CALL TEACHER EDUCATION FOR THE INTERNET

A.      The Domains Of Networked CALL

These domains have not all been investigated with the same degree of in depth attention in the literature, and this reflects both in their description and in the presentation of the most significant experimentations on their teaching: in the case of social networks, for instance, there are no studies or examples of Teacher Education about that domain. The connection between CMC and communicative competency is rather an intuitive fact, reconfirmed by literature (Hampel & Stickler, 2005): if we sum the advantages of distance with the Web’s potential, this tool’s possibilities may be fully understood.

Asynchronous communication, for example, allows groups of several learners to discuss and elaborate contents without all having to be connected simultaneously; it allows single individuals to elaborate their message carefully, without the worry of having to keep communication active and, finally, it enables single individuals to reconstruct the evolution of the conversation, so as to be able to join in without mishaps. CMC may be developed on different levels; the simplest dimension is the textual one (chat room, forums and blogs), whilst audio- and video-conferences are more complex.

Teacher Training for CMC is, from a technical viewpoint, quite limited. Either the tools are rather simple, albeit with various options (as in the case of CMC tools in the Moodle platform), or the technical questions are outside the range of ICT skills teachers are likely to have: this is the case of the video-conference, which involves the presence of a qualified technician for the bigger problems. An important ambit, albeit one that has been rather neglected by research, is the use of the Web for contents distribution (Torsani, 2009). In this case there are numerous possible options and, above all, platforms and, or more simply, web logs4 are a rather flexible tool for distribution of contents and tasks. Although such usage of the web might seem less appealing for researchers than CMC, its flexible and light nature might be a first step towards technology integration.

Online language teaching, both in the “distance” model (Lamy, 2013) and in the blended model, i.e. coursework alternating online and classroom activities, represent an important development, for they are complex phenomena revolving, to differing extents, around the adaptation of language pedagogy to the Web. If online language teaching was, as all e-learning, originally conceived as a fast and economic way to distribute materials according to a tutorial model, the evolution of distance learning is an example of the progresses made by research and practice, which coincided with the diffusion of “good practices” (for example Polisca, 2006 shows how an online class improves learners’ motivation), and through studies which endeavour to systemise the various competences necessary for online language pedagogy (Hampel & Stickler, 2005).

The last ambit is the one, mentioned above, of social networks. These, which are mostly used outside the influence of institutions (Dettori & Torsani, 2012), have exercised a great appeal upon research, which is not surprising, considering their analogies with constructivist and interactionist developments in language teaching. There are no examples, in the reference literature, of teacher education on social networks; however, given their being outside the school environment and their diffusion, the topic remains an important one; training, in this case, might be limited to a presentation of the individual features of such systems (and perhaps trying them), in order to allow teachers to gain knowledge of their mechanisms and lead to an awareness of how they may influence language learning.

B.       Models For Online Language Teaching

In this paragraph some frameworks and models for online language education are illustrated. With respect to the frameworks seen in Chapter 2, those presented in this paragraph are perhaps less theoretical and, above all, they provide models of the competences language teachers need to approach online language learning. In these works, in other word, it is language teachers, their needs and their competences that come to the fore.According Hampel and Stickler (2005) A crucial reflection on online language teaching is the already mentioned work by Hampel and Stickler (2005), which presents the elaboration of the well known pyramid of skills necessary for teaching languages online; the model proposed by the two authors develops the idea, already proposed by Bennett and Marsh (2002, quoted in Hampel & Stickler, 2005), that technical skills are not sufficient and that it is also necessary to:

a.     be able to acknowledge the differences with in-presence teaching;

b.    identify strategies and techniques to facilitate interaction;

The model is, therefore, CMC-oriented. The skills individuated by Hampel and Stickler are, starting from the lowest level:

                                  i.          Basic informatic skills. They are the most diffused skills and form the basis of the pyramid: knowledge of the basic mechanisms of operating systems, of how to use the Internet, and of the most common programmes.

                                ii.          Specific knowledge of the application being used. This is the immediately higher level, at which the procedural mechanisms of the software application used for language teaching, be it e-mails, an instant-messaging programme or a complete platform, are known.

