Reading guide for the 2nd task

BLOCK 1: Introduction and literature review

1. Discuss the concept of learning autonomy as delt with in the article. Which are some of the constructs covered by this notion? Discuss. Please, indicate where in the article you found the information to compose your answer (page and paragraph/line). Tip: You can also make use of other resources to shed light on the concept of learner autonomy (in general and/or in particular, about learning autonomy in language learning and teaching). (up to page 91) Autonomous learning has been defined in different ways; the term was originally related to an individual taking control of his/her own learning. According to Little (2003), Autonomous Learning basically entails three things: decision making, critical reflection and social interaction. This type of learner is responsible for its own learning, hence, the role of the teacher and the student cannot be the same as it is in a classic teacher-driven classroom. The students are expected to take control of their own learning process and the teachers have to provide the appropriate conditions for the learning to happen. In addition, they should foster the students' interest for taking an active role in the decisionmaking and problem solving processes. Consequently, as Little states, autonomy is the result of interplay between social and reflective processes. (pg: 87; 1st paragraph and pg: 88 last paragraph) We can find other authors who deal with the concept of autonomous learning, such as Benson, who, in his book Autonomy and Independence in Language Learning (Pg: 192) deals with concepts such as Self-direction or Selfinstruction, which are related to autonomy in learning. Self- instruction defines a teaching-learning situation in which students do not work explicitly under control of a teacher. Self-direction on the other hand, describes a particular attitude to the learning task, where the learner accepts responsibility for all the decisions concerned with his learning but does not necessarily undertake the implementation of those decisions. We could say that, Autonomy involves both decisions and actions; when the learner takes the responsibility of his own learning by taking decisions concerned to it and implementing these. http://shantivam.tripod.com/id78.html Hence, we would say that being autonomous implies, on behalf of the students, determining objectives, and having the teacher as a guide, they can define contents and deadlines, select methods, evaluate the process and the outcome and come up with ways to improve the learning process. This does not mean that the learners have to undertake these tasks in an isolated way, they can use both classmates and teachers to achieve their goals. For instance, the students can organize workshops with the teacher as aid (grouping according to strengths, needs, weak points, or mixing patterns) where they can train one another as well as give feedback and advice on their companions progression. It is by doing this that learners can take advantage of having a teacher to become autonomous. The role of the teacher has changed in the current educational paradigm, he/she can be a very useful counsellor and a very effective adviser. As opposed

to the previous educational paradigm, in which the teacher had a leading role; he/she was the decision maker of the teaching-learning process and, what is more, the teacher represented a source of knowledge, therefore, his/her task was to transmit content to the students. That leads the role of the pupils to merely learn/memorize the content transmitted by the teacher. Benson also maintains that autonomy is related to the social constructivism of active learning. He believes that students construct learning in a social environment by having an active role in the learning process. What is more, it is through social interactions that students develop capacity to analyze, reflect upon and synthesize information. (last paragraph, page 88). Hence, we can say that learning in the current paradigm of education, is supposed to be constructed, not transmitted and also that it is constructed better in a cooperative or collaborative way; that is, in a social way, by interaction with others. Of course there is transmission of knowledge to some extent on behalf of the teacher, but that is not any more the core of education. Teaching now involves the students constructing knowledge, getting involved in the process and consequently, it implies creation. Information is so easy to get nowadays with the use of new technologies that it does not make sense any more basing the teaching-learning process in lecturing. 2. A number of characteristics of autonomous learning are mentioned along the article. Please, identify them. Please, indicate where in the article you found the information to compose your answer (page and paragraph/line) Since in question number one we have already stated numerous aspects of autonomous learning, we will provide now some of the characteristics of learning autonomy we found on the article according to different authors. The first one we found was made by Garrison et al. (2001) suggesting that teacher presence and scaffolding play a facilitative role in giving subject matter expertise and guidance to students during social interactions. To this view, teachers could use questions to cultivate reflective thinking to foster further discussions. The claim made by Ushiola (2006) regarding motivation and academic success is found to be true, hence, we can say that the more motivated the students are (by an interesting topic or by the goal of getting a better mark) the more successful they will be accomplishing the task. Right after that we found a statement made by Little (1996) arguing that social interaction plays a key role in autonomy, as learner develop capacity to practice fully and critically in learning tasks through interaction with others. Lee (2009a)proposes that the better the social interpersonal communicative relationship the gap has, the more willing each member is to share perspectives, seek help and offer support. Later on we found a reference made by Schwienhorst (2008) which says that critical reflection trough online cooperative interaction promotes learner autonomy.

