CALL as a transdisciplinary endeavor

1. CALL as a transdisciplinary endeavor .toward a respected community Jozef COLPAERT & Phil HUBBARD CALICO Montréal 24 May 2019 Hubbard, P. & Colpaert, J. (2019). TowardTransdisciplinarity in Computer Assisted Language Learning, CALICO Journal.

2. What is transdisciplinarity? Writing in the context of health sciences Choi & Pak (2006) state: • Multidisciplinarity draws on knowledge from different disciplines but stays within their boundaries. • Interdisciplinarity analyzes, synthesizes and harmonizes links between disciplines into a coordinated and coherent whole. • Transdisciplinarity integrates the natural, social and health sciences in a humanities context, and transcends their traditional boundaries (p. 351).

3. What is transdisciplinarity? Choi & Pak (2006) conclude that the terms represent implementations that are: • additive (multidisciplinary) • interactive (interdisciplinary) • holistic (transdisciplinary) Critically, these operate along a continuum

4. Shifts in Applied Linguistics • Larsen-Freeman (2012): 12 principles underlying transdisciplinarity including dynamism, complexity, and context • Ortega (2013, p. 1) “pursue and generate SLA knowledge that can be of use outside the confines of the field and contribute to overall knowledge about the human capacity for language.” • Douglas Fir Group (2016): propose a transdisciplinary framework that “assumes the embedding, at all levels, of social, sociocultural, sociocognitive, sociomaterial, ecosocial, ideological, and emotional dimensions” (p. 24). • Transdisciplinarity as the theme of 2017 AAAL Conference

5. Dimensions of Transdisciplinarity • Theory: instantiations, ensembles, and syntheses (Hubbard & Levy (2016) • Research • Practice • Programs • Projects • Researchers, developers, practitioners • Outreach (Ortega 2013) What does this mean for CALL? On to Jozef...

6. Who are you ? • How are you ? • Who are you ? • What are you ? • Which disciplines do youneed ? • Which disciplines do youknow ? • How do you update yourknowledge ? • How do you combine them ? • How do youcommunicatewithothers ? • Whathappens in your mind ?

7. Multiple … • disciplines: linguistics, computer science, pedagogy, psychology, sociology … • cultures: democratic, religious, totalitarian, Trumpian … • languages: English, French, Farsi, … • languagelearning types: mother tongue, L2, FL, minoritylanguages … • skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking • competences: digital, intercultural, communicative, … • levels: A1 … C2 • contexts: migration, business … • topics: special purposes • actors: learner, teacher, parent, provider … • tasks: (tele)collaboration … • language teaching types: CLIL, vocational, … • education levels: primary, secondary, higher … • countries: USA, Belgium, Japan, Chile … • …

8. Multidisciplinarity Research Linguistics Design Technology Pedagogy Psychology SDT EE HCI TAM SLA CMT L2 SELF ARCS PT LT 4C/ID CALL ? ZPD CoP

9. Challenge • How do we bringtherequiredknowledgeand skills together? • Three possibilities: • in onehead • in one team • withexternal support • How do these communicate?

10. Need a dimmer for an LED light? • Two types of dimmers are available: • leading edge phase-cutting: • ... have been in use for a long time and are cheap. They use a suppression coil. • trailing edge phase-cutting: • ... are newer, but also more expensive. They do not have a suppression coil and because of the built-in electronics they work more quietly.

11. Daily life examples • Grandadology: types of dinosaurs • Domotics: security camera, light bulbs, CO-detectors, heating, wifi, router … • Law: insurance, inheritance, house sale, … • Finances: investment, taxes, retirement … • Car: dynamic cruise control, programmeddrivingstyles, information screen, route planner … • Medicine: hemithyroidectomy, cardiac arrythmia, acute vestibular neuronitis, apnea …

