Download Online cafés for heritage learners Day 2

Online cafés for heritage
learners
Day 2: Content/tasks/sequence/
media for online intercultural
exchanges
--Gilberte Furstenberg
NFLRC Workshop
University of Hawai‘i
June 18, 2008
The projects presented
 The three projects:
 The original Cultura Project (between MIT and
other universities/institutions in France)
 The Italy-Padova exchange
 The Spanish High School exchange
 These three projects all take place within a
language class
Topics (on which students
base their online discussions)
 General statement: the goals will greatly define the
topics
 The choice of topics: some important
considerations:
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The topics need (ideally) to be chosen by both partners
They need to fit the stated goals
They need to cover a wide range
The choices will be made mostly by teachers but to some
extent by students
 General statement: the content needs to be
pertinent to the two cultures involved
The Cultura goals and
content
 The goals:
Understand the values, attitudes, beliefs and concepts
inherent in another culture - discover how people in
the other culture interact, look at the world and
frame their thoughts and ideas, and why.
 The content of the original Cultura site:
Responses to three questionnaires
National polls/statistics
Films
Media
Texts (founding texts and texts written by “experts” historians/sociologists/literary writers)
 Images (photos and videos)
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The connections between
class and online work
 Students work in and outside of class, both on
their own and in groups.
 Outside of class, students work individually
on specific documents (ex: answer the
intercultural questionnaires (in their
“native” language), analyze the responses,
research national surveys, watch the
films, read articles, upload images and
write and send comments in the on-line
discussion forums, based upon assignments
given by the teacher
 Inside the classroom, students share their
observations with each other.
The sequence of events : a
closer look
 Stage 1: Students analyze a document individually
(ex: the responses to the questionnaires) based
upon a worksheet provided by the teacher.
 Stage 2: Students come back to class and
share their observations with their
classmates, then go on the board trying to
make connections between the different
documents. This leads to whole class
discussions.
The sequence of events
(continued)
Stage 3: Outside of class, students go on the online
forums, posting individual comments, based on their
own observations and the class discussions and asking
their partners many questions (add example)
 Stage 4: They come back to class with a selection of
comments by their peers from abroad which they share
with each other in groups. Some of the comments are
discussed in the class as a whole
 Stage 5: Students go back to the website to explore
other/new materials, gradually refining their
understanding in the light of every new data analyzed,
in a continuous growing circular motion
A summary of the process
 Step 1
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
A summary
 Step 2
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
A summary
 Step 3
QuickTime™ and a
Sorenson Video decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
The choice of language for
the online discussion forums
 Our choice: students write in their “native” language.
 Rationale for using one’s native language in the on-line
forums
 No linguistic dominance by any person or any group. Everyone is
on an equal footing.
 Students can express their thoughts fully (not limited by their
linguistic abilities). They are thus equally able to write about
complex issues
 In return, students:
 read completely authentic texts (in French/Spanish/
German, etc.) written in a very contemporary language
 Use the language of the other when they speak in class and write
their essays and projects
 And the differences in discourse become yet a new cultural
object of analysis
The place of language
learning
 The discussions focus mostly on the differences
students perceive in terms of cultural attitudes but
language is also an integral part of their learning.
 Students use their “native” language in the
online discussion forums but the target language
in class and in their assignments, essays, etc..
 By virtue of the French students writing in French
in the on-line forums, students constantly read
French and learn a lot about:
 vocabulary (contemporary and authentic)
 grammar (in context). Ex: the use of the pronoun
(direct/indirect) Ex: the ways of expressing
agreements/disagreements (indicative/subjunctive)
 the discourse markers
The different media used
 In terms of content:
 texts, websites, photos, vidéos, films
 In terms of communication modes:
 Essentially: text-based discussion forums
 Combination of photos (students select and
upload photos or videos) and texts (to accompany
the photos and comment on their partners’
photos)
 Occasionally: videoconferences
New tools, new pedagogical
practices
 Such a project changes the role of the teacher and
the students.
 We are not the only voice of authority in the
classroom
 Our main role as teachers is to give students as
many opportunities as possible to share with others
what they have discovered, to reflect, discuss,
confront points of view and allow multiple voices
and perspectives to emerge in the classroom
The classroom becomes…
 … a highly interactive place where
students, taking center stage and
interacting with their classmates,
develop more insights, co-construct
and expand their own knowledge and
understanding of the subject matter.
What this changes
(continued)…
 This obviously clearly brings the process (of constructing
knowledge) into the limelight, not the finished product.
Students are like “cultural archeologists”, trying to make
initial connections which they will then try to confirm or revise
in the light of new materials they will analyze, trying to bring
patterns to light and put together the cultural puzzle.
 Incidentally, I would also argue for an extensive use of
black/white boards (our old staple!). They play a vital role as
they make the students’ observations visible to the whole class
and thus provides them with the ability to reflect further. They
act as wonderful mirrors of the students’ thought processes
and as springboards for further general reflection,
interpretation and discussion.
