Twenty years on and still reinventing the wheel? A critical review of Telecollaborative Exchange in FL Education

Robert O'Dowd

Universidad de León, Spain

@robodowd

robert.odowd@unileon.es

Eurocall 2015:

Padova, 26 August 2015

What is Telecollaboration?

The engagement of groups of students in online intercultural interaction and collaboration…

with partner classes from other cultural contexts or geographical locations….

under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators (Lewis & O’Dowd, 2015).

What’s in a name?Virtual Exchange – Soliya / EU•COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) - SUNY •Internet-mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education (Belz & Thorne)•eTandem (Europe)/ Teletandem (Brazil)•eTwinning / ePals (secondary education)

Jon Rubin (2015): “One of the problematics of this format is that it is called by so many different names, thereby making it harder for the practice to be more commonly understood and implemented.”

How many of you have organised a telecollaborative exchange with your students?

Is this book familiar to any of you?Virtual Connections: Online Activities & Projects for Networking Language Learners. Mark Warschauer (Ed.) (1995) – Twenty Years old!

Questions from the inside:Eurocall 2015: “…to unpack and examine some of the assumptions that may have become ingrained in our practice, and also to reflect on the state of CALL and language pedagogy”

Questions from the outside:It would good to know what kind of ‘intercultural’ exchange is actually fostered through telecollaboration or whether telecollaboration is mostly like to reinforce stereotypes in mostly monologic postings?

My main argument today:

After 20 years of widespread use in CALL classrooms, is Telecollaboration stuck in a comfort zone?

Comfort zone=

Limited to Foreign Language classrooms

Primarily Bilingual/Bicultural set-ups

Low risk ‘hobbies and fiestas’ tasks

Research on short-term impact of short-term exchanges

If it is as valuable as many of us think it is, shouldn’t we:

-be making it more relevant to the future needs of our students?

-provide more convincing evidence of its effectiveness?

-strive for its integration across university education (and not just in Foreign Language classrooms)?

Mark Warschauer:Virtual Connections (1995) Telecollaboration in Foreign Language Learning (1996)

Reinhard Donath: E-Mail-Projekte im Englischunterricht(1996)

Ruth Vilmi: International Writing Exchange (1993-2005)

Rick Kern:Technology, Social Interaction, and FL Literacy (1998)

A quick bit of history- Name the Pioneer Telecollaborators:

The International Tandem Network:LINGUA project "International E-Mail Tandem Network" (1994-1996)

IECC- Intercultural Email Classroom Connections : 1992-2001: 28,000+ requests for e-mail partnerships

Where could teachers find partners in the 1990’s?

Telecollaboration in Foreign Language Learning (1996) by Mark Warschauer (ed.)

Brave New Schools (1995) by Jim Cummins & Dennis Sayers

Das Transatlantische Klassenzimmer (1997) by Reinhard Donath (ed).

1990’s: Reports of Good Practice begin to emerge – Research interests lie in linguistic development and learner autonomy

The first clear ‘model’ of TC emerges: E-TandemAn American student writes to her partner in Spain…Hey Pablo!It was great to receive your letter. I was so happy to see that you responded to my questions. Thank you. Your responses were very informative and definitely showed me that family life in Spain was not all I'd expected it to be (I was surprised, for example, that your family is not religious. I assumed that most families in Spain are, and I'm sure you have many assumptions about life in America as well). Your English is very good. There are only a few suggestions that I have… Some of your sentences are too long, and would make more sense if you separated them into two or three sentences instead. For example, "My parents are not divorced in Spain there are very few cases of divorced" could be rewritten as "My parents are not divorced. In Spain there are very few cases of divorce." Your letter was great and made sense despite these things. Good work. Las fiestas en the ciudad de Nueva York son muy locas y emocionantes. Voy a las discotecas con mis amigas los jueves, los viernes, o los sabados. Vamos a los bars tambien. Nosotros volvemos a nos salons de dormitorio a las cuatro de la manana. Queremos bailar a las discotecas. Necesita tener veintiuno anos por beber el alcohol pero la mayoria de estudiantes en las universidades tenen los "fake IDs" y ellos beben el alcohol. … No sabo mucho de Espana. Sabo que hay un museo de Guggenheim en Bilbao y sabo que hay muchos castillos bonitos. Que sabes de los Estados Unidos? Como es la fiesta en Espana? Emily

Language Learning & Technology Special Issue on Telecollaboration by Julie Belz (May 2003)

2000’s: Emergence of Empirical Studies and Focus on Intercultural Learning

Internet-Mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education by Belz & Thorne (2006)

Network-based Language Teaching by Mark Warschuaer & Richard Kern (2000)

Development of many Class to Class Intercultural Telecollaboration Models – e.g. Cultura

Recent years: “Intercultural Learning in the wild” (Thorne , 2010)• Connecting learners to others

outside the classroom• Use of 2.0 technologies and

development of electronic literacies (“Telecollaboration 2.0” – Guth & Helm, 2010)

• Thorne et al. (2009): connecting learners with online fan communities and using Web 2.0 technologies to remix and create new artistic creations...

