Please cite as:

Ortega, L. (2007). Online interactions and L2 learning: Some ethical challenges for teachers and researchers. Invited presentation delivered at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, March 30.

Copyright © Lourdes Ortega, 2007

Online interactions & L2 learning:

Some ethical challengesfor teachers and researchers

Lourdes OrtegaUniversity of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, lortega@hawaii.edu

English Language Institute, University of Michigan

March 30, 2007

Acknowledgement

Eve Zyzik, Michigan State University

Sally Magnan (Ed.). (in press). Mediating Discourse Online.

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Information Communication

Technologies

have changed the nature of everyday communication the educational contexts afforded to

our students opportunities for L2 learning

(e.g., Kern, 2006; Thorne & Payne, 2005)

ICTs in our digital society

EmailInternet surfingInstant messagingCell phones

(photos/music)Web page creation,

maintenance, viewing

NewsgroupsChatsWikisPalm-sized

computers (movies)

BloggingGaming

L2 Computer-Mediated

Communication

CM interaction between individuals and groups of users, all or some of whom use an L2

Designed for pedagogical purposes (during regular class time & outside)

Some times with no specific pedagogical aim (e.g., joining a chat room or a news group on the Internet) but with a broad purpose to “practice the L2”

New ethical challenges?

Values that guide research programs (Ortega, 2005) and educational practices

Social usefulness and usability of knowledge (Stokes, 1997; House & Howe, 1999)

Conduct of research involving human subjects (Mackey & Gass, 2005, Ch. 2)

Ethics and Information Technology

(Springer, founded in 1999):

“...aims to foster and promote reflection and analysis which is intended to make a constructive contribution to answering the ethical, social and political questions associated with the adoption, use, and development of ICT”

L2 CMCEuphoric discourse

Idyllic imagesUnquestioned assumptions

No discussions about ethics so far

Computer-Mediated

Communication

tremendous potential for promoting L2 linguistic development Intercultural awareness

(Ortega, 1997; Smith, 2003; Belz & Thorne, 2006)

Main identified benefits

CMCfor L2 learning

“leaner communication”(Walther et al., 2005, p. 634)

Egualitarianparticipation

Higher productivityMore varied discourse

Contact HypothesisAllport (1954)

Target culturecloser to students

Promote interculturalunderstanding

L2 development

Intercultural learning

CMC & participation and productivity

Educational benefits egalitarian participation structures enable the democratization of education via dialogic communication

SLA benefits egalitarian structures bring about higher productivity and more complex discourse, both key ingredients for optimal L2 development

True:

more L2 output and more varied usage of the L2 are fostered online (e.g., Chun, 1994; Kern, 1995)

certain traditional participation structures, such as negotiation episodes, also occur online (e.g., Fiori, 2005; B. Smith, 2003, 2004)

But also:

anxiety provoked by the public visibility of text-based postings

“You always say - great response - but you do not understand the stress - it is going to be there - this response - people will think of me as this horrible person - people who do not know me - because it is on the Web and not at all a communication between two peers - it is like communication with a mass audience.”

“The Web is good to force me to read my note but I think it is very difficult -- I can hardly write - anything without making many mistakes and I cannot find anything to write ... I can just keep quiet in the class unless the teacher calls my name -- but [on the Web] I must talk -- it is very hard for me.”

Sengupta (2001, p. 122)

And also:more equally

distributed participation for one group but not the other (Fitze, 2006)

greater participation for some learners but exclusion of others (Jeon-Ellis et al., 2005)

perpetuation of preexisting power differentials (Reeder et al., 2004)

greater learning in the traditional face-to-face medium than online (Barr et al., 2005)

Productivity Productivity = productive engagement

with the L2?Teachers’ online threaded discussions:

“serial monologues” Pawan et al. (2003)Teachers’ text-only synchronous chat:

“cooperative development” (Edge, 2006)

Not the medium per se, but context and agency

Agency

“Always accessible, never fully alone, the wired personality is both more connected to more disparate others and, for that very reason, all the more forced to make choices about availability, about prioritizing the importance and duration of replies, and about filtering incoming messages and information”

(Burbules, 2006, pp. 117-118)

“Interactivity”

Cummulative meaning making? (Rafaeli, 1988)

Interchangeable roles? Reciprocal influence? Mutual interruptibility?

Walther et al. (2005)

What is the relative value of participation and silence in CMC?

there is a “need to understand lurking behavior not only to make people start participating or de-lurk, but also to be able to create virtual spaces that are pleasant and interesting to be in, even for silent participants” (n.p.)

