Presentation held at the SIG Teacher Education on Call Workshop held in Nice on 22 May 2014

1. Strategies to engageteachers in
telecollaborationprojects:insightsfrom the
TILA project
Kristi Jauregi Ondarra (Fontys University of Applied
Sciences & Utrecht University)
Martine Derivry-Plard (University of Paris 6)

2. TILA:Telecollaboration for
Intercultural language Acquisition
(2013-2015)

3. Project goals
• (1) to innovate, enrich and make foreign language teaching
programmes more attractive and effective by encouraging the
implementation of telecollaboration activities in secondary schools
across Europe;
• (2) to empower teachers and innovate teacher training programmes
in order to assist them in developing ICT literacy skills as well as
organisational, pedagogical and intercultural competences to
guarantee adequate integration of telecollaboration practices; and
• (3) to study the added value that telecollaboration may bring to
language learning in terms of intercultural understanding and
motivation amongst younger learners and pedagogic competence
development. 3

4. Partners
4

5. Consortium Partners
5
P1 Utrecht University (NL)
P2 Berlage Lyceum
P3 U Roehampton (UK)
P4 The Godolphin & Latymer School
P5 Steinbeis Transfer Center Language Learning Media
P6 Gymnasium Saarburg (DE)
P7 Universidad de Valencia (SP)
P8 IES Clot del Moro
P9 Université de Paris 3 and Paris 6 (FR)
P10 Collège La Cerisaie
P12 Palacky University (CZ)
P11 3DLES (NL)

6. 42 associate
partners
Synchronousandasynchronous
telecollaborationtools
6

7. Activities undertaken
• Analysis of teachers’ needs
• Development of teacher training
modules and
• Teacher training sessions
• Telecollaboration pilots
7
EuroALL 2013

8. Toolsforaudio-visualsynchronoustelecollaboration
inTILA
8
Video Communication
BigBlueButton
3D virtual worlds
Open Sim(ulator)
Challenges:
Schedules
Technical concerns
Hardware / Software
Broadband internet connection (cable not Wifi)
Headsets with microphone
Technical tests not only at your school but also at the
other school and common connection checks
(interdependence)
- Organisation of sessions: not all learners can participate 1x1
simultaneously (connection overload)

9. Asynchronous communication
9
Forum Blog
Wiki Journal
Moodle
Chat

10. Pilots on secondary education
(December2013-February2014)
 Pilots in English, French, German and Spanish
 Participants: 212 learners & 20 teachers from 8
schools
 Most pilots: synchronous audiovisual communication
 Challenges scheduling meetings
 Small group of students
 Many technical problems with sound
 Teachers aware of time & energy investment for
organising & carrying out synchronous voiced
telecollaboration projects
 Student questionnaires (very positive)
 Interviews with pupils: in spite of technical problems
learners very positive
 Teacher questionnaires 10

11. Voorbeeld TILA
11
Examples

12. OpenSim
12
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD8Prip1Vpk

13. WorkshopLevendeTalen,Utrecht
2013
13

14. 14
Sound was good (if applicable) 2,75
I like to communicate and interact in this tool environment 4,11
I like to meet students from other countries in this tool environment 4,3
I like to learn in this tool environment 4,12
I like to be visible in a video 3,68
I like to see the others in a video 4,06
II like to be an avatar 3,53
I like to speak with an avatar 3,53
I felt comfortable in the interaction 3,77
I felt satisfied with the way I communicated 3,53
I felt the tool environment affected my communication positively 3,58
I enjoyed communicating with students from another country 4,30
I found it motivating to communicate with students from another country 4,18
It was important for me to be understood 4,17
It was important for me to understand the other student(s) 4,23
It was important for me to learn about the other students’ life and culture 3,91
It was important for me to get to know students from another country 4,07
I was able to learn something about the other students’ life and culture 3,76
I enjoyed the online task 4,08
I found the online task interesting for interaction with peers of other
countries
4,15
I found the online task useful for my language learning 3,99
The online task helped me discover new things about the other culture 3,81
I would like to use online tasks with students from other countries more
often
4,15
110 respondents: 90 using BBB & 20 using OpenSim
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15. Intercultural telecollaboration
withinalearning/teachingandresearchenvironment
Target
languages
Researchers
Teacher
Trainers
Teachers
Learners
Target
Cultures

16. Intercultural telecollaboration
withina learning/teaching environment
• Teachers belonging to different teaching cultures and modes
of organization. All teachers volunteered but within different
teaching contexts
• Promoting Intercultural telecollaboration through an
intercultural learning/teaching environment
5 languages
6 „national“
cultures

17. Organising telecollaboration among
teachers : challenges
• Language Cluster Manager (LCM) vs Country Manager (CM)
• Getting X
teachers in
TILA languages
in one country
LCM = CM
• Organising
meetings in
one TILA target
language
LCM ≠ CM
Overlapping
• French teacher
in Spain with a
Spanish
teacher in
France
• 2 ≠ LCM
• 2 ≠ CM
• Lingua franca
LCM follow pairs
of teachers in
the TL + online
training and CM
provide FtoF
training and
dissemination
• Tandem
2 LCM and 2 CM
Objectives Roles Tasks