• Hanna and de Nooy (2009): Learners use their FL and ICC skills through participating in online public discussion forums of French newspapers…

• Competing(?) trend:• Integration of telecollaboration

into formal learning• Issues of:

– Awarding student credit– Recognition of teachers´

extra work– Reliability of partnerships

• Examples of work in this area:• O’Dowd (2013)• Dooly (2015) – TC descriptors• Hauck and Mckinnon (2015) –

accreditation through badges

The Current State of Telecollaboration in FL education

• Significant number of financed European projects:

• Moderating Intercultural Collaboration and Language Learning (Dooly, 2008)

• Integrating Telecollaborative Networks in Higher Education (O’Dowd, 2013)

• Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition (TILA) (Jauregi, 2015).

• Wide range of publications: • Dooly. M. (2008). Telecollaborative

language learning: A guidebook to moderating intercultural collaboration online.

• Guth, S., & Helm, F. (2010). Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, literacies and intercultural learning in the 21st Century.

• O’Dowd, R. & Lewis, T. (2015). Online Intercultural Exchange: Policy, Pedagogy, Practice.

Recognition in different areas of FL education literature:Corbett, J. (2010). Intercultural language activities. Liddicoat, D. and Scarino, A. (2013). Intercultural Language Teaching and Learning.Mehisto, P., Frigols, M. J., and Marsh, D. (2008). Uncovering CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning in Bilingual and Multilingual Education.

What are the main criticisms of Telecollaboration?“Interaction [in TC] is restricted to communcation with other learners… a situation which is limiting for advanced learners who need practice in venturing beyond the classroom.”

“… the institutionalisation of virtual exchange institutionalises a two-tier system of mobility: one for the elite few and another for the 80-90 % who cannot afford it.” (p.166)

“The tasks involved students in exchanges across cultures…but the intercultural learning was supposed to happen as an automatic result of communication or engagement with others.”

We now have a Hub for Telecollaborative Exchange in University Classrooms: www.UNICollaboration.eu

We now have a biannual international conference on Telecollaboration in University Education: Next up -

April 2016, Trinity College, Dublin

http://www.tcd.ie/slscs/telecollaboration2016/index.php

What has research told us about Telecollaborative Learning in university education?

• Great potential for awareness raising of cultural differences in communicative practices – different genres, pragmatic competence etc. Learners consider their partners to be ‘people who matter’ (Belz and Kinginger, 2002, 2003).

• However! “…exposure and awareness of difference seem to reinforce, rather than bridge, feelings of difference” (Kern, 2000: 256). – Hence high level of interest in task design.

• In order to contribute to students’ linguistic and intercultural development, the key is to combine online interaction with either reflective reviews of online interactions (e.g. ‘la salle de rétrospection’ Kern, 2014 ) or through pedagogic interventions by teachers (Cunningham & Vyatkina, 2012)

• The skills of online interaction do not come naturally– e.g. “Teaching Comments” (Ware, 2014) , “intercultural questioning” (Belz, 2004).

The importance of developing the skills of Online Intercultural Communication

• A German student writes this opening message to her new partner in Ireland:

• Hello, how are you? I study English and history and I want to become a teacher. This term we do some cultural studies concerning Ireland and I very interested in it because I actuallly do not know much about it.

• Now I would like to ask you some questions.Do you live in Northern or in Southern Ireland? How many people live in your town? Are you a Catholic or a Protestant? I have heard that regular churchgoing declines more and more in your country-is it true?

• What are you doing in your free time? Do you often go to pubs? What do you think about Germans? Irish people have the reputation of being very indirect and polite in their speaking style. I have read that there was an enormous economic change in Ireland.

• How have you or your parents experienced the social and economic change in the past 20 years?

• That's all for now. I am looking forward to hearing from you!

What do you think telecollaboration has to offer university education in general (and not just FL

students)?

The value of Telecollaboration for University Education?1. Provide international learning experiences for the non-mobile:

Aim for student mobility in the EU?

In 2020, at least 20% to have had a study or training period abroad.

The current rate of mobility in Europe?

