In this paper, the authors look at the changing student-teacher relationship in times of distance learning and examine the importance of feedback in distance teaching as a didactic tool. As part of the research project "Digi4Learners" (Turner & Scherde, 2019), a qualitative interview study which was conducted in the wake of the Corona crisis and the associated distance learning in schools. Interviews were conducted with teachers in secondary schools in Austria. The central assumption of the research team was that distance learning weakened the relationship between students and teachers. Contrary to the assumptions, it turned out that especially feedback seems to be a good didactic bridge to maintain the teaching-learning relationship, motivationally and performance-related. Here, the authors refer to theoretical foundations from school didactics. “Effective teaching not only involves imparting information and understandings to students (or providing constructive tasks, environments, and learning) but also involves assessing and evaluating students' understanding of this information, so that the next teaching act can be matched to the present understanding of the students” (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, 88). Therefore, “(…) feedback needs to provide information specifically relating to the task or process of learning that fills a gap between what is understood and what is aimed to be understood (Hattie & Timperley, 2007, 82; Sadler, 1989) A number of studies have shown that feedback has a positive effect on the motivation as well as the performance of students, as it "activates cognitive, motivational and metacognitive processes (Huth 2004, Narciss 2004, Rakoczy, Klieme, Bürgermeister & Harks 2008, Vollmeyer & Rheinberg 2005). If one wants to lead students to self-regulated learning in the long term (Butler & Winne 1995, van den Boom, Paas & van Merriënboer 2007), feedback is central so that students learn from a young age on to make an assessment of their own learning process, to reflect on it, and to design future learning activities more efficiently" (Lotz & Lipkowsky, n.d., p. 113).

Basically, the results will show that the relationship between teachers and learners changes due to the physical distance in distance learning. The interviewees describe this positive change in the sense that the relationship has become more intensive, mainly due to conversations that were held with the students during the distance learning phase online, both in writing and orally. Furthermore, private insights into the learners' home and family situation seem to have led to a positive change in the emotional relationship. This paper will first present the study and the methodological approach, and then illustrate and discuss the results using case vignettes. According to Vattøy & Gamlem, “the impact of feedback can be both, positive and negative for student learning, which makes it important to identify the criteria for feedback with positive effects on students’ learning” (2020, 373). In doing so, the findings from the distance learning phase will be transferred to the regular classroom and it will be discussed which benefits this experience can bring for teachers and students.

As outlined in the Digi4Learners project (Turner & Scherde 2019), a total of 20 people aged between 25 and 60 were interviewed, twelve of whom were female and eight male. The study focused on teachers who teach at least one language at secondary level in Austria. The main focus was on the province of Carinthia. 70 percent of the interviewees teach at a compulsory school in this province. The average duration of an interview was one hour and was conducted with the help of a guide. The surveys took place online between December 2020 and May 2021 via videoconferencing on the Zoom and Microsoft Teams platforms. The overall research question was: "To what extent have teachers succeeded in maintaining (emotional) contact with students in online-based distance learning?" The focus was to find out whether the relationship between teachers and students has changed due to the physical distance caused by distance learning. The interviews were analysed using the qualitative content analysis according to Mayring (Mayring 2014). The central goal of this analysis is to classify the outcomes of interviews into categories. These categories are then defined and assigned with a coding rule (Mayring, 2014). Overall, it can be said that the case group includes teachers that just started their teaching career in the school year 2019/2020, as well as teachers who are teaching at schools for almost 20 years. The overall focus of the questions was as already mentioned on the emotional relationship of students and teachers. Furthermore, it was also connected to aspects such as how to stay in touch with pupils and in which way this can be achieved successfully in distance learning, or which challenges teachers were confronted with when it comes to stay in touch with school-age children in an online setting.

In particular, regular and detailed feedback has changed the relationship with the students. Feedback that was given to the students in written form seems to be of particular importance. The interview partners used the term feedback to describe feedback on individual tasks or weekly plans that were completed by the students during the distance learning phase and made available and requested via an online platform. Furthermore, more feedback is generally given in distance learning than in face-to-face teaching. However, it should also be noted that giving feedback in online-based distance learning is much more time-consuming for the teachers compared to face-to-face teaching. The enormous amount of time required is attributed by the interviewees to the fact that students receive individual feedback and that online correction generally requires more time. From the interviews it also emerged that it was important for teachers to appreciate the learners' achievements and to give them credit. In summary, it can be stated that regular feedback, especially in written form, is crucial for good cooperation between teachers and students in distance learning and has even led to more closeness in the sample available for the interviews. Furthermore, it should be noted that according to the interviewees' assessment, more closeness to individual students in distance learning has arisen, mainly due to personal chats or conversations within the framework of virtual consultation hours or mentoring discussions. From the data, the assumption that online-based distance learning generally creates more distance to students cannot be confirmed. Furthermore, certain parameters are needed in order to maintain a good emotional relationship with the students. In particular, direct and personal contact via video conferences and individual feedback seem to be important. The individually arranged conversations helped both, the teachers and the students to stay in good contact and to clarify open questions.

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