18. Organisingtelecollaborationamong
teachers: European Challengesfor
implementingan intercultural/
plurilingual/cultural learning environment
• A complex European learning environment : engineering the
emerging system requires clarifying the
intercultural/plurilingual/cultural meshing of the learning-
teaching (Learnching) environment
5 languages
6 „national“
cultures
6 teaching
contexts
Language
Cluster
Manager
Country
Manager
School Manager
Teachers
Teacher
Trainers
Researchers

19. Organising telecollaboration among
teachers : an engineering problem-
solving approach
• TILA pilots: some experience in perceiving, defining and outlining
major challenges :
• Matching different modes of organisation and teaching cultures
• Clarifying overlaps (LCM/CM/Lingua
franca/Tandems/Trainers/Researchers)
• Overcoming a common individual attitude among teachers for
working and teleworking together on tasks planning and tasks
designing through a step by step follow up of partners, tailoring
feedback to their circumstances and interests.
• TILA results: present at the end of the experiment a European
working model for an intercultural learning/teaching environment :
• a more detailed planning of all the stages for implementing
intercultural telecollaboration among researchers, among teachers
and among researchers and teachers.

20. Organising telecollaboration among
teachers : two major challenges
• Use of technology in the classroom, the availability and
appropriateness of the facilities, and technical assistance have
been addressed in a former paper :
• Jauregi, K., Melchor-Couto, S., & Vilar Beltrán, E. (2013). The European Project TILA. In
L. Bradley & S. Thouësny (Eds.), 20 Years of EUROCALL: Learning from the Past,
Looking to the Future. Proceedings of the 2013 EUROCALL Conference, Évora, Portugal
(pp. 123-128)
• Facilitating intercultural telecollaboration, creating a third
culture for teachers with different teaching cultures to work
together on task planning and task development is going to be
explored.
LCM/CM
Trainers
Researchers

21. organising telecollaboration among
teachers : developing and facilitating
interculturalities
• Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and Culture in Language Teaching, Oxford, Oxford
University Press.
• - (2001). Intercultural communication in R .Carter and D. Nunan (eds.). The
Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
• Just like classrooms of FL are third spaces, telecollaboration
among teachers from different countries and teaching cultures
will develop as many third spaces as there are matching
teachers. So, a close look at the way teachers work or do not
work together or partially work together is important as
success means they will be better equipped to implement
collaborative and telecollaborative tasks for their learners.

22. Research
who are TILA teachers?
How do they work?
• Methodology should be ethnographic (multimodal with
questionnaires, interviews, analysis of task descriptions, online
interaction …) : another challenge for ethnography to be online.
• PILOT : 11 teachers out of 20 teachers answered the two
questionnaires.
• Background questionnaire : 4 respondents
• Teachers’ views on telecollaboration for intercultural language
learning : 7 respondents
• PILOT interviews will complement this information.

23. Teachers’ background
• female teachers = male teachers
• experience (0-4 years) to more
than 25 years
• Master’s degree and usually a
teaching license as they all work
in a state secondary school.
• Their learners are from 12 to 18.
• They teach one language or 2
languages or up to 3 subjects
• Half of them have worked in a
foreign country where they have
taught
• Lack of support for computer
technologies and Internet .

24. Teachers and schools
• a willingness for schools and teachers to engage with
intercultural perspectives and at the same time, harsh
realities are : lack of support from hierarchy

25. Teachers and the cultural dimensions
Everyday/onc
e a week
Once a month
• Bringing facts/
exchanging about
FL countries and
cultures
(news/experience)
• Pointing out
Stereotypes
• Describing
own culture
• Comparing
• Exploring
• Analysing
• Learners’
background as
a resource

26. Teachers and the cultural dimensions
• Never /once in a while
• Invite people from TC (Target countries and
cultures)
• Bring objects from TC
• Deal with an aspect of TC regarding which
they feel negatively disposed
• Work on monolingual/bilingual dictionaries
and translating aids to point out
intercultural perspectives

27. • well qualified, working in state secondary schools
• do not feel getting all the support they need for integrating
technologies and intercultural/cultural dimensions in their practices
: they need time for meetings, exploring tools and tasks with
learners and partners
TILA teachers
openness and willingness to
explore on technologies and
intercultural dimensions

28. Challenges : an intercultural, plurilingual
learning environment online
• More guidance is needed
• The Language Cluster Manager or Country
Coordinator have essential roles in :
• liaising the teachers working in pairs;
• suggesting change of pairs and situations (from
tandem to Lingua franca and vice versa).
• More teacher training sessions online and face-
to-face are needed : to monitor the mediating
process of teachers collaborating and working
online.

29. Challenges : an intercultural,
plurilingual learnching environment
online
Education
Board
Head of
school
Teacher Teacher
Head of
school
Teacher

30. experimenting the future of language
learnching and strategies
• Language learning and teaching is about
• communicating, working with people from different backgrounds,
cultures, and languages
• engaging in the intercultural dimension of communication in
teaching contexts which are national grounded (national
education systems)

31. Experimenting the future of language
learnching

32. 32
Join us in TILA!
tila@uu.nl
www.tilaproject.eu
@tilaproject
www.scoop.it/tila
Thank you!
Martine Derivry
Kristi Jauregi