Discourse strategies and power roles in student-led distance learning

The assertion of identity and power via computer-mediated communication in the context of distance or web-based learning presents challenges to both teachers and students. When regular, face-to-face classroom interaction is replaced by online chat or group discussion forums, participants must avail themselves of new techniques and tactics for contributing to and furthering interaction, discussion, and learning. During student-only chat sessions, the absence of teacher-led, face-to-face classroom activities requires the students to assume leadership roles and responsibilities normally associated with the teacher. This situation raises the questions of who teaches and who learns; how students discursively negotiate power roles; and whether power emerges as a function of displayed expertise and knowledge or rather the use of authoritative language. This descriptive study represents an examination of a corpus of task-based discussion logs among Vietnamese students of distance learning courses in English linguistics. The data reveal recurring discourse strategies for 1) negotiating the progression of the discussion sessions, 2) asserting and questioning knowledge, and 3) assuming or delegating responsibility. Power is defined ad hoc as the ability to successfully perform these strategies. The data analysis contributes to a better understanding of how working methods and materials can be tailored to students in distance learning courses, and how such students can be empowered by being afforded opportunities and effectively encouraged to assert their knowledge and authority.

Students’ Role in Distance Learning

1. IntroductionMuch of the support that students have in a traditional classroom is absent in a distance learning course. In the traditional classroom, the learner is together with his or her classmates and the teacher; learning is socially embedded. Students can talk to each other and may learn from each other as they go through the learning process together. They also witness the teacher’s expression of the knowledge firsthand. The class participants communicate to each other not only through their words, but also through their gestures, facial expressions and tone of voice, and the teacher can observe the students’ progress and provide guidance and feedback in an as-needed basis. Further, through the habit of meeting in a regular place at a regular time, the participants reinforce their own and each other’s commitment to the course. A distance course must somehow provide learners other kinds of supports so that the distance learner also has a sense of connection with a learning community; can benefit from interaction with peers who are going through a similar learning process; receives feedback that allows him or her to know how he or she is progressing; and is guided enough so that he or she continues to progress towards the learning objectives. This cannot be accomplished if the distance course does not simultaneously promote student autonomy, for the distance course format requires students to take greater responsibility for their own learning. This chapter presents one distance learning course that was able to address all of these goals. The English Department at Högskolan Dalarna, Sweden, participates in a distance learning program with Vietnam National University. Students enrolled in this program study half-time for two years to complete a Master’s degree in English Linguistics. The distance courses in this program all contain two types of regular class meetings: one type is student-only seminars conducted through text chat, during which students discuss and complete assignments that prepare them for the other type of class meeting, also conducted through text chat, where the teacher is present and is the one to lead the discussion of seminar issues and assignments. The inclusion of student-only seminars in the course design allows for student independence while at the same time it encourages co-operation and solidarity. The teacher-led seminars offer the advantages of a class led by an expert.In this chapter, we present chatlog data from Vietnamese students in one distance course in English linguistics, comparing the role of the student in both student-only and teacher-led seminars. We discuss how students navigate their participation roles, through computer-mediated communication (CMC), according to seminar type, and we consider the emerging role of the autonomous student in the foreign-language medium, distance learning environment. We close by considering aspects of effective design of distance learning courses from the perspective of a foreign language (FL) environment.

Chatbot como recurso didáctico en la enseñanza de español como lengua extranjera

Las normas educativas de la enseñanza de las lenguas modernas en el instituto sueco están cada vez más enfocadas en la competencia comunicativa y en realizar una comunicación funcional y significativa para los discentes. Una revisión hecha por la Inspección de la Escuela Sueca muestra que existe una falta de práctica en la lengua meta en las aulas.  El objetivo de este estudio es investigar una herramienta digital llamado chatbot. El chatbot www.soydiego.com, es un programa diseñado para estudiantes de español en el cual se puede chatear con un robot en línea. Hemos investigado la actitud de los docentes hacia las metas comunicativas y la posible aportación de un chatbot como recurso didáctico. Mediante encuestas y entrevistas recibimos respuestas de parte de 25 docentes de español de nivel de instituto. Los resultados muestran que los profesores tienen una actitud muy positiva hacia el chatbot. Opinan que este puede ser una herramienta útil para desarrollar la competencia comunicativa de los discentes. De todos modos, hemos concluido que todavía hay una necesidad de un desarrollo adicional de la herramienta que sea adaptable a todos los niveles de español.