The specific role of the
teacher
 Sharing goals and means with the students
(ex: what language to use and when)
 Providing appropriate materials and a
sequence (ex: calendar)
 Assigning tasks/projects and designing
worksheets
 Ensuring good quality intercultural
exchanges (providing appropriate prompts)
For a more detailed look at the teacher’s role in the
classroom, see: The Teacher’s role (Word document)
 And… >
Evaluating students’
intercultural understanding
 Important question: how to evaluate a
process?
Carnets de bord or Portfolios
Syntheses
Analyses of new materials
 For assessment of asynchronous forums, see
the LLT June 2008 issue, Vol.2, Number 2:
Asynchronous forums in EAP: assessment
issues
The US-Italy Exchange
 The partners:
 Masters’ level students in an advanced English
class in “Foreign Languages for International
Communication”, at the U. of Padova, Italy
 Undergraduate students in an Italian intensive
writing course focusing on the history and culture
of Italy, at Dickinson College in
 The exchange was the major part of the course
for the students at Padova, but only a component
of the writing course at Dickinson.
 For more information, see the website (under
partner classes)
A closer look at the Padova Dickinson exchange content
 The main website
 The aims
 The topics explored (choice driven mostly
by the Dickinson College syllabus)
The Padova-Dickinson
exchange (continued)
 Weekly calendars and activities
Introductions
Questionnaires
Word associations
Sentence completions
Other materials used (under Resources)
Articles: Italy seen from the US
Articles: the US seen from the US
Videos from YouTube
The means of communication
 Asynchronous online discussion forums, some based on:
 The answers to the questionnaires (ex: about lifestyles)
 Articles and videos
 The questions posed (chosen by both teachers on the basis
of questions posed by students in the class)
 Skype conversations (once a week)
 Based on the conversations they had in class (about the
diverse materials and subjects), students prepared a series
of questions (cf week 5) which would become the basis of
their conversations on Skype). Conversations not recorded.
 Blogs
 Collaborative writing of a wiki-based final project (as a end-of-
semester final project)
Language(s) used in the
exchanges
 For the online discussion forums: one forum a week in English
from the Italian students and one in Italian from the American
students per week + English used for article about the US and
Italian used for articles about Italy
 One interesting observation (from the American teacher in
Padova): the Italian students who tend to use complex
vocabulary and structures when writing in their own
language simplified their writing when addressing
themselves to the American students
 For the Skype exchanges: the first half-hour everyone speaks
English, for the second, everyone speaks Italian.
 For the wiki final project: 50% in Italian, 50% in English. 25%
will be written by the American student in Italian, 25% by the
Italian students in Italian and 50% by the Italian students in
English.
Final projects
 Description and guidelines
 The different stages:
 Selection of final project topics (below Week 7)
 Tasks
 Calendar
 Peer feedback (voting)
Assessment
 This is the final activity
 self-assessment in terms of:
 the exchange itself
 their own intercultural learning
 their own language learning
 example of student self-assessment
The High School Spanish
exchange: topics
 The context: preparing for a physical
exchange
 The Website
 The topics (chosen mainly in terms of the
textbook used by the school in Spain)
 Family
 Environment
 Arts and Travel
 Immigration
The High School Spanish
exchange: materials used
 Questionnaires (administered in class on a
piece of paper and compiled by the
instructors) formed the basis of the
exchange.
 Questionnaires for each topic.
 Ex: family
 Ex: environment
 Results of the questionnaires about the
environment
 Answers from the American students
 Answers from the Spanish students
How students worked with
the materials
 After the questionnaires were administered,
(at the beginning of the terms) students:
1. went back to their textbooks and studied
relevant vocabulary
2. discussed the results in class (in the target
language): the similarities and differences they
noticed
3. went on the online forums to share their
observations with their foreign partners and ask
questions
4. discussed the postings of the partners in class,
looking both at content and language.
Modes of communication used
 Online discussion forums: to talk about the topics
(sometimes the teacher in Spain would interfere and
participate in the discussions. The teacher in the US
never would)
 Chats : to talk about anything they wanted
 Videoconferences were planned but never happened
due to technical problems on the Spanish side
The language(s) used
 A bit of everything
 In the online discussion forums:
 Sometimes in their native language
 Example 1 (The… environment)
 Example 2 (Problemas en Espana)
 Sometimes a mixture
 Example: Que se prefiere..playa o montana?
 In the chats
 Sometimes all in English (ex: the exchange)
 Sometimes all in Spanish (ex: la voz de la
experienca)
To summarize
 Content is crucial (this is what will give substance and
meaning to the online discussions).
 Not a single recipe:
 A variety of topics, content
 Different language choices
 Different things can happen in the respective classrooms.
What is important is to try and make that third, common
and shared space truly interactive and to ensure that it will
generate real intercultural learning and understanding.
 Choices will depend on cultural constraints (priorities, syllabi)
in each institution and country. Compromises will always need
to be made
 But what cannot be compromised are the goals and the
following question always needs to be asked: do the choices
we make help us achieve our goals?