Do cultural differences that are known to be important in face-to-face communication (such as the valuing of silence and reticence in some cultures) become simply irrelevant when interacting online for the sake of L2 learning...?

Soroka and Rafaeli (2006) on lurking & de-lurking:

What counts as optimal participation and productivity in L2 online interactions?

Quality and not only quantity of interactions

Not the medium per se, but context and agency

Strategy 1: Consider...

CMC forL2 learning

Participation Productivity

InteractivitySilence

(Lurking)

Intercultural learning & L2 CMC

Telecollaborations“the use of Internet communication tools by internationally dispersed students of language in institutionalized settings in order to promote the development of (a) foreign language (FL) linguistic competence and (b) intercultural competence”

(Belz, 2003, p. 68)

Telecollaborations

Have relevance for L2 teachers (Furstenberg et al., 2001; Kinginger et al., 1999; see also Bauer et al., 2006)

Promote contextualized and social views of language in curricula, stressing pragmatic development and cultural learning, rather than just lexis & grammar

Foster a sense of cultural curiosity (Abrams, 2002)

Help confront stereotypes and prejudice (Sakar, 2001; O’Dowd, 2005)

Help reflect on one’s own culture (Ware, 2005)

True:

Telecollaborations can result in

better learning of cultural content

better knowledge of L2 pragmatics

enhanced intercultural understanding

But

also...

If unsuccessful, telecollaborations can

reinforce stereotypes and confirm negative attitudes that students had prior to the telecollaboration (Belz, 2002; Meagher & Castaños, 1996; O’Dowd, 2003)

e.g., Kramsch & Thorne (2002):U.S. undergraduates thought French lycée students were unfriendly & pompous because they had an unfamiliar factual, impersonal, and dispassionate communication style

Is CMC a culture-free zone?

there is good reason to be “suspicious of the assumption of the flattening out of cultural difference” by merely using technology as a medium

Hanna & de Nooy (2003, p. 72)

ICTs are a product of culture

ICTs are a Western, affluent, English-speaking invention (Ess, 2002; Walther, 1996)

Virtual cultures

We now have digital natives (Mcmillan & Morrison, 2006; Thorne, 2003) and they create their own virtual communities and norms

Also, primary access to ICTs is severely unequal across geographies and socio-economic class (digital divide-- Parayil, 2005; Stanley, 2003), so...

Cultural resistance and negotiation

Many competent users of technology may have had “a reluctant entry into the computer age” (B. Q. Smith, 2004)

Many may be resistant/oppositional technology users

Plus, online interaction is never just about language, but about repositioning oneself and negotiating cultural, personal, and power differentials online (Chen, 2006; Lam, 2004)

How can “culture” be defined online?

Global computer uses, emergent cultures of users, and local cultures interact (Kern, 2006; Thorne, 2003; see also Ess, 2002)

Virtual interlocutors in our

classrooms and studies?

For cultural learning, “internationally dispersed students” are the imagined interlocutors (Belz, 2003, p. 68)

So, “intra-community resources remain largely untapped” (Thorne, 2006, p. 9)

e.g.,French communities in the U.S.??

Cajun French, Louisiana Canadian French, New England

Haitian French, Miami

13 million French ancestry1.6 French-English speakers

Francophone Arabs, all of U.S.

Virtual learners in our classrooms and studies?

Yoshie, a Japanese-English bilingual who had studied in Berlin as a high school student

Yen, a native speaker of Cantonese and EnglishLori, who came from a rural, working-class

background and had never traveled outside of the U.S.

Belz (2003, 2006)

What does each bring to CMC for L2 learning?

Strategy 2: Consider...

CMC forL2 learning

“Multilayered Cultures”

(global, virtual, local)

Negotiation & resistance

Legitimate interlocutors?Who are the

“learners”

Public spaceresearch

Humanresearch

Archivalresearch

Creative artsresearch

Human activity?

Consent?

Protection of (virtual & real) anonymity?

Recognition?

Copyrights?

Textual products?

Public access?

Ephimeral or permanent?

Loitering & lurking, ok?

Virtual disguise, sufficient?

CMC & research conduct

An empirical approach

Hudson and Bruckman (2004): Data base: 137 chatrooms and 766

usernames Results: between 56% and 72% of the

time chat members showed great hostility and expelled researchers

Conclusion: Internet users do expect – perhaps against all logic – privacy

Public spaceresearch

Humanresearch

Archivalresearch

Creative artsresearch

Email:

Biesenbach-Lucas (2005)

Chen (2006)

Web creation:

Hull & Nelson (2005)

??

