A Review Of Telecollaboration On The Task

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

This paper reviews how different telecollaborative task types develop and enhance learners‟ ICC and language competence and what are the possible challenges and difficulties for educators

when they implement them. The paper begins with the definition and explanation of telecollaboration ,following that are the introduction of the three main categories of telecollaborative tasks and their functions and challenges. Last, the paper provides possible directions for future exploration on the topic.

Introduction

Foreign language educators have been bringing networked technologies into

their classrooms to assist learners‟ learning for more than two decades. These networked technologies enable learners to make contact and work with other learners

in different parts of the world. Therefore, students can benefit from this kind of

"telecollaboration", which was defined by Judi Harris (1998) as "an educational endeavor that involves people in different locations using Internet tools and resources to work together". Belz (2003) gave it a more specific definition:

"…internationally-dispersed learners in parallel language classes use Internet communication tools such as e-mail, synchronous chat, threaded discussion, and MOOs (as well as other forms of electronically mediated communication), in order to support social interaction, dialogue, debate, and intercultural exchange."

These telecollaborative exchanges can contribute to a variety of learning outcomes, from individual aspect such as learner autonomy, linguistic accuracy and fluency, and electronic literacy to cultural aspect such as intercultural awareness, online intercultural communication skills. Moreover, the focus of this long-distance collaboration has expanded from language learning to culture learning such as

intercultural competence, cultural learning, and cultural literacy. As Belz (2002)

pointed out, "Some CALL researchers have also recently recognized the need to place sociocultural dimensions of language learning and use toward the center of their developing research agendas."

However, on-line interaction does not necessarily lead to intercultural understanding (Belz 2002; Belz & Müller-Hartmann 2003). The belief that contact between cultures automatically gives rise to intercultural learning and to the development of positive attitudes towards the target culture has already been rejected

by many researchers (Coleman, 1998; Fischer, 1998). O‟Dowd (2003) also suggested

that "The Internet brings about the contact of cultures, but this does not automatically imply cultural understanding." Hence, a number of researchers have identified different communicative genres, mediums, task types, linguistic styles, academic

cultures, as well as institutional and cultural characteristics can affect the extent to which language learners can negotiate meaning and cultural understanding (Kern,

2006).

Thus, task types play an essential role in meaning negotiation and cultural learning among learners in telecollaborative activities. As Smith (2003) pointed out, " it is suggested that task types indeed influence the amount of negotiation that

learners engage in during task-based CMC." The aim of the present paper is to review the different types of on-line exchanges in literature and their different contributions

to the extent which learners‟ intercultural competence can be improved.

Classification of Task Types

Online learning involving students logging in to formal courses online is one of the most common applications of the Internet in education. However, telecollaborative activities take advantage of web-based collaboration tools such as

email, message boards, real-time chat, and web-based conferencing to connect learners to other learners, teachers, educators, or to any individual with access to the Internet who can enrich the learning process. Much of educational telecollaboration is curriculum-based, teacher-designed, and teacher-coordinated.

A various range of topics and tasks can be applied to telecollaborative exchanges. In the past, researchers such as Warschauer (1999) criticized that many practitioners

were simply engaging their learners in superficial " pen-pal exchanges" which

involved an unreflective exchange of information and did not exploit the activity to the maximum. However, according to O‟Dowd (2004), modern reports reveal a rich

and creative range of projects which involve learners in comparative reviews of literature, in-depth investigation into aspects of the foreign culture and society, collaborative creation of websites, and carefully structured analysis of on-line cultural questionnaires.

Information Exchange Tasks

O‟Dowd and Waire (2009) classified telecollaborative tasks into three main categories that reflect the degree of meaning negotiation which is involved in each category. The first category is information exchange tasks. These tasks involve

learners to offer information about their personal biographies, local environments, or home cultures to their telecollaborative partners. These tasks mostly serve as an introductory activity for two groups of learners who are not familiar with each other, but they can also function as part of a more in-depth ethnographical study t about an aspect of the target culture.

The intended outcomes of information exchange tasks are the development of ICC (intercultural communicative competence) and fluency in the target language as well as the increased knowledge of factual and cultural knowledge about the target culture.

However, tasks in this category are often considered "monologic", for learners may tend to deal with "information exchange" without significant processing or the input from their on-line partners may not be challenging enough. Therefore, there is

usually little negotiation of meaning (neither cultural nor linguistic) between the interlocutors.

If these tasks take the form of ethnographic interviewing, they involve more meaning negotiation because they require not only cultural sensitivity but also intercultural skills of discovery and interaction to deal with the tasks. Nevertheless, educators and teachers need to recognize that even if ethnographic interviews are applied into the educational context, learners are not necessarily always aware of their own cultural situation, and thus they may provide their partners with incomplete or incorrect information of their home culture. In addition, learners with little experience in intercultural communication may not possess the necessary skills to interact with

each other or to discover their partner‟s intended meaning (O'Dowd & Ritter, 2006).

Also, learners‟ lack of factual knowledge of the target culture may even result in misunderstandings in the interpretation of messages from their on-line partners and thus fail to accomplish the goal of this type of tasks.