Utbildningens påverkan på människors acceptans för ett kommunikationssystem

I denna studie, som bedrivits på Landstinget Dalarna, har kommunikationssystemet Microsoft Lync studerats. Lync består av kommunikationsmodulerna chatt, video- och telefonkonferens samt dela dokument. Syftet med denna rapport är att förklara hur utbildning kan påverka människors acceptans för ett kommunikationssystem samt vilka orsaker som kan finnas för att det inte används. För att kunna besvara studiens syfte användes ett kvasiexperiment som genomfördes genom två intervjuomgångar och en utbildning mellan dessa intervjuomgångar. Utifrån intervjuomgångarna kunde slutsatser dras om hur utbildningen hade påverkat acceptansen för kommunikationssystemet Lync. Modellen Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) användes för att studera de olika faktorer som påverkar acceptansen för teknik. Slutsatsen ska besvara frågorna, om utbildning påverkar människors acceptans och vad som kan vara orsaker till att ett kommunikationssystem som Lync inte används. Efter utbildningen hade en viss påverkan skett för kommunikationsmodulen chatt, inställningen hade ändrats och respondenterna såg en ökad nytta efter utbildningen. Utbildningen hade ingen påverkan när respondenterna inte såg nytta.

Översyn magisterprogram i socialt arbete med inriktning evidensbaserat arbete med barn och unga

Denna rapport har som syfte att göra en översyn av magisterprogramet i evidensbaserat socialt arbetes första år. Intervjuer har genomförts med studenter, lärare samt representanter för arbetslivet (kommuner). I rapporten presenteras följande förlag; 1) Att avsluta fri-fart, fri-start upplägget och istället införa fast fart (25% alt. 50%)  takt för studierna. Kurserna kan fortfarande bestå av inspelade föreläsningar och ha en stor flexibilitet, inom terminsgränserna. 2) Att begränsa examinationerna till fem. 3) Att ha kvar distans/nätundervisningen och att uppmuntra kursansvariga att lägga in diskussionstrådar, chat, connectmöten och bjuda in studenter som bor nära studieorten att närvara vid streamade föreläsningar. 4) Att ge möjligheter till ett program. Att erbjuda magisterkurserna som fristående kurser som sedan vägs samman i en magisterexamen. 5) Att inrätta ett programråd där återkommande diskussioner förs kring socialarbetarnas utbildning, policyns implementering och vidarutveckling.

Distance teacher education – some experiences from Dalarna University, SwedenPaper presented at the 33rd Annual ATEE Conference Brussels, Belgium, 23rd – 27th August 2008

Distance teaching is now-a-days used in different shapes. However, it is something different from traditional campus organised education as it systematically uses Information Communication Technology (ICT) as a key element. When the distance teacher education started in Sweden many teacher educators doubted the wisdom of this. They expressed that the educational process to become a teacher would be deteriorated. For instance, they feared for high drop out rates and difficulties to examine in a proper way. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education has recently edited a report that showed that this form of teacher education was well adapted to the labour market, but the possibilities for the teacher students to shape their education were relatively limited. However, we still know quite little about the effects of this way to educate teacher students. This paper explores the possibility of using distance teacher education.In a case study 20 students, who were the first to finish a complete a distance teacher education at Högskolan Dalarna, were asked in a questionnaire how they had apprehended their education. We also interviewed four of these students, as well as five teacher educators.One of our findings were that the distance teacher education reached new target groups, who not had been able to participate in university studies if it not had been offered in this form. Especially, this was valid for the middle-aged women, living a long distance away from a university, with social responsibilities for children or old parents. Other findings were that these students in general were target oriented and ambitious, wrote more than the campus students and developed that kind of skill better. Marratech, an ICT system for small groups, e-mail and chat were used for the communication. Marratech was considered to permit free and spontaneous communication, both of the teacher educators and the students. Initially the teacher educators were sceptical to distance teacher education, but afterwards they were surprised of how well it had worked. They declared that they had better and nearer contact with their students and more control over the students´ performance, but some parts of the teacher education were better suitable for campus education, for example, power of creating characters. Distance teacher education was considered time consuming and demanded much activity from the teacher educators as the students wanted rapid responses. This study indicates that distance teacher education works well for mature individuals with high motivation. However, it demands more time from the teacher educators, but it gives in general good results. Still, there are pedagogical challenges to overcome. Maybe we should reflect on a mix of distance teacher education and campus based teacher education, instead of separated ways of accomplishing teacher education?

Topic- and mode-sensitive interaction strategies : Functions of ellipsis in oral communication

In this article, we discuss ellipsis as an interactive strategy by analysing the author’s textchat corpus and the VOICE corpus of English as a Lingua Franca. It is found that there were fewer repetitions in the textchat data, and this is explained as a consequence of the textchat mode. Textchat contributions are preserved as long as the chat is active or has been saved, and therefore users can scroll through and review the discussion, compared to the more fleeting nature of oral conversation. As a result, repetition is less necessary. The frequency of other functions identified could be attributed to the topic of discourse. Discussions involve much ellipsis used to develop discourse, although some were self-presentations with repetition used to confirm details. Back-channel support and comments were often low because speakers instead used forms like yeah as supportive utterances.

