“On the Outside Looking In” A Review of Criticism of Telecollaborative Research and Practice

Robert O'Dowd

Universidad de León, Spain

@robodowd

robert.odowd@unileon.es

The Second International Conference on Telecollaboration in Higher Education

Trinity College, Dublin 2016

It’s good to be among friends….

Lamy and Goodfellow:

‘[t]he field of telecollaboration for language learning has been remarkable for its willingness to review its own effectiveness regularly’ (2010, p. 109)

My plan for my 20 minutes:

• Provide an overview of the main criticisms of Telecollaborative Learning

• Ask you to reflect and react to these criticisms and critiques

• Finish by asking “What should we be doing better?”

What are the main criticisms of Telecollaboration?

Telecollaboration and Authenticity

Telecollaboration and first class / second class mobility

Telecollaboration and the contact = learning falacy

Telecollaboration and the impact of the medium

Telecollaboration and Authenticity

• Hanna and de Nooy (2009):

• What are the underlying tenents of telecollaborative practice?

1. ‘Interaction is restricted to communication with other learners, a situation that is safe and reassuring for beginners and younger learners, but somewhat limiting for more advanced and adult learners, who need practice in venturing beyond the classroom’ (2009, p. 88).

2. ‘The success of telecollaboration and e-tandem learning activities tends to rely on the quality of the relationship that develops between geographically separated participants. . . . [I]t is an exchange between a pair of individuals, already positioned as friends’ (2009, p. 92).

3. ‘[A]lthough personal conversation is an indispensable genre, it can be a limiting one. . . . [I]t predisposes the student to launching conversations about the self that inevitably position him/her as the exotic little foreigner/the other. He/she may fail to learn strategies for opening and maintaining communication of other kinds’ (p. 195).

Cause for Reflection:

Issue one: How authentic are online exchanges that bring together two or more classes to carry out communicative tasks together in different languages?

Issue two: Do your exchanges depend on the online partners developing a friendship as the basis for their interactions?

Issue three: In your exchanges, is there an over-reliance on the genre of personalised conversation?

Telecollaboration and the Contact = Learning Falacy

Liddicoat and Scarino (2013):

[Referring to a large number 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.’

‘The problem is that exposure to interaction of itself does not necessarily equate with intercultural learning. . . . To be able to contribute to learning, the interaction must first become available in some way for students to reflect on and interpret. It is therefore necessary to consider not only what these technologies permit students to do, but also consider how their experiences may contribute to learning’ (2013, p. 112).

Cause for Reflection:

Do your telecollaborative exchanges merely engage students in interaction or do they also provide opportunities to reflect on and learn from the interaction?

Leask (2015): “International interaction and collaboration…offer a way to identify and address the issues associated with globalization and to address inequalities …but 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.”

Telecollaboration and first class / second class mobility

Lawton:‘[I]t can …be argued that 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. Looked at this way, ‘internationalisation at home’ (the core element of which refers to developments in curricula consistent with the international aspirations of institutions) can be seen as a consolation prize for non-mobile non-elites.’ (2015, p. 80)

The Relationship between Physical and Virtual Mobility:

What is the relationship between virtual mobility (telecollaboration) and physical mobility?

Will physical mobility be reserved exclusively for wealthier students, while the remainder are given the second-best option of virtual mobility?

• Cause for Reflection:

• How will your institution use telecollaboration?

• Will it be used to support and enrichen physical mobility? Or will be used as a ‘second best’ for those who do not travel abroad?

Telecollaboration and the Impact of the Medium

• Misconceptions by teachers and students involved in Telecollaboration (1):

The discourse of online interaction is governed by universal rules:

Ware & Kramsch: “[T]he electronic medium tends to blur genres that are usually kept separate in face to face interaction. The type of exchange in which the students were engaged was fundamentally ambiguous: It was a private dialogue between two students but it was also a dialogue on which an unknown numbers of others eavesdropped; it was a classroom assignment, but Rob had changed the assignment into a chatty get-to-know-each-other conversation; it was a written exchange but in the form of a spoken chat. . . . What students perceive as appropriate uses of the Internet can differ interculturally” (2005, p. 199).

Misconceptions by teachers and students involved in Telecollaboration (2):

The computer medium does not play a role in how meanings are expressed and understood in online intercultural interaction.

• Kern: ‘…what one sees on the computer screen is a highly mediated, filtered, and designed version of the world’ (2014, p. 341).

• ‘…Our students will be called upon to use their languages in technology-mediated environments, and we need to prepare them with a critical awareness of how mediations affect meanings’ (2014, p. 352).

• Cause for reflection:

• Do you bring your students to reflect on how the medium can influence the message?

• Do you make them sensitive to difference genres in use in their online interactions?

Summing UpStrive to….

• Establish working relationships among students which do not over-depend on friendship as the basis for their interactions.

• Provide practice in multiple-genres – avoid an over-reliance on the genre of personalised conversation.

• Provide not only opportunities for interaction but also opportunities to reflect on and learn from the interaction.

• Avoid telecollaboration being perceived as a ‘second best’ option for those who do not travel abroad.

• Develop tasks which bring your students to reflect on how the medium can influence online communication.

• Sensitize your students to difference in genres in their online interactions.

My Reaction to the arguments and criticism:

Online Intercultural Exchange Policy, Pedagogy, Practice

Edited by Robert O’Dowd and Tim Lewis

Routledge (2016)

ROBERT O’DOWD:

Learning From the Past and Looking to the Future of Online Intercultural Exchange (pp. 273-294)

This presentation is available online:

http://www.slideshare.net/dfmro