Chats:

Jepson (2005) himself

Tudini (2003) her students

L2 examples

Strategy 3: Consider...

CMC forL2 learning

Purposes for your research

Vulnerability of

population

Credit for cultural

creation?

Protection from harm?

L2 CMCEuphoric discourseIdyllic imagesUnquestioned assumptions

It’s about technology-mediated......human interaction

Thank Youlortega@hawaii.edu

References: Abrams, Z.I. (2002). Surfing to cross-cultural awareness: Using Internet-mediated projects to explore

cultural stereotypes. Foreign Language Annals, 35, 141-160. Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Barr, D., Leakey, J., & Ranchoux, A. (2005). Told like it is! An evaluation of an integrated oral

development pilot project. Language Learning and Technology, 9(3), 55-78. Bauer, B., deBenedette, L., Furstenberg, G., Levet, S., & Waryn, S. (2006). The Cultura project. In

Belz, J. A. and Thorne, S. L. (eds.), Internet-Mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education (pp. 31-62). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Belz, J. A. (2002). Social dimensions of telecollaborative language study. Language Learning & Technology, 6(1), 60-81.

Belz, J.A. (2003). Identity, deficiency, and first language use in foreign language education. In Blyth, Carl, (ed.), The Sociolinguistics of Foreign Language Classrooms: Contributions of the Native, Near-Native and the Non-Native Speaker (pp. 209-250). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Belz, J. A. (2006). At the Intersection of Telecollaboration, Learner Corpus Research, and L2 Pragmatics: Considerations for Language Program Direction. In Belz, J. A. and Thorne, S. L. (eds.), Internet-Mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education (pp. 207-246). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Belz, J.A. & Thorne, S.L. (2006). (Eds). (2006). Internet-Mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Biesenbach-Lucas, S. (2005). Communication topics and strategies in e-mail consultation: Comparison between American and international university students. Language Learning & Technology, 9(2), 24-46.

Burbules, N. C. (2006). Rethinking dialogue in networked spaces. Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies, 6, 107-122.

Chen, C.-F. E. (2006). The development of e-mail literacy: From writing to peers to writing to authority figures. Language Learning & Technology, 10(2), 35-55.

Chun, D. M. (1994). Using computer networking to facilitate the acquisition of interactive competence. System, 22, 17-31.

Edge, J. (2006). Computer-mediated cooperative development: Non-judgemental discourse in online environments. Language Teaching Research, 10, 205-227.

Ess, C. (2002). Computer-mediated colonization, the renaissance, and educational imperative for an intercultural global village. Ethics and Information Technology, 4, 11-22.

Fiori, M. L. (2005). The development of grammatical competence through synchronous computer-mediated communication. CALICO Journal, 22, 567-602.

Fitze, M. (2006). Discourse participation in ESL face-to-face and written electronic conferences. Language Learning and Technology, 10(1), 67-86.

Furstenberg, G., Levet, S., English, K., & Maillet, K. (2001). Giving a virtual voice to the silent language of culture: The Cultura Project. Language Learning & Technology, 5(1), 55-102.

Gass, S., & Mackey, A. (2006). Input, interaction, and output in second language acquisition. In B. VanPatten & J. Williams (Eds.), Theories in second language acquisition: An introduction (pp. 173-196). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hanna, B., & de Nooy, J. (2003). A funny thing happened on the way to the forum: Electronic discussion and foreign language learning. Language Learning & Technology, 7(1), 71-85.

House, E. R., & Howe, K. R. (1999). Values in evaluation and social research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Hudson, J. M., & Bruckman, A. (2004). “Go away”: Participant objections to being studied and the ethics of chatroom research. The Information Society, 20, 127-139.

Hull, G. A., & Nelson, M. E. (2005). Locating the semiotic power of multimodality. Written Communication, 22, 224 - 261.

Jeon-Ellis, G., Debski, R., & Wigglesworth, G. (2005). Oral interaction around computers in the project-oriented CALL classroom. Language Learning and Technology, 9(3), 121-145.

Jepson, K. (2005). Conversations — and negotiated interaction —in text and voice chat rooms. Language Learning & Technology, 9(3), 79-98.

Kern, R. (1995). Restructuring classroom interaction with network computers: Effects on quantity and characteristics of language production. Modern Language Journal, 79, 457-476

Kern, R. (2006). Perspectives on technology in learning and teaching languages. TESOL Quarterly, 40, 183-210.

Kern, R., Ware, P., & Warschauer, M. (2004). Crossing frontiers: New directions in online pedagogy and research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 243-260.