(The previous citations were found all along page 99) According to Garrison et al. (2001) the instructors intervention plays a vital role in providing students guidance and feedback to encourage critical reflection. (page 102; last paragraph before the heading 'Limitations and future studies') The last reference we found on the article is that of Lee (2009a) and Abram's (2005) about computer mediated communication, whose findings revealed that expert scaffolding play a facilitative role in cultivating critical thinking. 3. Research the following concepts within the social constructivist paradigm of education: a) collaborative/cooperative learning: Collaborative or cooperative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together. Unlike individual learning, people engaged in collaborative learning capitalize on one anothers resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one anothers ideas, monitoring one anothers work, etc.). More specifically, collaborative learning is based on the model that knowledge can be created within a population where members actively interact by sharing experiences and take on asymmetry roles. Put differently, in collaborative learning, learners engage in a common task where each individual depends on and is accountable to each other. These might include both face-to-face conversations and also computer discussions (online forums, chat rooms, etc.). (This paragraph has been taken form Wikipedia) Therefore, we can say that this approach aims at organizing activities in group learning experiences. Students have to work in teams to complete tasks in a collective way. As opposed to individual learning, students learning cooperatively can use and take advantage of other learner's skills and knowledge, for instance, by asking for information, providing feedback to other student's ideas, observing their work, and so on and so forth. Besides, like we said before, the teacher's role has to change within this methodology, his/her task now is to facilitate students' learning, creating an appropriate environment for the learning to take place. Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds. We think it is important to stress that cooperative learning does not mean splitting up a task into different pieces for the members of the group to carry out, and once they are done put all the pieces together so as to 'create' a unique task. In a real cooperative learning all the member of the group learn about the whole task. Group work means that each learner is responsible to learn their own part of the task, but also make sure that the rest of the students in the group learn everything too. The assessment withing this approach is done in two ways: individually and as a group, so as the teacher can make sure that every member of the group has learned everything. http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/coopcollab/index.html ) b) scaffolding Bruner coined the term "scaffolding" to describe how children often build off the information they have already mastered. In his research on the

development of children (1966), Bruner proposed three modes of representation: enactive representation (action-based), iconic representation (image-based), and symbolic representation (language-based). Rather than neatly delineated stages, the modes of representation are integrated and only loosely sequential as they "translate" into each other. Symbolic representation remains the ultimate mode, for it "is clearly the most mysterious of the three." Bruner's theory suggests it is efficacious when faced with new material to follow a progression from enactive to iconic to symbolic representation; this holds true even for adult learners. Bruner's work also suggests that a learner (even of a very young age) is capable of learning any material as long as the instruction is organized appropriately, in sharp contrast to the beliefs of Piaget and other stage theorists. (Driscoll, Marcy). (This paragraph has been taken form the Wikipedia) Hence, the scaffolding theory coined by Bruner can be understood as providing students the specific amount of help in the right moment, and as we do with a real scaffolding structure, the teacher will 'remove the scaffold', that is, the help, which can be provided by the teacher, by the students who have more knowledge about the topic and also by any given materials, for example a dictionary when learning vocabulary. Little by little and when it is appropriate, all those aids are removed until the student is ready to work on his/her own and no strong guidance is required any more. There is another interesting thing within this theory; it is believed that students can learn anything if the instruction is organized following an appropriate sequence. This ideas is totally the opposite of Piaget's cognitive developmental theory, which says that a student will only learn something when he/she is cognitively ready to do so. c) ZPD (zone of proximal development) The concept of Zone of Proximal Development was coined by Vygotsky. It can be defined as the difference between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help. He stated that a child follows an adult's example and gradually develops the ability to do certain tasks without help. Vygotsky's often-quoted definition of zone of proximal development presents it as the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers. (This paragraph has been taken form the Wikipedia) Now, think of possible scaffolds that students might need or take advantage of during their language learning process in general and in the learning of particular language components and or skills (such as vocabulary, reading, etc.). Something we use a lot with children when learning English are images, since they help children to associate the new word or structure with the picture and, what is more, we do not need to translate anything into into Spanish. This is associated to iconic representation (image-based). Another thing we find very useful is the total physical response method in which an action is associated to a meaning. In that way the students learn with the help of actions, that is, enactive representation (action-based).

