My presentation at the ‘Second International Conference on Telecollaboration in Higher Education - New Directions in Telecollaborative Research and Practice’ which took place in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland from 21 to 23 April 2016.

1. “On the Outside Looking In”
A Review of Criticism of Telecollaborative Research and Practice
Robert O'Dowd
Universidad de León, Spain
@robodowd
robert.odowd@unileon.es
The Second International Conference on
Telecollaboration in Higher Education
Trinity College, Dublin 2016

2. It’s good to be among friends….

3. Lamy and Goodfellow:
‘[t]he field of telecollaboration for language learning has been
remarkable for its willingness to review its own effectiveness regularly’
(2010, p. 109)
My plan for my 20 minutes:
• Provide an overview of the main criticisms of Telecollaborative
Learning
• Ask you to reflect and react to these criticisms and critiques
• Finish by asking “What should we be doing better?”

4. What are the main criticisms of Telecollaboration?
Telecollaboration and
Authenticity
Telecollaboration and
first class / second class
mobility
Telecollaboration and
the contact = learning
falacy
Telecollaboration
and the impact of
the medium

5. Telecollaboration and Authenticity

6. • Hanna and de Nooy (2009):
• What are the underlying tenents of telecollaborative practice?
1. ‘Interaction is restricted to communication with other learners, a situation
that is safe and reassuring for beginners and younger learners, but somewhat
limiting for more advanced and adult learners, who need practice in
venturing beyond the classroom’ (2009, p. 88).
2. ‘The success of telecollaboration and e-tandem learning activities tends to
rely on the quality of the relationship that develops between geographically
separated participants. . . . [I]t is an exchange between a pair of individuals,
already positioned as friends’ (2009, p. 92).
3. ‘[A]lthough personal conversation is an indispensable genre, it can be a
limiting one. . . . [I]t predisposes the student to launching conversations about
the self that inevitably position him/her as the exotic little foreigner/the
other. He/she may fail to learn strategies for opening and maintaining
communication of other kinds’ (p. 195).

7. Cause for Reflection:
Issue one: How authentic are online exchanges that bring together two or
more classes to carry out communicative tasks together in different
languages?
Issue two: Do your exchanges depend on the online partners developing a
friendship as the basis for their interactions?
Issue three: In your exchanges, is there an over-reliance on the genre of
personalised conversation?

8. Telecollaboration and the Contact = Learning
Falacy

9. Liddicoat and Scarino (2013):
[Referring to a large number of telecollaborative studies:]
‘In each instance discussed above, interaction using a social technology has
not necessarily resulted in intercultural learning… The tasks involved students
in exchanges across cultures…but the intercultural learning was supposed to
happen as an automatic result of communication or engagement with
others.’
‘The problem is that exposure to interaction of itself does not necessarily
equate with intercultural learning. . . . To be able to contribute to learning,
the interaction must first become available in some way for students to
reflect on and interpret. It is therefore necessary to consider not only what
these technologies permit students to do, but also consider how their
experiences may contribute to learning’ (2013, p. 112).

10. Cause for Reflection:
Do your telecollaborative exchanges merely engage students in
interaction or do they also provide opportunities to reflect on and
learn from the interaction?
Leask (2015): “International interaction and collaboration…offer a way
to identify and address the issues associated with globalization and to
address inequalities …but only if we develop in students the capacity
to critique the world they live in, see problems and issues from a
range of perspectives, and take action to address them.”

11. Telecollaboration and first class / second class
mobility

12. Lawton:
‘[I]t can …be argued that the institutionalisation of virtual exchange institutionalises a
two-tier system of mobility: one for the elite few and another for the 80–90 % who
cannot afford it. Looked at this way, ‘internationalisation at home’ (the core element of
which refers to developments in curricula consistent with the international aspirations of
institutions) can be seen as a consolation prize for non-mobile non-elites.’ (2015, p. 80)
The Relationship between Physical and Virtual
Mobility:
What is the relationship between virtual mobility
(telecollaboration) and physical mobility?
Will physical mobility be reserved exclusively for
wealthier students, while the remainder are given the
second-best option of virtual mobility?

13. • Cause for Reflection:
• How will your institution use telecollaboration?
• Will it be used to support and enrichen physical mobility? Or will be
used as a ‘second best’ for those who do not travel abroad?

14. Telecollaboration and the Impact of the
Medium

15. • Misconceptions by teachers and students involved in
Telecollaboration (1):
The discourse of online interaction is governed by universal rules:
Ware & Kramsch: “[T]he electronic medium tends to blur genres that
are usually kept separate in face to face interaction. The type of
exchange in which the students were engaged was fundamentally
ambiguous: It was a private dialogue between two students but it was
also a dialogue on which an unknown numbers of others eavesdropped;
it was a classroom assignment, but Rob had changed the assignment
into a chatty get-to-know-each-other conversation; it was a written
exchange but in the form of a spoken chat. . . . What students perceive
as appropriate uses of the Internet can differ interculturally” (2005, p.
199).

16. Misconceptions by teachers and students involved in Telecollaboration
(2):
The computer medium does not play a role in how meanings are
expressed and understood in online intercultural interaction.
• Kern: ‘…what one sees on the computer screen is a highly mediated,
filtered, and designed version of the world’ (2014, p. 341).
• ‘…Our students will be called upon to use their languages in
technology-mediated environments, and we need to prepare them
with a critical awareness of how mediations affect meanings’ (2014,
p. 352).

17. • Cause for reflection:
• Do you bring your students to reflect on how the medium can
influence the message?
• Do you make them sensitive to difference genres in use in their
online interactions?

18. Summing Up
Strive to….
• Establish working relationships among students which do not over-depend
on friendship as the basis for their interactions.
• Provide practice in multiple-genres – avoid an over-reliance on the genre
of personalised conversation.
• Provide not only opportunities for interaction but also opportunities to
reflect on and learn from the interaction.
• Avoid telecollaboration being perceived as a ‘second best’ option for those
who do not travel abroad.
• Develop tasks which bring your students to reflect on how the medium can
influence online communication.
• Sensitize your students to difference in genres in their online interactions.

19. My Reaction to the arguments and criticism:
Online Intercultural Exchange Policy, Pedagogy, Practice
Edited by Robert O’Dowd and Tim Lewis
Routledge (2016)
ROBERT O’DOWD:
Learning From the Past and Looking to the Future of
Online Intercultural Exchange (pp. 273-294)
This presentation is available online:
http://www.slideshare.net/dfmro