Kinginger, C., Gourves-Hayward, A., and Simpson, V. (1999). A telecollaborative course on French-American intercultural communication. The French Review, 72(5), 853-866.

Kramsch, C., & Thorne, S. (2002). Foreign language learning as global communicative practice. In D. Cameron & D. Block (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 83-100). New York: Routledge.

Lam, W. S. E. (2004). Second language socialization in a bilingual chat room: Global and local considerations. Language Learning & Technology, 8(3), 44-65.

Mackey, A., & Gass, S. M. (2005). Second language research: Methodology and design. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Mcmillan, S. J., & Morrison, M. (2006). Coming of age with the internet: A qualitative exploration of how the internet has become an integral part of young people’s lives. New Media & Society, 8, 73-95.

Meagher, M. E., & Castaños, F. (1996). Perceptions of American culture: The impact of an electronically-mediated cultural exchange program on Mexican high school students. In Herring, S. C. (Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social, and cross-cultural perspectives (pp. 187-202). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

O’Dowd, E. M. (2003). Understanding the “other side”: Intercultural learning in a Spanish-English e-mail exchange. Language Learning & Technology, 7(2), 118-144.

O’Dowd, R. (2005). Negotiating sociocultural and institutional contexts: The case of Spanish-American telecollaboration. Language and Intercultural Communication, 5, 40-56.

Ortega, L. (1997). Processes and outcomes in networked classroom interaction: Defining the research agenda for L2 computer-assisted classroom discussion. Language Learning and Technology, 1, 82-93.

Ortega, L. (2005). For what and for whom is our research? The ethical as transformative lens in instructed SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 89(3), 427-443.

Parayil, G. (2005). The digital divide and increasing returns: Contradictions of informational capitalism. The Information Society, 21, 41-51.

Pawan, F., Paulus, T. M., Yalcin, S., & Chang, C.-F. (2003). Online learning: Patterns of engagement and interaction among in-service teachers. Language Learning & Technology, 7(3), 119-140.

Rafaeli, S. (1988). Interactivity: From new media to communication. In R. P. Hawkins, J. M. Wiemann & S. Pingree (Eds.), Advancing communication science: Merging mass and interpersonal processes (pp. 110-134). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Reeder, K., Macfadyen, L. P., Roche, J., & Chase, M. (2004). Negotiating cultures in cyberspace: Participation patterns and problematics. Language Learning & Technology, 8(2), 88-105.

Sakar, A. (2001). The cross-cultural effects of electronic mail exchange on the Turkish university students of English as a foreign language (EFL). CALL-EJ Online, 3(1).

Sengupta, S. (2001). Exchanging ideas with peers in network-based classrooms: An aid or a pain? Language Learning and Technology, 5(1), 103-134.

Smith, B. (2003). The use of communication strategies in computer-mediated communication. System, 31, 29-53.

Smith, B. (2004). Computer-mediated negotiated interaction and lexical acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 365-398.

Smith, B. Q. (2004). Teaching with technologies: A reflexive auto-ethnographic portrait. Computers and Composition, 21, 49-62.

Soroka, V., & Rafaeli, S. (2006). Invisible participants: How cultural capital relates to lurking behavior. In IW3C2 (Ed.), Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on World Wide Web. (pp. 163-172). New York: ACM Press. Retrieved August 20, 2006 from: http://www2006.org/programme/item.php?id=1018

Stanley, L. D. (2003). Beyond access: Psychosocial barriers to computer literacy. The Information Society, 19, 407-416.

Stokes, D. E. (1997). Pasteur's quadrant: Basic science and technological innovation. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Thorne, S. E. (2003). Artifacts and cultures-of-use in intercultural communication. Language Learning & Technology, 7(2), 38-67.

Thorne, S.L. (2006). Pedagogical and praxiological lessons from Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education research. In Belz, J. A. and Thorne, S. L. (eds.), Internet-Mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education (pp. 2-30). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

Thorne, S.L., & Payne, J.S. (2005). Evolutionary trajectories, Internet-mediated expression, and language education. The CALICO Journal, 22(3), 371-397.

Tudini, V. (2003). Using native speakers in chat. Language Learning & Technology, 7(3), 141-159. Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal, and

hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23, 3-43. Walther, J. B., Gay, G., & Hancock, J. T. (2005). How do communication and technology researchers

study the internet? Journal of Communication, 55, 632-657. Ware, P. (2005). “Missed” communication in online communication: Tensions in a German-

American telecollaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 9(2), 64-89.