Being more specific, we can think of the use of graphic organizers to arrange compositions in an appropriate way http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/ and also the use of dictionaries when learning vocabulary. Provide an example of a CALL application that you think can constitute an appropriate scaffolding instrument for a language learner. Discuss. Since CALL refers to the use of of computers in the learning and teaching of foreign languages in the broadest sense, from the use of wordprocessors to the use of the Internet (ICT4LT) the uses of computer a means of 'scaffold' learning can be very varied. A good example many of us do is watching films or series in the target language to improve listening skills. We can do that first with subtitles in L1, then in L2 until we don't need any. 4. "Unlike real-time CMC, asynchronous communication gives students more time to reflect on their ideas, which fosters critical thinking (e.g., Abrams, 2005; Arnold & Ducate, 2006; Jonassen, 2003; Lamy & Goodfellow, 1999)." a) Research the notion of critical thinking. Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives which divides them into three "domains": Cognitive: mental skills (Knowledge) Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (Attitude) Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (Skills) * Bloom's taxonomy (old and new versions) A group of cognitive psychologists, lead by Lorin Anderson (a former student of Bloom), updated the taxonomy to reflect relevance to 21st century work. The two graphics show the revised and original Taxonomy. Note the change from nouns to verbs associated with each level.

Each of the categories or taxonomic elements has a number of key verbs associated with it: Remembering - Recognising, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding Understanding - Interpreting, Summarising, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying Applying - Implementing, carrying out, using, executing Analysing - Comparing, organising, deconstructing, Attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating Evaluating - Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, Experimenting, judging, testing, Detecting, Monitoring Creating - designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making * Creative and critical thinking - Bloom's taxonomy Critical thinking involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hypothesizing, and critiquing. Creative thinking involves creating something new or original. It involves the skills of flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing, metaphorical thinking, forced relationships. The aim of creative thinking is to stimulate curiosity and promote divergence. Hence, if we follow Bloom's taxonomy, we can see that critical and creative thinking belong to the higher order thinking skills. When we talk about HOTS we are concentrating on the top three levels of Bloom's Taxonomy: analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. * Bloom's digital taxonomy (by Andrew Churches) The elements within the taxonomy cover many of the activities and objectives of a classroom, but they do not address the new objectives presented by the emergence and integration of Information and Communication Technologies into the classroom and the lives of our students. Bloom's digital taxonomy is an update to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy to account for the new behaviours, actions and learning opportunities emerging as technology advances and becomes more ubiquitous. Bloom's Revised Taxonomy accounts for many of the traditional classroom practices but does not account for the new technologies and the processes and actions associated with them, nor does it do justice to the digital children, or as Marc Prensky describes them the Digital Natives. While Bloom's in its many forms, does represent the learning process, it does not indicate that the learners must start at the lowest taxonomic level and work up. Rather, the learning process can be initiated at any point, and the lower taxonomic levels will be encompassed within the scaffolded learning task.

