Thierry Chanier

Social Network Analysis Used for Modelling Collaboration in Distance Learning Groups

We describe a situation of distance learning based on collaborative production occurring within groups over a significant time span. For such a situation, we suggest giving priority to monitoring and not to guiding systems. We also argue that we need models which are easily computable in order to deal with the heterogeneous and the large scale amount of data related to interactions, i.e. models relying on theoretical assumptions which characterise the structures of groups and of interactions. Social Network Analysis is a good candidate we applied to our experiment in order to compute communication graphs and cohesion factors in groups. This application represents an essential part of a system which would enable tutors to detect a problem or a slowdown of group interaction.

Supporting oral production for professional purposes in synchronous communication with heterogenous learners

During the last decade, most research studies have analysed online synchronous interactions in written mode (textchat), highlighting the benefits of chatting for the development of learners’ oral proficiency. The environment used in our experiment is multimodal and based on a synchronous audio conference. Analyzing interactions in such an environment is rather new in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). This study is related to false-beginners in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course, presenting a high degree of heterogeneity in their proficiency levels. We use two approaches. One is quantitative and involves learners’ participation in audio and textchat. The other is qualitative and relates to the complexity of professional discourse. Firstly, we provide a method that accurately measures oral participation in the two modes. Then, within this framework, we report that heterogeneous linguistic levels do not constrain learners’ oral participation, outlining the equalizing role played in this instance by the textchat. Moreover, this type of environment supports oral production by false-beginners who have over a period of years become unaccustomed to learning and speaking in a foreign language, and leads them to regain self-confidence. The qualitative part of our study shows that false-beginners can cope with professional conversations at different levels of complexity.

COLLABORATION AND COMPUTER‐ASSISTED ACQUISITION OF A SECOND LANGUAGE

Abstract In the last few years, the community working on Computer Assisted Learning has started considering a different type of learning as an alternative to traditional ones: collaborative learning (or cooperative learning). We address the question of defining how collaboration could be beneficial to a computer environment for language learning. In order to answer that question, we refer to various research fields, such as Applied linguistics, Psychology of Education, Artificial Intelligence and Education. From thereon we propose an application of collaborative learning to one particular domain of the second language: interrogative sentences in French.

Interactions between text chat and audio modalities for L2 communication and feedback in the synthetic world Second Life

This paper reports on a study of the interactions between text chat and audio modalities in L2 communication in a synthetic (virtual) world and observes whether the text chat modality was used for corrective feedback and the characteristics of the latter. This is examined within the context of a hybrid content and language integrated learning design workshop. This course involved 17 students of architecture whose L2 was either French or English and for which the synthetic world environment Second Life was employed for distance language sessions. Using multimodal transcriptions of the interaction data from these sessions, it was found that text chat was employed for content-based interaction concerning the task as well as for feedback concerning non-target-like errors in the audio modality. Feedback predominantly concerned lexical errors and was offered in the form of recasts. The multimodality of the environment did not appear to cognitively overload students who frequently responded in the audio modality to corrective feedback offered in the text chat. The study highlights the need to train language tutors who wish to exploit synthetic worlds to use the text chat in parallel with the audio to support learners’ verbal production with respect to verbal participation and proficiency.

Multimodal learning and teaching corpora exchange: lessons learned in five years by the Mulce project

In order to make replication possible for interaction analysis in online learning, the French project named Mulce (2007-2010) and its team worked on requirements for research data to be shareable. We defined a Learning & Teaching Corpus (LETEC) as a package containing the data issued from an online course, the contextual information and metadata, necessary to make these data visible, shareable and reusable. These human, technical and ethical requirements are presented in this paper. We briefly present the structure of a corpus and the repository we developed to share these corpora. Related works are also described and we show how conditions evolved between 2006 and 2011. This leads us to report on how the Mulce project was faced with four particular challenges and to suggest acceptable solutions for computer scientists and researchers in the humanities: both concerned by data sharing in the Technology Enhanced Learning community.

Integration of Automatic Tools for Displaying Interaction Data in Computer Environments for Distance Learning

Our research concerns distance learning (DL). We are interested with distributed collaborative learning. In this approach, it is important to have indicators permitting the appreciation of durability and the evolution of groups involved. We think that actors responsible for the organisation and the working of groups (tutor for each group and coordinator of the DL session for all groups and its progress in general) can from the types of interactions and their amounts, get revealing elements permitting them to appreciate the state of a group and its evolution. From the analysis of interactions seen during a distance learning experimentation that we led, we show here that the disappearance of a group as we observed could be discerned practically in real time. It justifies for us, the necessity to set up in distance learning environments, agents capable of assisting the coordinator of the training and the tutors in their tasks.

Architecture Students’ Appropriation of Avatars — Relationships between Avatar Identity and L2 Verbal Participation and Interaction

The synthetic (virtual) world Second Life (SL) can be defined as a social networking (SN) environment: it allows users to network informally by initiating relationships with other users, often strangers, with whom they share no previous offline connections. Users can also connect with people with whom they have previously established offline relationships. In SL, networking can occur by interacting and later friending, other users whose avatars are proxemically close inworld. This is facilitated by a feature allowing public audio and textchat channels to be heard/read by other nearby users. Users can also initiate relationships through interest groups and create a public profile, albeit relating this profile to that of their avatar or their physical world (first world) identity. Users who friend each other can view the newsfeed and interest groups as well as the list of connections of one another and can navigate the latter.

ICT in varied language learning environments: Selected papers from EUROCALL 1999

This special issue offers a selection of papers presented at the 1999 annual EUROCALL conference, held last September in Besancon, France. Although CALL has a deep rooted tradition in France, EUROCALL’99 was the first large scale international CALL conference to take place in this country. Initiated by the European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning and the French speaking CALL journal ALSIC (2000), the conference attracted more than 370 full participants coming from 30 countries.