ENG517 Final Term Notes

Lecture: 8: 20

Collaboration - a process in which two or more learners need to work together to achieve a common goal, usually the completion of a task.

Collaboration puts learners into a semi-autonomous situation in which they are faced with a task, question or problem and must use discourse to negotiate each participant’s separate learning strategies and make joint decisions about what is (and is not) worth investigating and learning.

The place of collaboration in CALL

Collaboration is an important activity in the classroom because it encourages both social skills and thinking skills and mirrors the way in which learners often need to work in an academic setting and certainly once they leave it.

Types of goal structure

1. Individualistic - where a learner believes his or her chances of reaching the goal are unrelated to what others do
2. Competitive - where a learner believes he or she can reach the goal only when others cannot
3. Cooperative - where a learner believes that he or she can reach the goal only if others can too

Scaffolding describes a situation in which a learner interacts with someone who can guide, support, and shape his or her learning; in CALL the computer can sometimes take on these functions.

Structuring Collaboration

The teacher must structure collaboration at computers through:

1. Establishing students’ mixed-ability teams
2. Establishing positive interdependence
3. Insuring individual accountability
4. Teaching cooperative social skills
5. Helping groups process information

Interdependence in collaboration

1 Goal interdependence – stating clearly what each member of the group should know how to complete the task

2 Task interdependence – clearly defining the group goal, and what the team should be able to produce

3 Resource interdependence – specifying parameters, materials, the team’s task

4 Role interdependence – reviewing the individual roles for the group members: keyboarder, checker, reporter, summarizer.

Cooperative learning is an activity set by the teacher or is merely a mode of instruction.

Collaborative activities are ones spontaneously set up by the learners or whereby learners have greater control over the design of their learning.

Reasons for people to collaborate Argyle

1. For external rewards
2. To form and further relationships
3. To share activities they are involved in

Lecture: 8: 21

McConnell suggests that cooperative learning serves to make public.

Several dimensions of Making public

Our learning is public when it is known to others and ourselves It is blind when it is known to others but not ourselves It is hidden when it is known to ourselves but not to others It is unconscious when it is not known to ourselves or to others

Negotiation of meaning differentiates collaboration from more cooperative situations - in which a group of learners are expected simply to complete a set of defined tasks with resources to which they have been directed

Grice maxims

Quality Quantity Relevance Manner

Cook maxims

Be true (the maxim of quality) Be brief (the maxim of quantity) Be relevant (the maxim of relevance) Be clear (the maxim of manner)

Three non-collaborative strategies

Unilateral action by the child with the mouse Accepting the choice of the most dominant child without supporting reasons Drifting together to one or other choice without debating any of the alternatives

Ways of classifying social interactions at the computer/ Murillo’s four categories

1. Copying: repeating what was just read or said
2. Repeating: repeating language from the screen
3. Managing: dealing with the computer, the program and discussing progress made
4. Conferring: offering or discussing solutions

Organizing the CALL classroom

1. Lecture classroom - focus is on teacher-led discussion at the front of the room
2. U-shaped classroom facing out - the teacher can see, at a glance, what each student is doing
3. U-shaped classroom facing in - the learners face the teacher, but also have a good view of each other

Challenges to Collaboration at the Computer

Main problems/challenges

1. The general problems of collaboration in a language-learning setting
2. The challenges to collaboration when learners work collaboratively at a task at the computer

Other problems

The lack of input from some collaborative group members The inability of some teachers or learners to facilitate Teachers’ insecurity over unpredictable outcomes

Lecture: 8: 22

Cognitive strategies is used in collaborative learning

1. Explain with evidence
2. Generalize
3. Offer a concrete example
4. Offer an unstructured idea
5. Organize ideas
6. Present a hypothesis or idea
7. Repeat
8. Repeat with expansion
9. Take a stand

Factors which impact on the opportunities for collaboration

Learner characteristics may make the collaborating learners incompatible The goals/objectives of the program may discourage collaboration The content of learning material may discourage collaboration The pedagogical model may be overly behaviorist The methods of navigating the information may be too obscure

Four general social challenges to collaboration

1. An unwillingness to engage in the activity
2. An unwillingness to accept the collaborative nature of the activity
3. An unwillingness to offer suggestions
4. An unwillingness to offer or accept justifications, clarifications

Additional challenges based on the computer / Technical challenges to collaboration

the complexity of the program’s content the navigability of the program’s interface the difficulty of the program’s model of instruction (behaviorist or constructivist)

Discourse analysis - a way of looking at records of spoken or written text to see if they suggest that the surface utterances are representative of underlying thinking and learning processes.

Ways to examine discourse

1. Quantitatively (counting the occurrence of certain phrases)
2. Qualitatively (examining types of expressions)

Transcription Notations/System - The goal of any transcription system is to ensure an accurate portrayal of the language being used to the extent that another researcher using the same conventions and looking at the same data would reach the same conclusions.

Strategies used in collaboration

Determine participants’ expertise (DE): determining expertise is classified as a collaborative strategy because it helps to clarify what each partner knows or does not know about a task Explain the text/task/ideas (ET): explaining the text, the task and the ideas in a collaborative situation helps to provide opportunities for negotiation of meaning Offer suggestions (OS): offering suggestions is often marked by the phrase I think. Direct attention (DX): directing attention to text or images on the computer screen Solicit clarification (SC): soliciting clarification occurs when one partner asks the other for more information on a statement.