An increasing influence on learning is the impact of collaboration in its various forms. These are often facilitated by digital media and are increasingly a feature of our digital classrooms. This taxonomy is not about the tools and technologies, these are just the medium, instead it is about using these tools to achieve, recall, understanding, application, analysis, evaluation and creativity. b) Discuss how ICTs (in general or any in particular) can foster the development of critical thinking skills. We shall talk first about blogs ans e-mail use in class because both of us have used them and we find them very useful. Needless to say that a blog is a virtual space where one has freedom to write about any issue one likes. We think that is the key of how the use of ICTs, and more specifically blogs, help students develop critical thinking. When we get ready for writing a new post on a blog we have to choose a topic, select the content we want to deal with, structure it, write it in a nice way because we expect people to read it and we might even think of adding a video, a picture or maybe change the colors of the letters etc. What we try to explain here is that there are many different decisions to take before publishing a new entry and that all those decisions are made following some criterion. It is a personal choice what we have to make. Besides all that, blogs are a very useful tool to use in the classroom; the teacher could have a class blog and post there extra activities, grammar explanations, or topics for the students to discuss about. We find the discussion about a given topic the most explicit example of how blogs support and help developing critical reflection. The teacher could choose the topics he/she thinks are important, but he/she can also ask the students about what they would like to to talk about so as to make sure they take part n the discussion. However we might not be successful with our blogging idea and it will probably be good to make compulsory the participation in a determined number of discussions along the course and give the students a brief list issues of to follow, like when to post, how long the post should be, etc. We think it is a good idea to make them talk about cultural differences between countries, specially in the globalized society we are currently experiencing. It is by doing that, that they can compare their culture with other people's, reflect upon it and ultimately be critic or judge a given aspect/event. But the process could go beyond that, and the teacher could ask them to state (if they do not do it by themselves) what they believe to be the appropriate solution for a problem, once they identify the problem, design a plan of action, stating hypothesis, etc. As we can see, all the actions implied in a discussion like the ones we have given in the previous paragraph belong to the so called HOTS, and they for sure will develop critical thinking. As for the e-mail we find it rather utile and helpful for the development of the class. The teacher can use e-mail for different purposes, for instance, he can ask the students to send him compositions and he can very easily give them

back to the students with feedback on their mistakes. Another use could be asking the teacher doubts before an exam and in that way, the teacher can also notice whether something is wrong or it is not clear enough if the students ask the same questions all the time, hence it is a way for the teacher to reflect about his/her teaching and think of ways to improve it in the future. In addition, we believe that carrying out activities by using ICTs motivates students more than doing them in a traditional way. Some students might like the topic and would be willing to take part in the discussion, but some other might need extra motivation, and using ICTs in the classroom is definitely a good way to increase that motivation. 5. Can you explain how blogs and ethnographic interviews can be used in order to develop intercultural communicative competence, drawing from what is said in the article? It is more than obvious that one of the best ways of improving our intercultural knowledge, (apart form traveling and living abroad), is talking and getting to know people from other cultures. This is exactly what the participants in this study are supposed to do; not only moving to the target society, but also get to know locals by means of face to face interviews and by using blogs as well. Since speakers of different languages see the world in a different way, being interculturally competent means to be able to communicate and understand the culture, that is, not only know the target society, but also understand why things are as they are. Participants in this study are expected to become familiar with what is underlying the language, and that means going beyond the learning of the language, it implies being able to put yourself in the situation of the people who speak the language. We cannot forget that fact that motivation is also crucial. This reminds us to Schumann acculturation model, clearly describes the role social and affective variables may play in language acquisition. This model states that learners will acquire the target language to the degree that they acculturate. Two types of successful acculturation can be distinguished: integrative motivation and assimilative motivation. The first one regards the desire on part of the learner to be part of the target culture, whereas the second one has to do with the desire to become an indistinguishable member of the target speech community, he/she will willingly embrace the target culture. Having said all this, and taking into account the type of ethnographic interviews carried out in the study, we can suggest that this type of interactions foster intercultural communicative competence, since one of the findings of the study regarding this issue is the fact that students show an increase in understanding of and respect Spanish speakers (Page 98) Through the comments of their blogs the researchers found that the students were able to compare and understand two different cultures, which is the basis of a good intercultural communicative competence. 6. Please, identify the main goal of this study. The study investigates the role of learner autonomy and its pedagogical impact. It is done by closely exploring how using combined modalities of

asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) via blogs and face-toface (FTF) interaction trough ethnographic interviews with native speakers (L1s) supports autonomous learning as the result of reflective and social processes. The study was designed to address three major questions form a social constructivist theory: 1. How do students view the effectiveness of using CMC (blogs in this case) and FTF (ethnographic interviews) for intercultural learning in support of self-directed learning? 2. To what extent blogs promote learner's autonomy through social and cognitive engagement? 3. What factors affect how students learn independently and collaboratively within the virtual learning environment?

BLOCK 2: Methodology
7. Complete the chart below with information from the article:

Participants
Numb Ag Blogging L2 Proficiency er e expertise
That kind of information We don`t 17 is not given. But more have that to than 70% of the L1s had kind of infor64 experience dealing with mation. American students. 18 to 22

Prior interaction with L1s

Regular interactions with the students at home or outside of class. Most of them did not have the experience of interacting with L1 prior to the study abroad.

L1 s L2 s

16

Intermediate Spanish

none

Tasks
Contents Participa nts Contributions

Students have to write Person Personal diary where they have Each student reflective observations about various aspects of al blog to write 3 times per week. the Spanish culture.

Class blog

Weekly assignments on readComments other postings, culture activities, interings to improve their views, observations and com- Each student participation in the ments about the assigned topproject. ic. Create their own blog where students can write about an They have to analyzed specific topic. they have to all the previous materiread 3 articles and conduct 2 Each student als and write about their interviews with experts speakown observations ers to find out their own perspectives.

Project blog

Now, please, identify the data collection instruments that were used in this project. a) Blog entries. b) Reflective reports c) Post survey

BLOCK 3: Results and discussion

8. Please, summarize the response to each of the research questions posed for this study. a) Research question 1: How do students view the effectiveness of using CMC (blogs) and FTF (ethnographic interviews) for intercultural learning in support of selfdirected learning? b) Research question 2: To what extent do blogs promote learner autonomy through social and cognitive engagement? c) Research question 3: What factors affect how students learn independently and collaboratively within the virtual learning environment? Summary of results for these questions: In one part of the study some students considered themselves to be selfmanaged and problem solvers. Some of them were frustrated by not being able

to participate actively in the blogs because some of them don't have free access to internet so, they have to go to a cyber cafe and pay for it. Addition to this, some students observed that they thought that professors should have discussed strategies for online posting along with writing examples with the students prior project. One of the most important effects of the blog project was the development of critical thinking they also found that blogs allowed them to engaged in the process of self-reflection that helped them to understand crosscultural similarities and differences. In the same way, it demonstrates the positive result of using ethnographic interviews, because students showed the ability to compare and contrast the two cultures. When we talk about cognitive process we can mention that critical reflection through online collaborative interaction promotes learner autonomy (schwienhorst,2008). Most of the students give their personals opinions in all their posting blogs and they don`t support their opinions, also they give suggestions about things that you can do in the city, they describe the way that people live their lives comparing their own. With this information, we can say that blogging allows them to build their knowledge over time (Godwin-Jones, 2005, p.13). Blogging can help motivate students to write and do research over an extended period of time (as well as share their efforts), and can give them a platform from which to analyze various Internet materials (Oravec, 2003, Introduction section). Despite the fact that students gained cultural knowledge and awareness from online exchange the findings confirm the previous concerns raised by the students about the lack of substantial comments to generate critical thinking. It is possible that students were not accustomed to reflecting. they may also have felt reluctant to express their candid thoughts in an open source blog platform because they did not wish to make others uncomfortable.