g fuchs euro_call_teacher_ed_sig_presentation_cfuchs_may2010

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Carolin Fuchs Teachers College, Columbia University EuroCALL Teacher Ed SIG, Lyon, May 27, 2010

Wikis and Blogs for Cross-Institutional Task Design – An Empirical Study in Language

Teacher Education

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I. Background CMC modes (Murray, 1988) expanded

to “socio-technical modes” to include the social and cultural practices that have arisen out of their use (Herring, 2002)

Herring (1999) lists two properties of the medium that are known to be obstacles to interaction management in CMC:

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I. Background

“(1) lack of simultaneous feedback, caused by reduced audio-visual cues and the fact that messages cannot overlap;

(2) disrupted turn adjacency, caused by the fact that messages are posted in the order received by the system, without regard for what they are responding to.” (p.2)

How coherent (or not) are computer-mediated interactions? (Herring, 1999)

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I. Background “[W]iki is Hawaiian for “quick” and

refers to a type of Website with pages that any user can easily contribute to and edit, including text, photos, and videos” (Niño, 2009, p. 25)

Use of Wiki: student research projects, collaborative annotated bibliography, publishing course resources, knowledge and reflection base, mapping concepts, presentation and group authoring tool (for an overview, see Parker & Chao, 2007);

FoF in language teaching (Kessler, 2009);

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I. Background

Email and chat: informal, author-centric, personalWiki: more formal, topic-centric, depersonalized; each edit contributes concretely to collaborative written product; edits log and edits authors on separate page; teacher can monitor individual student contributions (Warschauer, 2010, p.5).

“Often group members collaborate on a document by emailing to each member of the group a file that each person edits on their computer, and some attempt is then made to coordinate the edits so that everyone’s work is equally represented: using a wiki pulls the group members together and enables them to build and edit the document on a single, central wiki page” (Duffy & Burns, 2006, as cited in Parker & Chao, 2007, p. 61).

Wikis & Blogs (Zeinstejer, 2008)

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Blog Wiki

-structured-highly personal-focused on process-administered by one individual-edited by creator-chronologically organized

-flexible-intensively collaborative-focused on content-administered by a number of people-edited by anyone-organized in innumerable ways

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II. Goals of the Project

Train student teachers in various CMC tools (e.g., wikis, blogs, podcasts) for use in their teaching

Exchange perspectives and create tech-based tasks with cross-institutional partners

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II. Groups’ Joint Products

Group 3: “Global English Café”http://sites.google.com/site/group3site/Home Group 3: “Travel with the Local

Experts” Bloghttp://travelwithlocalexperts.blogspot.com/

http://sites.google.com/site/group3site/Home

http://travelwithlocalexperts.blogspot.com/

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II. Research Questions

1. How do student teachers use the tools (e.g., the wiki)?

2. What kind of interaction takes place to negotiate the task?

3. What are the methodological implications for analyzing interaction in Web 2.0 tools such as Google Sites and Google Wave?

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III. Research Design

Exploratory study that draws on three qualitative research traditions: Ethnography, Case Study, Action Research (e.g., Nunan, 1992; Richards, 2003)

Researcher as participant observer: TC instructor & project co-designer (e.g., Denzin, 1989)

Data triangulation through CMC data and journal entries (e.g., Nunan, 1992)

Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis (Herring, 1999, 2004)

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III. CMDA

Approach to analyzing internet content that goes beyond traditional content analysis;

Basic methodology of CMDA is language-focused content analysis supplemented by a toolkit of discourse analysis methods adapted from the study of spoken conversation and written text analysis;

Methods can be quantitative (coding/counting) or qualitative (Herring, 2004)

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III. CMDA

Implementation for the coding and counting(quantitative) approach to CMDA, involve afive-step process that resembles that forclassical content analysis:1) Articulate research question(s) 2) Select computer-mediated data sample 3) Operationalize key concept(s) in terms of

discourse features 4) Apply method(s) of analysis to data

sample 5) Interpret results (Herring, 2004)

III. Coding Procedure

2 Coders coded for c-units (Crookes, 1990, p. 184; Duff, 1986, p. 153)

Intercoder Agreement: .90 Types of C-units

SI: Sharing/ Summarizing Information SA: Suggests Action RA: Requests Action RV: Requests Validation RI: Requests Information EG: Expressing Gratitude A: Agrees D: Disagrees E: Emoticons O: Others

Ratio of Each Type

SI SA RA RV RI EG A D E O

23.1 %

12.5 %

5.8 %

6.7 %

4.8 %

6.3 %

5.3 %

0.5 %

3.0 %

32 %

Out of 208 C-Units

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III. Coding Examples

Requesting Validation: “Any thoughts?” [CCF-RVCF] [CEJ-RVEJ]

“Let us know what you think, and we look forward to hearing from you.” [CCF-RVCF] [CEJ-RVEJ]

Expressing Gratitude: “Thank you for sharing.” [CCF-EGCF] [CEJ-EGEJ]

Requesting Action: “Now for the project, we have some suggestions:[…]” [CCF-SACF] [CEJ-SAEJ]

IV. CMC Data – Class Wiki

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Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4

20 Wiki Posts 47 Wiki Edits




0 Attachments 1 Attachments 0 Attachments 1 Attachments

6 Comments 25 Comments 0 Comments 0 Comments

4 Subpages 2 Subpages 1 Subpages 2 Subpages

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IV. The wiki as a discussion tool? (Journal Entry data; N=12)

“[W]ikis for example, it is a collaboration tool that needs participants to discuss a topic by collaboratively writing on the web. […] wikis may be used as a good tool for students to discuss the social and cultural aspects of English speaking societies. […] wikis will be a great tool for students in higher level to practice the target language by discussing various topics and exchanging information” (Ying, Group 3, Journal 1, emphasis added).