4% -5%

European Commission Report: “European Higher Education in the world”:

“…internationalisation should …ensure that the large majority of learners who are not mobile… are nonetheless able to acquire the international skills required in a globalised world (2013:6)”

Schultheis Moore & Simon (2015): “[Telecollaboration]… meets the need of higher education institutions …to help their students recognize the value and viability of worldviews different from their own.”

2. Integrate digital skills as part of university education:

Supporting growth and jobs: An agenda for the modernisation of Europe’s higher education systems (2011):

“The knowledge economy needs people with the right mix of skills : transversal competences, e-skills for the digital era, creativity and flexibility and a solid understanding of their chosen field.”

However, is there any empirical data to prove the development of digital competence through telecollaboration?

Lewis & O’Dowd (2015): Systematic review of 54 empirical studies of Telecollaboration’s contribution to learning objectives – only 3 touch on digital competence development

The value of Telecollaboration for University Education?

But to what extent has Telecollaboration become mainstreamed in University FL Education in Europe?

• What do you understand by ‘mainstreaming’?

• Widespread use beyond the immediate CALL community?

• Academic recognition through ECTS credits? Mention in European Diploma Supplement?

• Explicit mention and recommendations in University Policy Documentation?

The European Higher Education Area in 2015: Bologna Process

Implementation Report- European

Commission/EACEA/Eurydice (2015)

“…higher education institutions have an increasing choice of instruments or activities to engage in the internationalisation process (e.g. joint programmes and joint degrees,campuses abroad, MOOCs).

Let’s look for Telecollaboration in some policy documents and reports

New Modes of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education -

High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher

Education (2014)

Developing educational partnerships is an important element of Europe’s strategy for cooperationwith other parts of the world. We are already seeing very interesting developments including theSwiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne’s MOOC initiatives for francophone Africa…(p.21)

Trends 2015:Learning and Teaching

in European Universities: European University Association

(2015)

“…Six emerging technologies… likely to have an impact on higher education in the next five years:–– by 2014, MOOCs and tablet computing;–– by 2016, games and gamification and learning analytics;–– by 2018, 3D printing and wearable technology (p. 73).

GREEN PAPER: promoting the

learning mobility of young people:

Commission of the European

Communities (2009)

“Virtualmobility, such as that supported via Comenius eTwinning or via social networking, can inparticular be valuable in opening up school-age young people to new contacts and cultures.”

How can Telecollaboration go beyond being merely a respected yet isolated activity in university FL education and…

…move on to become a more effective educational tool which is more widely used and integrated into university education?

• 1. Steps in the development of Telecollaborative classroom practices

• 2. Steps in the development of Telecollaborative research

• 3. Steps in the integration of Telecollaboration across university education

Steps in the development of Telecollaborative classroom practices

Step 1: Move beyond bicultural/bilingual Exchange

• Lewis & O’Dowd (2015): Systematic review of 53 empirical studies of how telecollaboration contributed to the goals of foreign language learning in university education:– 45 studies: bilingual/bicultural exchange– 6 of the 53 studies: Lingua franca– 2 of the 53: Multilingual exchanges

What types of partner-classes are teachers looking for in UNICollaboration.eu?

Time to look towards Lingua Franca exchanges?

• Practical reasons - Not enough ‘natives’ to go around:

Kohn & Hoffstaedter (2015): “…[D]ue to a strong imbalance between high and low-demand foreign languages, finding a partner with a matching native/target language combination can be difficult, even impossible.”

• Educational reasons – Getting learners ready for the real world:

Kramsch (2006): “It is no longer appropriate to give students a tourist-like competence to exchange information with native speakers of national languages within well-defined national cultures. They need a much more sophisticated competence in the manipulation of symbolic systems.”

Provide experience of learning how to interact with cultural difference per se: Kern (2014): “…we need to think of computer-mediated exchanges as what

Pratt calls contact zones: ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other’ (1991, p. 34)”.

An example from a Spanish-German-Israeli Lingua Franca exchange during the recent Gaza conflict:

A German student writes to his Israeli partners:

“ …. I can understand that the rockets are very scary and i'm very glad that we in Germany don´t have war like you. And i think Israel isn't alone in charge for this conflict. But can you understand the people in Gaza? Is it ok to keep these people there like in prison? And why it isn't possible or why it´s so complicated to find a solution for all the people in your region? And why the people especially the young don't do something for the international understanding between these cultures? So it´s time so sit together, talk and finish this war. And both parties must grant facilities. Greetings…”

Step 2: Develop tasks which focus on democratic citizenship and genuine intercultural dialogue

• Beware “the empty babble of the communicative classroom” (Pennycock, 1994)!• Typical Telecollaborative tasks:

– This task allows the partners to prepare a powerpoint presentation about places to go out at night in their hometown.