                             iii.          The ability to manage the limits and individual features of the software application. This is a more elaborate skill, in the sense presented above: the software applications provide affordances to be used and also limits, with which language educators need to be able to come to terms. In the specialised literature we may find numerous analyses in that direction. For instance, in audio communication that part which passes through visual perception is missing; or, in communication through synchronous systems, there is not much time to check one’s output. All of these features influence communication and need to be carefully taken into consideration when designing tasks.

                         iv.               The next level consists in the ability to create a sense of community in the classroom. This is, as may be noticed, the first completely “non-technical” point. This ability, which is related to the social turn that has occurred in language pedagogy (Block, 2003) is fundamental in order to create in the (virtual) classroom a sense of community, as the authors say (p. 318):

In the context of communicative language teaching, there is no doubt that a classroom without a sense of community will be ill-suited for successful learning. Role-plays, dialogues, information gap exercises, simulations—basically any form of ‘‘meaningful communicative interaction’’ (Canale & Swain, 1980, p. 27)—would hardly take place in a classroom without social cohesion and would certainly not provide successful practice opportunities for communicative encounters. This, however, is not a universally attainable goal and success in this sense cannot be guaranteed by any endeavour. In other words, the ability to create and support a sense of community and socialisation – these being fundamental elements for the success of communicative approaches – is something that may be taught, but not necessarily learnt. This is, in any case, a sensitive point, the preserve of professional figures who work beyond the boundaries of the linguistic framework, to tackle the difficult task of successfully managing interpersonal relationships. Such is the price of humanist, social and communicative approaches.

                       v.                   An even higher level presents the ability to facilitate communicative competency. This is a simpler task than the previous one, for communicative competency is developed through designing specific tasks or, more simply, by discussing contents.

vi.          The following level is that of creativity in task design (see previous point) and in contents choice. Creativity is made manifest by the ability to use tools in an innovative manner; that is to say, by adapting them to any specific needs emerging from teaching activities. In this case also, this skill is difficult to formalise.

vii.         The final level, personal style, coincides with teachers’ ability to integrate technologies with their own teaching style. Personal style develops with time, en one is able to exploit and integrate all the basic skills.

The second application, instead, relates to a discussion forum (see Table 2.1).

Table 2.1. Competences for forum based activities

Application	Discussion forum
Basic competences	Minimal and general knowledge of how Internet applications work. Problems relating to surfing the Internet: e.g. activating a script, cancelling personal data, knowing data input boxes and how to fill them in.
Specific competences	Knowledge of the different types of forum (tree-forum, sequential etc.). Creating new forums, starting a conversation, cancelling/modifying messages, modifying one’s profile, managing non-linguistic text elements (emoticons). Knowledge of accessory elements, e.g. enclosing documentsto messages.
Limits and strong points management	In asynchronous systems, the fact of knowing how much time participants have will allow them to investigate autonomously and to take care of language form.
Socialisation	Creation of specific rules (netiquette) for socialisation in this kind of environment: e.g. do not write in capital letters; do not write off -topic messages.
Communicative competency	Designing of activities suitable for the asynchronous communication form, such as complex group works requiring documentation and discussion. Defining homogeneous groups so that all participants may contribute. Kol and Schcolnik (2008) illustrate a series of rules in a pilot project, established in order to “force” their students to communicate (e.g. posting a question on a topic from a text which was not understood, answering at least one question).
Creativity Personal style

According Compton (2009) The model proposed by Compton (2009) starts from a reviewing of Hampel and Sickler’s work, and it makes an attempt to bring online language teaching into the framework of Chapelle’s reflection (2001), which has, as seen before, a strong linguistic matrix. Compton starts from a criticism to Hampel-Sickler’s model, which develops in two directions. First the author questions the model’s vertical and progressive approach; that is to say, the idea that some competences ought to be learnt before others, of which they form the basis: for instance, there is no reason to think that managing social skills on the Internet should be a prerequisite to be able to develop communicative competency: these two aspects can be developed simultaneously or in a different order. The second point is the generic character of this model which, maintains the author, might be applied to any branch of knowledge, since only one of the skills listed by the authoresses, i.e. the ability to develop communicative competency, is strictly pertaining to language pedagogy.

