Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Bılkı Z. (Yürütücü)
Yükseköğretim Kurumları Destekli Proje, 2019 - 2020
"Technology-enhanced learning environments provide today’s language learners with “new kinds of social encounters, new kinds of communities, and new prospects for learning” (Kern, 2014, 340). Such environments also require language teachers to acquire new skills including effective integration of technology into language teaching and learning. Experiencing and developing awareness of these specific skills (i.e., participation in online communities) not only help teachers to get prepared for the classrooms of tomorrow, but also facilitate their future language learners’ participation in online learning. Today virtual exchange (VE) is a ground-breaking method of engaging students in online intercultural collaboration projects with partner classes across the world. This present project aims to explore the implementation of virtual exchange in two English Language Teaching (ELT) teacher education program at TED University in Turkey and the Newcastle University in UK to specifically investigate how virtual exchange experience impacts pre-service ELT teachers critical digital literacy while communicating with their international partners in the process of completing virtual exchange tasks. Despite its considerable benefits for learners and teachers, virtual exchange environments can raise problems including a lack of “social presence” (Short et al. 1976), and of engagement and participation among learners, and hence less effective learning (Hauck, 2010, Pegrum, 2011). Participants may face some collaboration challenges such as the negotiation of linguistic, technical and/or cultural barriers. For the successful and effective set-up and implementation of online learning and teaching, it is, therefore, important to explore this online learning context and online communication experiences of students from a student’s point of view. Thus, this project also aims to contribute to the knowledge base by specifically investigating the reflections of student teachers towards virtual exchange in relation to their critical digital literacy development. 3rd year student ELT teachers in ELE program at TEDU and students in the MA Applied Linguistics and TESOL degree at Newcastle University will collaboratively work to complete 3 different tasks in VE setting and using different online tools. Considering the specific objective of the project, three sequenced tasks will be build in light of “five resources model of critical digital literacy” (Hinrichsen & Coombs, 2014) (Figure 1): Task 1: Getting to know each other (Persona), Task 2: Creating a group identity (Using), and Task 3: E-literacy: exploring online tools (Analyzing and Decoding). All three tasks will also serve to examine meaning making dimension of the framework as it implies both the understanding and interpretation of student teachers. "