“[…] wiki to post recipes. This topic is perfect for the collaborative forum of a wiki” (Lisa, Group 2, Journal, emphasis added).

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IV. The wiki as a discussion tool? (Journal Entry data; N=12)

“Groups can meet online using Skype or on Google Sites or even in a chat room. Using these venues to have discussions can be quite fruitful, especially as students can feel more open to share their ideas given the informal nature of such online meetings” (Warner, Group 1, Journal 2, emphasis added).

“Web tools such as discussion forums and Wikis enable students to participate actively in discussing given topics and in bringing additional information sources to the group” (Yun, Group 1, Journal 2, emphasis added).

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IV. CMC Data – Group 3

See handout (pp. 1-3): Group 3 Wiki

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IV. Group 3 – Reflecting on the collaboration (Yang, Journal Entry 3)

We had a couple of Skype meetings that are

usually about an hour. In the Skype meeting, we

talked about our ideas through the microphones

and earphones. Even though we cannot see

each other, we always have a good discussion.

It is great to have group members from different

cultural and language background. We canbrainstorm various ideas. The topic our

project isto teach students to introduce their own

culture,and provide a platform for them to share

anycultural experience.

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Reflecting on the collaboration cont’d (Yang, Journal Entry 3)

The other thing that makes us excited is that we could never get to know each other if there is not a project like this, no technology, and no Internet. Because of the Internet, we are connected. Whenever we have Skype meetings, in addition to the discussion of the project, we also exchange information about school lives. I know more about the school system, and the student population in Luxembourg little by little. What we experienced in the project is what I would like to have my students experience. This could be a good experience for language learners truly more practices.

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To have good cooperation, it is important that all the group members need to be considerate, and can allow the technical problems or any emergency that what might happen. We need to understand that sometimes the Internet may not be working, or the person might be running late because of any emergency and there is no cell phone for us to talk immediately. A great amount situation might occur, we need to be thoughtful about the difficulties, tolerate with this, and try to avoid the problems in advance. All the members in our groups are easygoing and considerate, so we can understand the challenges and still make the communication and the project go on.

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In addition to the challenge of technical problems, language can be the other challenge. All the members in our group have the awareness that communications take time, and we need to be patient to clarify ourselves. On-line communications can be ambiguous since we cannot just sit together in front of the computer to make the decisions such as the colors, the vocabulary that we would like to teach, or the layout of the website, etc. right away. We not only need to talk on the Skype, but also need to type things down in words to make our ideas clear. We are all conscious of the challenge of communication. To some degree, we can tolerate the ambiguity and miscommunications. Being aware of the difficulties of communication is the reason that our experience of cooperation can be pleasant.

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V. Discussion

Group 3 wiki is like email but in a chat mode in that the students wanted to make it informal. For instance, greetings are a way to write who is speaking (cf. email: to/from is already in the mask; chat: has names of participants – real or pseudonyms)

They used various forms of greetings and salutations to make the wiki more conversation-like

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V. Discussion

Groups perceived the wiki as a forum for discussion (Group 3 excerpt is a good example for this)

The wiki is a hybrid in that there is no thread, and posts do not get listed chronologically (in fact, there are not supposed to be any posts but content only); in contrast, in discussion forums, blogs, or email, the most recent post gets listed first

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V. Discussion

There seems to be additional issues with the wiki due to the fact that users can insert messages at any point. The revision history is in chronological order and won’t show who edited what unless one reverts to a prior version. With email messages, there is some sort of a dated thread. But the wiki does not show the date except for the revision history.

Additionally, in contrast to analyzing public forums or chat rooms where all the messages are displayed, institutional settings differ in that students have a choice of tools and may revert to exchanging private email messages or, in the case of Group 3, talk on Skype. The researcher does not have access to these data.

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VI. CMC Data – Google Wave

Context: “Internet and Language Teaching” elective in Spring 2010; we explored several tech tools such as Ning, Google Wave, podcasts, blogs, wikis.

Google Wave started in October 2009 and it is a “a new web application for real-time communication and collaboration”

(http://wave.google.com/about.html) Google Wave functions as both an SCMC

and ACMC tool for communication No need for dates or greetings because

automatically in the blip But: overlapping or interrupted blips (cf.

turn-taking in the wiki)

http://wave.google.com/about.html

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VII. Conclusion

Task results were excellent, but participants did not use the tech tools in the way they were intended to be used (especially with regard to the Google Sites): All groups entered meta-level comments on the task design, procedure, or collaboration on the wiki site;

Students generally agreed on usefulness of the technology tools (especially wikis); yet, the public nature of the wiki (or blog) may have an inhibiting impact on students (supports findings from De Pedro, 2006).

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VII. Conclusion

In Google Wave, everyone can go back and edit, and it’s hard to tell afterward what went on.

Google wave is a tool where one can not only edit previous posts but can also edit within someone else's blip, in a sense one can interrupt someone’s else blip (e.g., Suzanne and Ellen in Google Wave chat)

Researchers will need to use instruments such as think-aloud protocols or track what users were doing on the screen in order to analyze changes; limitations: no one has control over what gets edited afterwards when students log in from home

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VIII. Implications for future research

How easy and collaborative a tool is the wiki really? What are the implications for learner training?

How do we most effectively introduce the two functions of the wiki (i.e., as class portal, as website)? Introduce Google Sites in a manipulated version?

What are the methodological implications if anyone can go back and edit previous posts? Implications for authorship/ownership?

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THANK YOU

Contact:Carolin [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]