Comparison and Analysis Tasks

The second task type is comparison and analysis tasks. They can be more demanding because they require learners not only to exchange information, but also to go a step further and carry out comparisons or critical analyses of cultural products from both cultures such as literary works, books, surveys, films, newspaper articles.

According to O‟Dowd and Waire (2009), these analyses or comparisons

generally have a cultural focus or a linguistic focus, or both focuses are included. These tasks usually ask learners to provide their partners with explanations of the linguistic meaning or cultural significance of certain cultural products or practices and

then engage them in dialogue in order to establish similarities or differences between the two cultures.

Educators and teachers expect this type of tasks can increase learners‟ awareness

of target culture and their own culture as well as the awareness of culture differences. Moreover, they can develop learners‟ awareness of different cultural meanings, connotations of words, and concepts in two cultures. Through this process, learners‟ language awareness along with linguistic accuracy and fluency in the target language can also be improved.

As mentioned before, learners do not necessarily naturally know a great deal about their own language and culture, even if they do, this does not imply that they will be able to transmit this knowledge to their partners, nor does it mean that they will be able to analyze and interpret the correspondence they receive from their

partners (O‟Dowd, 2004). The misunderstandings and communication breakdowns in

such exchanges occur when learners do not have thorough and enough understanding of the complex relationship between language and culture. Learners need to possess enough metalinguistic awareness in order to perform this task. Furthermore, learners face more challenges to describe their own culture to others and engage in a more critical reflection of their own social reality. If they do not think critically, superficial contrasts are inclined to be made unless the instructor guides the conversation. Collaboration and Product Creation Tasks

The final task type, collaborative tasks, requires learners both to exchange and compare information and to cooperate to produce a joint product or conclusion. This may come in the form of a document (e.g. essay) or multimedia product (e.g. website or powerpoint presentation), or it may involve co-producing a linguistic translation or cultural adaptation of a text between the two languages and cultures. These types of activities usually include a great deal of coordination and planning, and they also

involve substantial amounts of negotiation of meaning both on linguistic and cultural levels as learners strive to reach agreement on their final product.

These tasks aim to develop learners ICC and electronic literacy, and through the

meaning negotiation process, learners‟ linguistic fluency and accuracy in the target language can be developed. However, these tasks pose the greatest challenges not only for learners but also for teachers since they require technology-savvy teachers

because of their tendency toward multimedia. Furthermore, learners need to engage in a great deal of teamwork and lack of participation on one side jeopardizes the whole project. Also, they tend to be reduced to information or linguistic exchange and are less rich in opportunities for cultural learning. One thing teachers have to pay extra attention is that research has shown that students may negotiate only at the lexical level when interacting with each other on line.

O‟Dowd and Waire (2009) synthesised this variety of tasks into 12 general types

by reviewing over 40 reports in the literature on telecollaborative exchanges taken from peer-reviewed journals and peer-reviewed edited collections (see Table 1).

Possible Direction for Future Research

Even though lots of efforts have been made to explore the topic of telecollaborative tasks by researchers, there are still much can be done in the future research. First, O‟Dowd and Waire (2009) argued that the topic of how tasks are

designed has been relatively neglected to date in the literature on telecollaboration. Similarly, Samuda and Bygate (2008) emphasized that the issue that why certain tasks and task-based schemes of work are chosen by educators and how educators and practitioners put them into practice should receive more attention. More specifically, researchers should do a more in-depth exploration on how decisions about task design are reached and what factors influence these decisions during the actual

implementation of the tasks.

Second, educators usually combine different types of tasks in class to engage learners in various aspects of intercultural communication and to develop learners‟ different aspects ICC. However, most studies of sequence the different types of tasks

in the fixed order with information exchange in the first stage, followed by comparison and analysis, and collaboration and product creation at the final stage (Belz, 2002; Müller -Hartmann, 2007; Wilden, 2007). There can be attempt to examine how different task combinations and sequencing influence learners‟ learning

outcomes and development of ICC. Additionally, no attempt has been made to correlate the different task types to different levels of language competence (O‟Dowd

& Waire, 2009). Therefore, the relationship of task types and proficiency levels can be explored to discover how different tasks types contribute to learners‟ development of

ICC with different proficiency levels.

Third, teachers‟ online collaborative competence as well as how they reach agreement with their telecollaborative teacher partners as to the task design should also be paid more attention. Fourth, teachers nee to be aware that learners tend to

bring their own personal preferences about tasks and learning procedures to an exchange, and even teachers themselves have their own preferences in selecting the tasks. Thus, it would be worthwhile to examine how individual differences and personal preferences among the instructors and students characterize telecollaboration.

To conclude, there are still plenty of aspects of telecollaborative tasks and their design need further exploration. Different factors in the process of design and

implementation affect students‟ language and cultural learning outcomes. One thing

teachers should keep in mind is that the best telecollaborative projects are those that are fully integrated into the curriculum and not just extra-curricular activities, those in

which technology use is necessary for activities to attain the learning objectives and

improve students‟ knowledge and skills of technology, and those that empower students to become active, collaborative, creative, integrative, and evaluative learners.

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