– This task aims to have students explore and reflect on stereotypes…– Students have to post an image to the forum that exemplifies an aspect of

their daily routine.– This presentation task allows the telecollaborative partners to speak about

their daily lives by producing a video or a commented slideshow.• Kramsch and Ware (2005): “the illusion of commonality”:• Spanish Student 1: “I will say that I liked the exchange very much and that Missouri

students looked like very nice people. I talked to them about my city and about theirs and it was nice to see that there are little differences but not as much as I thought.”

• Spanish Student 2: “To my mind, we aren't too different, both of us like sports, music and spending time with our friends. We have different lifestyles but the same goal: helping people with our jobs.”

Telecollaboration for democratic citizenship and intercultural dialogue?

Leask (2015): “International interaction and collaboration…offer a way to identify and address the issues associated with globalization and to address inequalities …only if we develop in students the capacity to critique the world they live in, see problems and issues from a range of perspectives, and take action to address them.”

Council of Europe (2015): Competences for Democratic Citizenship and Intercultural Dialogue:

Examples of descriptors:– Expresses commitment to sustaining and safeguarding the human

rights of other people– Expresses a willingness to seek out or take up opportunities to

engage, cooperate and interact with those who are perceived to have cultural affiliations that differ from his/her own

What type of tasks lead to genuine collaboration and rich educational outcomes?

Developing tasks that lead to genuine collaboration and interaction• Challenge students to go beyond simply exchanging information and to

actually collaborate in the co-elaboration of projects or products:• Allport (1958!!!): “The nub of the matter seems to be that contact must

reach below the surface in order to be effective in altering prejudice. Only the type of contact that leads people to do things together is likely to result in changed attitudes.”

• Guth and Robin (2015): “Tasks must be designed so that students depend on one another to complete the task. For example, rather than having students write a collaborative essay in which each individual writes his or her own part and adds it to the whole, students could be asked to carry out interviews locally, which are then shared with their peers and interpreted through online discussion and edited jointly.”

Example 1: The Soliya Model – East-West Negotiations

• Soliya connects over 200 students from over 30 different universities in the US, Europe and the predominantly Arab and/or Muslim worlds.

• Students are placed into small groups of 8-10 students and guided through a 9-week, English language dialogue program by pairs of trained facilitators.

http://www.soliya.net/

Example 2: Sharing Perspectives: A Content & Exchange Modelhttp://www.sharingperspectivesfoundation.com/

Provide academic content

Participating universities construct a shared curriculum. This curriculum is presented through video lectures by the participating educators.

Enable online discussion

After watching the video-lectures, sub-groups – of one student per participating university – come together in a web-based video-conference room, where they discuss the lectures of that week. These discussions are hosted by professionally trained facilitators.

Facilitate collaborative research

Students are required to collaboratively design and conduct survey research in their own communities in order to learn about the broader societal impact of the topic.

Example 3: Porto (2014): British/Argentinian Action research project on the Malvinas/Falklands conflict

Steps in the development of Telecollaborative research

Step 1: Expand sources of data used in Telecollaborative Studies

Liddicoat and Scarino (2013):

[Referring to a long range of telecollaborative studies:]

“ In each instance discussed above, interaction using a social technology has not necessarily resulted in intercultural learning… The tasks involved students in exchanges across cultures…but the intercultural learning was supposed to happen as an automatic result of communication or engagement with others.”

Really?

Chun (2015): “…it is essential for teachers to help students to go beyond comprehending the surface meaning of words and sentences in order to understand what their intercultural partners are writing.”

Müller-Hartmann (2012): “…[t]he role of the teacher is crucial in initiating, developing and monitoring telecollaborative exchanges for language learning” (p. 172).

• Then why do Liddicoat and Scarino (2013) feel it necessary to warn that “…the technologies make available possibilities that need to be developed as experiences of learning in parallel with the interactions that technology facilitates?”

• One possible reason:• Lewis & O’Dowd (2015): Systematic review of 54 empirical studies

of Telecollaboration’s contribution to FL objectives. What are the main sources of research data? – 41 studies: Online Transcript Analysis– 21 studies: Student Questionnaires – 18 studies: Student interviews– 13 studies: Analysis of learner documents– ? Studies: Analysis of classroom interaction

• Then why do Liddicoat and Scarino (2013) feel it necessary to warn that “…the technologies make available possibilities that need to be developed as experiences of learning in parallel with the interactions that technology facilitates?”