Wie lässt sich das Interesse am Erlernen von Deutsch als Fremdsprache (wieder) steigern? : Warum lernt man als schwedischer Schüler neben der eigenen Muttersprache gerade Deutsch als zweite Fremdsprache? Was sind Anreize dafür?

By the means of a questionnaire the present work examines the attitudes among pupils between the 5th and 9th grade towards choosing French, Spanish or German as their third language. The main question to be answered is "What needs to be improved to raise the interest in choosing specifically German as their preferred third language?". The other questions posed are for example "Do they want to study a language at all?", "Which language do they want to study and why?" or "What motivates them to keep studying generally?". The results show a high motivation and that the most pupils have already decided for a specific language at the middle of the 5th grade. Family and friends play a crucial role in choosing their language in combination with other factors such as the experiences of visiting countries or settings where the target language is used. To raise the popularity of German as the chosen language is not a short time project. More variation in teaching and real contact with German people, for instance language trips, needs to be done or improved. Nearly all of the pupils want to use modern techniques like chat or video conversations instead of just reading a text book.

Conversación digital: copresencia y disponibilidad : Estudio pragmático del preámbulo de reuniones multipartitas por videoconferencia

The present thesis explores how interaction is initiated in multi-party meetings in Adobe Connect, 7.0, with a particular focus on how co-presence and mutual availability are established through the preambles of 18 meetings held in Spanish without a moderator. Taking Conversation Analysis (CA) as a methodological point of departure, this thesis comprises four different studies, each of them analyzing a particular phenomenon within the interaction of the preambles in a multimodal environment that allows simultaneous interaction through video, voice and text-chat. The first study (Artículo I) shows how participants solve jointly the issue of availability in a technological environment where being online is not necessarily understood as being available for communicating. The second study (Artículo II) focuses on the beginning of the audiovisual interaction; in particular on how participants check the right functioning of the audiovisual mode. The third study (Artículo III) explores silences within the interaction of the preamble. It shows that the length of gaps and lapses become a significant aspect the preambles and how they are connected to the issue of availability.  Finally, the four study introduces the notion of modal alignment, an interactional phenomenon that systematically appears in the beginnings of the encounters, which seems to be used and understood  as a strategy for the establishment of mutual availability and negotiation of the participation framework. As a whole, this research shows how participants, in order to establish mutual co-presence and availability, adapt to a particular technology in terms of participation management, deploying strategies and conveying successive actions which, as it is the case of the activation of their respective webcams, seem to be understood as predictable within the intricate process of establishing mutual availability before the meeting starts.

La cronémimca de reuniones multipartitas en videoconferencia : Observaciones en torno al silencio de la fase de preparación

En este estudio se examinan los silencios que aparecen durante la fase de preparación de dieciocho reuniones multipartitas por videoconferencia. Partiendo de la metodología del Análisis Conversacional, el análisis del material muestra que la duración de los silencios entre turnos se reduce considerablemente en dos momentos cruciales de la interacción en línea. Esto a su vez confirma la existencia de tres etapas diferenciadas en la preparación: etapa inicial, etapa de transición y etapa audiovisual, en cada una de las cuales los silencios presentan unas características concretas. Se muestra que en el chat escrito también se producen intervalos y lapsos y que el nivel de tolerancia de los participantes hacia el silencio varía en cada una de las etapas, lo cual puede relacionarse con su nivel de atención y disponibilidad. Se sugiere un estándar máximo aproximado para los intervalos que ocurren en la etapa de transición y se demuestra que, en el canal audio-oral, el límite de tolerancia se sitúa por encima de los tres segundos de duración. Por último, este estudio pone de manifiesto la aparición de diferentes ritmos cronémicos a lo largo de la preparación en videoconferencia, donde elementos como la apertura de la cámara web parecen poseer una gran relevancia interaccional.

El alineamiento modal en el preámbulo de reuniones por videoconferencia

En el presente artículo se introduce el concepto de alineamiento modal, un fenómeno interactivo característico del preámbulo de reuniones por videoconferencia, en las que la interacción puede llevarse a cabo a través del chat escrito, la imagen y la voz. Con tal propósito, se parte del modelo de interacción de Erving Goffman y la metodología del Análisis de la Conversación (AC). A través de una selección de ejemplos extraídos de un corpus de dieciocho interacciones por Adobe Connect 7.0, el análisis muestra que la selección del canal, dentro del contexto analizado, constituye un recurso para el alineamiento y la (re)configuración del marco de participación de las reuniones. Asimismo, se sugiere que dicho recurso es utilizado por los participantes como estrategia para gestionar la orientación recíproca y la toma de turno durante los preámbulos.