12. Learning analyticsand GDPR? • It is therefore appropriate for those fields to be addressed by a directive that lays down the specific rules relating to the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by competent authorities for the purposes of the prevention, investigation, detection or prosecution of criminal offences or the execution of criminal penalties, including the safeguarding against and the prevention of threats to public security, respecting the specific nature of those activities. Such competent authorities may include not only public authorities such as the judicial authorities, the police or other law-enforcement authorities but also any other body or entity entrusted by Member State law to exercise public authority and public powers for the purposes of this Directive. Where such a body or entity processes personal data for purposes other than for the purposes of this Directive, Regulation (EU) 2016/679 applies. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 therefore applies in cases where a body or entity collects personal data for other purposes and further processes those personal data in order to comply with a legal obligation to which it is subject. For example, for the purposes of investigation detection or prosecution of criminal offences financial institutions retain certain personal data which are processed by them, and provide those personal data only to the competent national authorities in specific cases and in accordance with Member State law. A body or entity which processes personal data on behalf of such authorities within the scope of this Directive should be bound by a contract or other legal act and by the provisions applicable to processors pursuant to this Directive, while the application of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 remains unaffected for the processing of personal data by the processor outside the scope of this Directive. • (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%3AOJ.L_.2016.119.01.0089.01.ENG&toc=OJ%3AL%3A2016%3A119%3ATOC)

13. What are we? • My path: • Linguistics • Didactics (teacher training) • Software engineering • Software design • Language testing • Management • Research design & methods • Instructional design • Pedagogy • Psychology

14. What are we ? • If we call ourselvesCALLers, howcan we say we have ourown discipline ? Linguistics Pedagogy Psychology Technology SLA Testing Sociology Design Research methods CALL ??

15. Interdisciplinarity • Example: computer scientist & language teacher • Learneachother’slanguage ? • Interdisciplinarityoccurs on one side, not on both • In ‘onehead’: difficultwith more disciplines • The more disciplines involved, theweakerthe model

16. Whereitbegan • Software for making frequencylists (1982) • Binary tree as arborescentstructure in memory based on recursive routine: the concept, themethod is pure logic, has nothingto do withtechnology • Translate back totechnology (5 lines in Pascal)

17. Transdisciplinarity

18. Examples • Courseware design • Adaptivelanguagetesting • Pronunciation training • Contextualization • Task design • Open Data • Educational Engineering • Distributed Design

19. Task design Erasmus+ TECOLA project

20. Courseware design

21. Transdisciplinarity • New definition: transdisciplinarity in this view is an activity and stands for a new way of thinking. The activity consist in the co-construction (conceptualization and specification) of mental artifacts or knowledge constructs on a higher level of abstraction. These constructs can be models, concepts, objects, methods, metaphors, images and even frameworks. The activity consist in crossing boundaries between disciplines (linguistics, pedagogy, psychology, technology, sociology…).

22. CALL = transdisciplinarity CALL Linguistics Pedagogy Psychology Technology SLA Testing Sociology Design Research methods …

23. CALL = transdisciplinarity • The more disciplines, theeasier, the more obviousitbecomes … • New way of thinking • Boundary-transcending activity between disciplines, but also between actors involved (learner, teacher, parent, developer, provider, policy maker …). • Also between cultures: transcultural approach • Colpaert, J. (2018). Identity and culture: sense and sensibility. Foreword in Tafazoli, D. (ed.) Cross-cultural perspectives on technology-enhanced language learning. Hershey, Pa : IGI Global.

24. Language • New solutions every time we need to combine findings from various disciplines ? • Or • One language for CALL, one representation of Reality based on multiple angles of attack. • An ontology specification language such as Ontolingua, OIL (Object Interaction Language), RDF (Resource Description Framework) or UML (universal modeling language). • An educational modeling language such as HTTML (tutorial mark-up language), EML (educational modeling language) and LDL (leaning design language). • Natural Language

25. Tryit out foryourselves … • Trydailyexamples in naturallanguage • What do we meanby: • learningstyles • learningstrategies • affordances • information • agency • learneranalytics • …

26. Transdisciplinarity • If we want to learn from the past, then we should know that interdisciplinarity is not the solution to cope with the ‘pluriness’ of CALL. • Transdisciplinarity implies the construction of mental artefacts on a higher boundary-transcendent level of abstraction. We can start with conceptualizing the learner, the teacher, the learning environment in a new way.

28. CALLendar • JaltCALL, AoyamaGakuin University, Tokyo, Japan, 31 May – 2 June 2019 • 2nd PPTELL Conference, National Taiwan Normal University, 3-5 July 2019 • XXth International CALL Research Conference, the Education University Hong Kong, 10-12 July 2019 (http://www.call2019.org). • GloCALL / VietCALL, Danang, Vietnam, 9-10 August 2019 • EuroCALL, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 28-31 August 2019 • 27th ICCE, Kenting, Taiwan, 2-6 December 2019 • …

29. Questions ? Thankyou! jozef.colpaert@uantwerpen.be phubbard@stanford.edu