Blended Learning: Integrating Online Collaboration and Exchange into VOLL contexts

1. Blended Learning: Integrating Online Collaboration and Exchange into VOLL contexts • Robert O'Dowd • University of León, Spain • robert.odowd@unileon.es

2. What is ‘Blended Learning?’ • Blended Learning refers to learning scenarios which involve the combination of online resources and activities with face-to-face classroom-based interaction. • “Some providers tend to focus on the web as a means of getting materials into electronic format, and tend to view the new learning spaces as something to be filled by their printed study materials, with perhaps some links to other sites. This is a very typical approach. In this view the new spaces are used as a means of course dissemination, rather than as a new, rich learning context in themselves (Cynthia White, 2003: 216).”

3. Blended Learning Activity in VOLL Contexts • Authoring and publishing of blogs, podcasts, wikis and other multimodal documents • Collaborative project work using online resources and tools (e.g. webquests, e-portfolios) • Online interaction with individuals outside of classroom (e.g. interviewing professionals and experts in the field) • Class-to-class online exchange (i.e. telecollaboration or online intercultural exchange)

4. The Problems & Challenges of Blended VOLL Activity • Online interaction and collaboration is ‘infamously’ difficult to organise and implement • Jan Guesen on our Moodle platform: “I have seen a few colleagues struggle with international projects, and very few of them have been really succesful. At our college the exams system is partly to blame, as many students see it as an unnecessary burden from which no profit is to be gained.”  • The ‘fine line’ between ‘exchanging information’ and ‘intercultural learning’ • A Spanish student writes after her online exchange: “The exchange with American students has been very important for me. It has been very interesting as well because it has helped me to prove that Americans don't care about human beings.” • Are we assessing what learners learn and what teachers teach in blended learning contexts? • “. …although students may make imaginative use of new technologies in their coursework… all too often they are still required, individually, to complete examinations and assessment items that use very traditional techniques and technologies (Levy and Stockwell, 2006: 231-232).”

5. Proposed Aims for our Sessions • 1. Explore the various options and issues which emerge in online collaboration and exchange in VOLL contexts • 2. Examine a categorisation of telecollaborative tasks (O’Dowd & Ware, in press) and develop a set of tasks which are specifically suited to your VOLL contexts. • 3. Develop assessment grids for online interaction and telecollaborative activity - taking into account intercultural and multimodal characteristics of these learning activities. Stemming from the CEFR but also referring to other intercultural assessment tools (e.g. INCA, Byram etc). • 4. Review existing models of 'new literacies' for foreign language learners and draw up a list of literacies which reflect the needs and future aims and working contexts of VOLL students.