A. Knysh, A. Matochkina, D. Ulanova, P. Meechan, Todd Austin
{"title":"When two worldviews meet: promoting mutual understanding between ‘secular’ and religious students of Islamic studies in Russia and the United States","authors":"A. Knysh, A. Matochkina, D. Ulanova, P. Meechan, Todd Austin","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.940","url":null,"abstract":"The authors discuss results from two co-taught courses in Islamic studies shared as a virtual exchange between the University of Michigan (U-M), USA, and Saint Petersburg State University (SPbU), Russia. These courses were shared with the intent of expanding the range of perspectives to which the students were exposed and to provide an opportunity to experience the approach to education and to the subject studied in the partner country. The SPbU student cohort included graduates of Islamic religious colleges from across Russia who studied along with non-religious students specializing in Islamic studies. The U-M cohort included students of diverse religious, ethnic, and national backgrounds. International teams met outside class to prepare questions for the weekly synchronous whole-class discussions and to create a final group presentation. 1. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States and Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia; alknysh@umich.edu; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2791-8976 2. Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia; anna-matochkina@yandex.ru 3. Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia; d.ulanova@spbu.ru 4. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States; phili@umich.edu 5. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States; laustin@umich.edu; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0717-3759 How to cite this chapter: Knysh, A., Matochkina, A., Ulanova, D., Meechan, P., & Austin, T. (2019). When two worldviews meet: promoting mutual understanding between ‘secular’ and religious students of Islamic studies in Russia and the United States. In A. Turula, M. Kurek & T. Lewis (Eds), Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship (pp. 57-64). Research-publishing.net. https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.940","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"128 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115254057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Challenges of the transatlantic cross-disciplinary ENVOIE-UFRUG project","authors":"Juan Albá Duran, Gerdientje Oggel","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.937","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.937","url":null,"abstract":"This paper reports upon the interdisciplinary exchange between a group of students at the University of Groningen (UG), The Netherlands, enrolled in a course on Hispanic literature and a group of students at the University of La Frontera (UFRO), Chile, enrolled in a course on journalism. The study focusses on three challenges: first, the way sociopolitical factors, i.e. a student strike, can affect an exchange; second, how to integrate learning goals from two disciplines in one Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE); and third, how to ensure reciprocity and interdependence between students. After describing how we addressed these challenges, we evaluate to what extent we have been successful at doing this. Departing from student and teacher surveys and field observations, we will show how the contextual constraints at socio-political, course, teacher, and learner level influenced the development of this OIE. Finally, we summarise the main lessons learned and in the conclusions we draw new lines for further improvement and research.","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124979259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gamifying intercultural telecollaboration tasks for pre-mobility students","authors":"Marta Giralt, Liam Murray","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.941","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.941","url":null,"abstract":"At a recent TeCoLa3 project conference, Colpaert (2017) declared: “there is not enough evidence to suggest that technology has a direct effect on learning, not even virtual worlds. No, not even games... My hypothesis is... that the added value of technology depends on the designs of your learning environment on the one hand... and what I will talk about on task design on the other”. This position paper argues that gamification may be effectively employed in engaging students’ participation in pre-mobility preparation telecollaborative programmes, paying particular attention to environment and task design. Such preparation involves carrying out telecollaborative tasks with international partners and peers. Participation is voluntary and one of the biggest challenges in completing the set tasks results from the initial mismatch or ‘non-fit’ of pair partners. We present issues and ideas surrounding the possible gamification of task design in order to motivate students, to build an ‘expectancy-value framework’ (Dörnyei, 1998), and to remain engaged throughout the pre-mobility telecollaborative project.","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123285327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A discussion on how teachers assess what foreign language students learn in telecollaboration","authors":"Suzi Marques Spatti Cavalari","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.942","url":null,"abstract":"Institutional integrated TeleTanDem (iiTTD) is a model of telecollaboration characterised as a series of tasks that are integrated into the syllabus of a foreign language course. This paper aims at presenting and discussing the assessment practice of a Brazilian teacher who integrated teletandem into her regular English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lessons within a teacher education programme. Among the different tasks that learners carry out within iiTTD, this study focusses on what is assessed by the teacher when offering formative feedback on learning diaries written by Brazilian participants. The study, of a qualitative interpretative nature, uses data collected by means of the tasks that 13 Brazilian learners carried out within iiTTD in 2017. Results show that the teacher was able to assess (1) students’ self-assessment skills, (2) language accuracy (when diaries are written in English), (3) the learning of content presented in class, and (4) intercultural issues that may emerge during teletandem oral sessions.","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115092464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From ‘CoCo’ to ‘FloCoCo’: the evolving role of virtual exchange (practice report)","authors":"R. Barbier, Elizabeth Benjamin","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.936","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.936","url":null,"abstract":"‘CoCo’ (Coventry-Colmar) is an online international learning exchange project involving students of French and International Relations at Coventry University (CU) and Networks and Telecommunications Engineering students at the Université de HauteAlsace (UHA) in Colmar, France, running since 2014. In 2018, the exchange gained a new member through merging with an existing exchange between Coventry University and the Centro Florida Universitària (FU), in Valencia, Spain, becoming ‘FloCoCo’. Where CoCo allowed for language and intercultural exchange between paired groups of UHA and CU students, FloCoCo now brings together FU, UHA and CU students, who complete a series of culture-based tasks, developing skills relating to intercultural communication and ‘global citizenship’ that are valued by today’s graduate employers. Like its predecessor, FloCoCo aims at enhancing participants’ intercultural awareness, communicative competence and digital fluency, providing an opportunity for ‘virtual’ international mobility and international intercultural online exchange. The following practice report discusses the most recent two iterations of FloCoCo in the context of the history of the exchange, drawing upon theories of (digital) discourse competence and online spaces to facilitate the best possible experience for participants in Virtual Exchanges (VEs). 1. Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, France; regine.barbier@uha.fr 2. Coventry University, Coventry, England; ac7390@coventry.ac.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0547-0688 How to cite this chapter: Barbier, R., & Benjamin, E. (2019). From ‘CoCo’ to ‘FloCoCo’: the evolving role of virtual exchange (practice report). In A. Turula, M. Kurek & T. Lewis (Eds), Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship (pp. 23-29). Research-publishing.net. https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.936","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127828636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Virtual exchange across disciplines: telecollaboration and the question of asymmetrical task design","authors":"M. Štefl","doi":"10.14705/RPNET.2019.35.944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/RPNET.2019.35.944","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses an experience with an asymmetric online intercultural exchange between three different groups of students which took place during a specialised soft skills-focussed language class of Business Networking in English (BNiE) at the MIAS School of Business, Czech Technical University, Prague (MIAS). The results of the post-project discussion and perceptions of MIAS students participating in the asymmetric telecollaboration are analysed and conclusions are drawn.","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"111 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117262409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Vocabulary learning in Mandarin Chinese – German eTandems","authors":"Julia Renner","doi":"10.14705/RPNET.2019.35.947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/RPNET.2019.35.947","url":null,"abstract":"This article deals with vocabulary learning in synchronous, multimodal eTandems focussing on Mandarin Chinese as a target language. In doing so, the study adopts an emic, conversation analytic perspective and triangulates self-reported data from learner diaries with recordings of actual eTandem conversations. The analysis of the learner diaries showed that the participants perceive to have mostly improved their vocabulary. In order to identify the video extracts for qualitative analysis, the vocabulary items mentioned in the learner diaries were located within the interactions and analysed by means of Conversation Analysis (CA). For the most part, the analysed sequences classify as instances of word searches during which a clear preference for self-initiated collaborative repair was observed. Peer-assistance of the expert speaker was only performed on request of the learner. Furthermore, the multimodal setting shows how the participant’s gaze plays a key-role in assessing the status of the word search.","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115837539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A proposal to study the links between the sociocultural and the linguistic dimensions of eTandem interactions","authors":"M. Cappellini","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.945","url":null,"abstract":"After identifying a major limitation of current research on telecollaboration, I propose to develop a methodological framework to empirically study the link between the sociocultural dimension and the linguistic dimension of interaction in eTandem via desktop videoconferencing. For the sociocultural dimension, I study which roles the learners take during the interactions using discourse analysis tools. For the linguistic dimension, I focus mainly on different types of conversational side sequences identified in the francophone interactionist literature. In the end, I discuss the relevance that the methodological framework I propose can have for research on telecollaboration and point to studies that explored this avenue.","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126785598","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"When more is less: unexpected challenges and benefits of telecollaboration","authors":"Daniela Caluianu","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.934","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.934","url":null,"abstract":"This article documents the changes undergone by a telecollaboration project between a Japanese university and a university in Romania. While the size of the project diminished with every passing year due to extrinsic and intrinsic causes, the quality of the exchanges improved. It became apparent that the main goals of the collaboration – improving cross-cultural understanding and increasing student selfawareness – were better served by reducing the number of tasks and allowing more time for reflection.","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126083700","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lived experience of connected practice: Clavier","authors":"T. MacKinnon","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.946","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.946","url":null,"abstract":"Actors in a large scale Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) (O’Dowd, 2016) known as Clavier (MacKinnon, 2016) took time to reflect on their personal experiences of an OIE Network (OIEN) through creating auto ethnographic accounts (Nunan & Choi, 2010). Data reflect different contexts, roles and identities. The data were analysed using a grounded theory method to explore the various perspectives, convergences, and divergences. Through this analysis, “[t]he researcher creates an explication, organisation and presentation of the data rather than discovering order within the data. The discovery process consists of discovering the ideas the researcher has about the data after interacting with it” (Charmaz, 1990, p. 1169, cited in Willig, 2013, p. 77, emphasis in original). This ‘discovery process’ was followed by a series of online discussions where we grappled with the question of how best to present this complex picture with its many facets given the short period of presentation time in the conference. An account emerged of the transformative nature of connected practice. The process of preparing this performance for the UNICollaboration conference in Krakow took the actors to a new point in their professional lives.","PeriodicalId":340550,"journal":{"name":"Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125530716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}