Project RITE
Recipients
Engaging Students in a True Intercultural Dialogue: Network-based Discourse Communities and Culture Learning in the FL Classroom
launch blog |Sebastien Dubreil
Assistant Professor, Modern Foreign Languages & Literatures, UT KnoxvilleOverview
In this telecollaborative project between the University of Tennessee and the ENSEIRB (École Normale Supérieure d'Électronique, Informatique et Radiocommunications de Bordeaux), learners will use Internet 2 technology to engage in weekly conversations with their partners (via webcam and videoconferencing) in groups of four (two American learners and two French learners). Each groups' semester goal is to choose a cultural event and explore it through various sources (media, films, surveys, questionnaires, websites, a class blog, etc.) to identify differences and similarities in French and American cultures, not only as far as cultural practices and products are concerned but also, more importantly, with regard to perspectives. At the end of the semester, all groups will present the results of their investigation to both classes in the form of a website in which they will show the nuances of the topic they chose.Even though there has been a nascent body of literature on discursive practices in online environments, the majority of the studies that have been conducted pertain to the examination of asynchronous CMC (fora, discussion boards, e-mail exchanges) or text-based CMC (chats). In all of the telecollaborative projects, researchers found that students were engaged in the learning process as they were trying to make sense of a cross-cultural reality that they were constructing. They also noted that the difficulties of cross-cultural communication go beyond the linguistic choices that students make as well as their relationship to technological use (Thorne, 2003). This is a testimony to the need for more research around the dynamics at work in ELCs. There is a paucity of research, however, on ELCs driven by audiovisual media (videoconferencing and/or webcams). While this can likely be attributed to the somewhat heavy technological setup, I would argue that this new development in this strand of research is critically important both to the understanding of learners' interaction in online communities and the impact of technology in innovative classroom settings, as well as for the promotion of intercultural dialogue and understanding.