Observation

Following the course in Antwerp and my discussion with Markus it became clear that the initial data for my phd would be qualitative data based on teacher observation and interviews/focus groups with students. I thought it would be a good idea to have an observation schedule to use during the sessions. I spent quite awhile the other day looking for other examples of teacher observation schedules in the language classroom to use as a basis for mine. It was very difficult to find anything relevant, though my search is not up. I found this article about observing teachers, which provided some insight.

These are some ideas I jotted down.

I found it extremely difficult to observe students for three reasons basically:
1 - though it would be nice to be the researcher on the outside, I'm actually running the course;
2 - once I'd finally got them all up and running, the time was almost over;
3 - I need an effective observation schedule.

I've got one major doubt about observing: am I supposed to observe them all or choose a few and just observe those in particular? Obviously, the former is more challenging and I can't do the latter until I've gotten to know them better. I've asked Marcello if we can have access to their Skype text chats, but, ....

So here are some ideas on what I came up with before the session based on what I thought during the session. This is what it might be worth observing:

Topic
Sts stayed on topic?
If not, off topic, sts were discussing
Personal experiences
Comparing cultures
Current events
Reinforcing stereotypes
Challenging stereotypes
Local culture content
Target cultural content
Grammar
Technical problems
Other

Level of motivation
high
fairly high
low

Initiative Taken by students to manage difficulties
A lot - never asked for help, always managed alone
Quite a lot - rarely asked the teacher
Some - sometimes asked the teacher for help
None - always asked the teacher for help

Types of online activity in addition to Skype
text chatting with other people
dictionaries/translation sites
wikipedia
college websites
other websites to share information

Use of text chat in Skype with peers
overcome initial shyness anxiety
explain words/expressions
say things sts don't want peers to hear
share urls
support one another
other

Padova-Dickinson Exchange 2009 - Session 2

My observations from the first actual Skype exchange:

• the usual - two students had technical problems, but the rest did fine
• all of them started off text chatting and then, thankfully, Nicoletta made hers call ours so they actually started talking - usual blushing, smiling, anxiety, discomfort
• most students' first comment was 'it was fun' or 'that was great' :-)
• most of the American students are very weak in Italian, and our students noted this - some said it made it impossible to speak in Italian, others said once they 'got to know each other' in English, then their peer was willing to speak in Italian, others said they just had to speak slowly - will have to question the order, i.e. in the case of weak students, maybe it's better to start in English
• use of the Web: I found observing very hard (see next post) but this was my general impression - some students kept the screen only on the questions on the wiki, others Skype audio and text so that they could text in awkward or difficult moments, only 2-3 had other windows/text chats going on at the same time, and one student was using a dictionary rather than the Web! It will be interesting to note whether this limited use of the Web was caused by the fact that the first session is overwhelming and will increase as time goes by or not.
  
• most students had already contacted one another on Facebook and were very excited about meeting there peers online in Skype - one had read all the intros and decided who she wanted to be paired with (girl-boy) and when that wasn't the case she was disappointed.
• Lara-John: John doesn't talk much so this needs to be observed in the future exchanges.
• Silvia-Monia-Nina: Silvia was very disappointed when she found out the reason she wasn't able to hook up with Nina was that Nina wasn't using her Skype name and had already started Skyping with Monia using another name - then added Silvia to the conversation but Monia seemed to dominate (she seems to be a strong student) - thought about changing the groups, but towards the end Monia seemed to 'leave space' for Silvia as well so for now, have left così, 3 strong students - will see how it goes.
  

Padova-Dickinson Exchange 2009 - Session 1

Wow, it's been nearly a month now. I've spent the past few weeks writing a chapter on TBLT and Telecollaboration 2.0 together with Fran, which will hopefully be published after all the work we've done it! Then I had to organize the Padova-Dickinson Exchange Fall 2009. This is what I'd like to note for now...

We've made several changes to the wiki based on our past experience and are hoping it will work better, and be more user-friendly this semester. We're having students use the comment function and their own personal pages for introductions in order to avoid many different people trying to edit one wiki page - which has proven to be inevitably a disaster.

Each discussion topic will have it's own page where students can continue the discussion asynchronously after the Skype chat. We still have to decide whether we, the teachers, are going to start discussions or 'let them go' through the comment function.

Fran and I made a long questionnaire that nearly all students have completed. We hope this will help inform us in our research.

I need to make up an observation schedule to use while observing the students Skyping. Need to work on that with Fran.

My observations with the students during the first lesson were these:

• Although they use technology, they don't really know how to use it and the second there's any glitch, they get frustrated and ask for help, with the exception of a few students such as Antonino.

• Fiona had a problem accessing the wiki and wrote a comment - a student replied with the technical help before I did, even though we hadn't suggested this. It was Silvia. Two others are also using this page to post comments so it looks like this use of the wiki is working - I just need to be checking it regularly!

• The students' questions are the usual, trivial, banal ones so it's going to be a challenge getting them beyond this. On the other hand, there is some material there like one student's statmente (note: not question!)"Do you know that where we live and troughout the north of Italy Mafia doesn't exist? It is not a countrywide phenomenon."I am definitely going to have to find out more about the 'Ndrangeta and other sources of organized crime, Mafia del Brenta, ecc. or have them investigate???Then there are a few cute ones worth using for increasing language awareness: During the Christmas Holidays which season are you living in? (This one for basic knowledge - does this student not know that the US is in the Northern Hemisphere??!!)Do you know Silvio Berlusconi?Have you ever done a spelling race?
  

• I'm hoping to make the 'Single Story' video into a task that will challenge them to consider their 'Single Story' of America, Italy or any other country. I think I can use this with the German-Italian exchange as well. For now I've embedded it in the wiki and made links to the comments on YouTube and on the TED website surrounding the video. It might be worth having students choose one of those two discussions as well and to contribute.

Still trying to figure out how to best organize my time :-(