upon Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, this study attempted to unearth Indonesian students’ learning culture by analysing written reflections on their learning experiences. Twenty EFL (English as a foreign language) students enrolled in the English Academic Writing courses at an Islamic university in Indonesia, wrote a reflective essay on their online learning experiences with various platforms, such as Google Classroom, Google Meet, Canvas, Moodle, and some other online learning platforms. Content analysis was used to analyse the students’ reflective writing essays. Results show that the students’ voices bring to the fore several learning issues from online learning experiences. These include: the lecturers’ dominant use of WhatsApp as an instruction tool, unclear explanations, assigning students too many assignments, and the abandonment of lecturer feedback on works submitted by students. Noteworthy, whether the students liked or disliked the online learning experience, they accepted how the lecturers treated them in the online teaching and learning process. The findings indicated that the students avoided conflicts, showed high respect to their superiors, and used indirect disagreement in the online learning contexts. The findings suggest that the ‘small culture’ of online learning in higher education is governed by a strong influence of ‘large culture’ in Indonesia.