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Investigating group interactions in a networked second language classroom : appropriating a representational tool for collaborative language learning
Abstract
This case study investigates the appropriation of a representational tool by students in small groups in the context of collaborative writing and the teacher orchestration in a dual-interaction (both face-to-face and online) environment. The study aims to unravel and discover how different small groups evolve alternative approaches to appropriating online technology in classrooms, and during the process, what role the teacher can play to orchestrate multiactivities for productive interactions.
This study is situated in a real second language (L2) learning classroom setting equipped with a generic representational tool—Group Scribbles—that enables collaborative generation, collection, and aggregation of ideas in multimodal interactions. The notion of representational tools is emphasized to distinguish them from other computer-mediated communication tools for dialogical communication or threaded discussion. The study focuses on analyzing and modelling interactions in which technology-mediated learning takes place. Both statistical analysis and qualitative microanalysis of interaction are addressed to provide a more comprehensive analytical region to examine the interactions that occurred naturally. Underlying the rationale of mutual shaping of participants and technical devices, the study contextually examined and reinterpreted the dynamic interplay between small groups of students, teacher, and medium, and their holistic effect in L2 learning.
Two key findings are generated from the study. First, the functions of inscriptional devices in L2 classroom learning are identified: (1) referencing, (2) pinpointing, (3) accumulating, (4) prompting notice, (5) realizing parallels, and (6) promoting synergy. Second, teachers are suggested to play a dual role as both facilitator and collaborator to monitor and adjust all groups’ work processes and even join in small-group work by providing improvised scaffoldings. The case study does not aim at predicting that all the identified functions will be played out in all the representational tool-supported L2 learning contexts but rather suggests that teachers and researchers should create conditions for enabling the inscriptional device to facilitate more productive group understanding development. A series of principles for teacher orchestration in networked L2 learning are distilled. These principles are not antagonistic with some traditional instructional principles or strategies, such as making learning objectives explicit, holding the attention of the students, or controlling time strictly. Teachers are recommended to monitor small-group progresses by drawing upon group inscriptions throughout the lesson. In the context of L2 learning, teachers are suggested to detect and assist students to in-situ solve language-related problems that emerge in their language use, though they are suggested not to offer ready-made solutions for students in science or mathematics classes.
The study explores the beneficial affordances of the representational tool that supplement face-to-face communication for both learning and teaching in L2 learning classrooms and, thus, provides insights to task/script design and enactment of collaborative L2 learning in networked classroom environments where face-to-face and online interactions are intertwined. Methodologically, this study is sympathetic to calls from computer-supported collaborative learning researchers who are concerned with classroom learning and multimedia/multimodal interactions. It provides a workable approach to exploring how small-group interactions interweaving social and cognitive dimensions take place in networked classroom environments.
This study is situated in a real second language (L2) learning classroom setting equipped with a generic representational tool—Group Scribbles—that enables collaborative generation, collection, and aggregation of ideas in multimodal interactions. The notion of representational tools is emphasized to distinguish them from other computer-mediated communication tools for dialogical communication or threaded discussion. The study focuses on analyzing and modelling interactions in which technology-mediated learning takes place. Both statistical analysis and qualitative microanalysis of interaction are addressed to provide a more comprehensive analytical region to examine the interactions that occurred naturally. Underlying the rationale of mutual shaping of participants and technical devices, the study contextually examined and reinterpreted the dynamic interplay between small groups of students, teacher, and medium, and their holistic effect in L2 learning.
Two key findings are generated from the study. First, the functions of inscriptional devices in L2 classroom learning are identified: (1) referencing, (2) pinpointing, (3) accumulating, (4) prompting notice, (5) realizing parallels, and (6) promoting synergy. Second, teachers are suggested to play a dual role as both facilitator and collaborator to monitor and adjust all groups’ work processes and even join in small-group work by providing improvised scaffoldings. The case study does not aim at predicting that all the identified functions will be played out in all the representational tool-supported L2 learning contexts but rather suggests that teachers and researchers should create conditions for enabling the inscriptional device to facilitate more productive group understanding development. A series of principles for teacher orchestration in networked L2 learning are distilled. These principles are not antagonistic with some traditional instructional principles or strategies, such as making learning objectives explicit, holding the attention of the students, or controlling time strictly. Teachers are recommended to monitor small-group progresses by drawing upon group inscriptions throughout the lesson. In the context of L2 learning, teachers are suggested to detect and assist students to in-situ solve language-related problems that emerge in their language use, though they are suggested not to offer ready-made solutions for students in science or mathematics classes.
The study explores the beneficial affordances of the representational tool that supplement face-to-face communication for both learning and teaching in L2 learning classrooms and, thus, provides insights to task/script design and enactment of collaborative L2 learning in networked classroom environments where face-to-face and online interactions are intertwined. Methodologically, this study is sympathetic to calls from computer-supported collaborative learning researchers who are concerned with classroom learning and multimedia/multimodal interactions. It provides a workable approach to exploring how small-group interactions interweaving social and cognitive dimensions take place in networked classroom environments.
Date Issued
2014
Call Number
LB1028.5 Wen
Date Submitted
2014