• Lewis & O’Dowd (2015): Systematic review of 54 empirical studies of how telecollaboration contributed to the goals of foreign language learning in university education:– 41 studies: Online Transcript Analysis– 21 studies: Student Questionnaires – 18 studies: Student interviews– 13 studies: Analysis of learner documents– 0 Studies: Analysis of classroom interaction

But why has this valuable source of evidence been neglected in telecollaborative research studies?

• Researcher 1: “I think one important point is that through the work with computers we already store so much data that we have the feeling that we are able to present a multi-perspective in terms of data presentation. But we would need more data in this regard to see what actually transpires in the classroom.”

• Researcher 2: “I often take notes after classroom sessions but not in a structured way. One would need to video- or at least audiotape the classroom sessions which obviously is an additional workload...”

• Researcher 3: “Why is not done? It takes A GREAT DEAL of time and work. I am currently working on CA transcriptions of 1 and half hours of online conversations right now and it is, to the clock - 1 minute of conversation requires 1 hour of transcription... SO much easier to nab those online data ...but I agree, it needs to be combined with what is happening in the classroom).”

Step 2: Time to take a Longitudinal Approach to Assessing the Impact of Telecollaborative Contact?• Lewis & O’Dowd (2015): Lack of longitudinal studies:

• Telecollaborative research studies to date have not attempted to evaluate the impact of virtual exchange on learners over a period any longer that one university semester.

• Not surprising? • Guth, Helm and O’Dowd (2012):

– 54% of European university educators: exchanges lasted between one and three months

– 26%: duration between three and six months. • Belz (2004): “…such longitudinal data are difficult to collect in the tutored North

American context where language courses typically last for only one semester.” • One possibility: Study long-term impact of different virtual exchanges on individual

students:

Steps in Telecollaborative integration

Step 1: Introducing non-FL teachers to Telecollaboration

What have been the reactions by non-FL teachers to Telecollaboration?

“Time is already short in the classes anyway. I just don’t know how I could add this activity as well.”

“I really don’t think my subject area is suited to this type of learning. I just can’t imagine what the two groups would write about.”

“Telecollaboration …can hardly be implemented in lectures, at least in my field. I do not mean to say that this was not an interesting topic, but it seemed more suitable to other fields.”

[Sample Feedback English Medium Instruction training courses in Austria and Italy]

“Representatives of “hard, pure”disciplines …are often less open to recognizing the cultural construction of knowledge than their colleagues in the “softer, applied” disciplines…” (Leask, 2015)

Step 2: Combine the Flipped Classroom and Telecollaboration –

e.g. León - Tel Aviv – Malmo

Step 3: Combining MOOC’s and Telecollaboration

http://lrl.univ-bpclermont.fr/spip.php?article365

Combining MOOC’s and Telecollaboration (2)• Princeton University, USA:• "Making Government Work in

Hard Places“ by Jennifer Widner • Traditional graduate-level course

with 19 enrolled students + • Nine-week online course reached

more than 2,000 learners from around the world.

• Online class: NovoEd MOOC platform - teambuilding and discussion between online and on-campus students.

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S42/98/12A55/index.xml?section=featured

Step 4: Combining Physical Mobility and Telecollaboration

• Kinginger (2009): “A particularly intriguing application… would be to establish telecollaborative courses linking students at home to their in-country peers in the precise locations where they will study abroad and thereby to establish contacts through prior, institutionally sanctioned interaction.”

Virtual International Partner (VIPs)• Students planning to take part in an

Erasmus mobility are assigned a Virtual International Partner in their country of destination

• The students carry out various tasks in L1 and L2 over a 2-month period using email, skype, etc.

• At the end of the exchange, students submit a portfolio providing evidence of their work and reflections on their learning

• Successful participants are awarded extra points for Erasmus application

• Partnerships currently exist with Ireland, UK and France

Summing Up• Twenty years of development and growth of telecollaborative practice and

research in CALL • The next step? Looking outward – making telecollaboration a tool for:

– The development of transversal skills and global citizenship in non-FL subjects

– The enhancement of university’s student mobility programmes

– An integral part of university’s online education courses (flipped classroom, MOOC’s etc.)

• How can we (CALL practitioners) contribute to this?– Expand the goals and partner constellations of Telecollaborative practice

– Provide more robust evidence of the value of Telecollaborative Learning

– Adapt Telecollaborative Initiatives to the needs and practices of University education

Thank you for listening!• Contact with comments and

questions:

robert.odowd@unileon.es– Bibliography and draft paper from

today’s talk: http://unileon.academia.edu/RobertODowd

– See this presentation again:

http://www.slideshare.net/dfmro– Join UNICollaboration:

www.unicollaboration.eu