Compton’s model of competences takes the form of a grid in which the columns represent the different ambits – technology, pedagogy and evaluation whereas the lines describe the different competence levels – i.e. novice, proficient or expert. The importance of the first two ambits is almost obvious: technological skills are necessary in order to choose and use applications (in an increasingly creative and original manner), whilst pedagogic (language teaching) skills are needed to design and develop language tasks. Knowledge about evaluation is an explicit reference to Chapelle’s work8 (2001) which forms one of the most important theoretical foundations for Compton’s work; the ability to evaluate is needed in order to understand whether or not a certain activity has reached the aim for which it was designed.

ü  Technology

·         Novice. Basic digital skills: working with an operative system and with its main applications. On the basis of such skills, technologies for online teaching need to be learnt; for example, learning platforms (e.g. Moodle). The different mechanisms of applications as concerns communicative competency need to be known; for example, the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication applications; it is also necessary to be able to use the main applications for Computer-mediated communication. Finally, it is necessary to be able to compare programmes with similar functions, for example Yahoo Messenger and Skype.

·         Proficient. At this level the teacher will be able to choose which application to use in order to attain his or her goals. He or she should be able to autonomously find applications and evaluate them; the teacher should, furthermore, be able to deal with any limits of the various programmes. He or she will be able to recognise the main extensions and to find the right programme to process the various documents. Chapelle and Hegelheimer (2004) include among competences the ability to solve browser-related problems and to work with the HTML language.

·         Expert. The expert teacher is able to use applications creatively for didactic activities. Many applications, in fact, were not designed for language pedagogy, and they need to be adapted. The author quotes the example of virtual worlds, in which experimentations in language teaching were carried out.

ü  Pedagogy

·           Novice. The basic level envisages knowledge of the most important phenomena of online language pedagogy. The first of these is knowledge of the various strategies, in order to foster socialisation on the Web; the second is knowledge of strategies to foster communicative competency; the third aspect, finally, is knowledge of online language evaluation methods. In addition to these three aspects, the differences with in-presence language pedagogy need to be known.

·           Proficient. At this level teachers should be able to choose suitable activities for online language pedagogy, as well as to exploit the various language theories and their potentials.

·           Expert. At the expert level, having gained confidence with the items of the previous levels, teachers should be able to use them in a creative manner; likewise they should feel comfortable in carrying out evaluation.

ü  Evaluation.

·           Novice. The basic level envisages the knowledge of an evaluation model, such as Chapelle’s (2001).

·           Proficient. At this level teachers should be able to apply evaluation models and, if an activity does not produce the results hoped for, they should be able to use their technical and language-teaching competences to modify the tool or the activity, or both.

·           Expert. At the expert level teachers know several evaluation methods and are able to integrate them with full autonomy; furthermore, at this level, teachers have no difficulty in assessing the impact of technologies/activities over learning.

The importance of pedagogy and the pivotal role of the teacher in online language education clearly emerges from these works. Network technologies, and especially CMC, may offer an original contribution to language pedagogy as they are based on interaction among people: telecollaboration is perhaps the most significant example. Precisely because they are integrated into language education, network technologies need to be framed within a solid pedagogical and linguistic rationale.

Pedagogy is indeed so important in this online language learning that it expands outside its own natural borders to inform, for instance, technical competences: a closer look at the “digital competences” proposed by O’Dowd, may reveal how they are heavily influenced by pedagogy, e.g. competence C8 “model social presence and online identity for his/her students and help to create an online community of trust and learning” (a perspective quite in line with Hampel & Stickler’s pyramid).

CALL frameworks shown in Chapter 2 focused on different elements, e.g. Underwood’s focused on the use of technology, while Egbert & Hanson Smith focused on the environment; all the works shown in this paragraph, on the contrary, focus on the teacher. It might be argued that it is the interactive nature of network technologies that causes the role of the teacher to become crucial, as shown, for instance, by the fact that all these authors stress the importance for online language education of the ability to build and manage a community.

C.      Processes In Teacher Education For The Internet

After presenting the various options and models relating to online language teaching, in this paragraph we will focus on training for them.

1.      Computer-Mediated Communication

Computer Mediated Communication, in its various forms, holds, as already mentioned above, a particular position with respect to technologies: communication tools usually work in rather a simple and immediate way, with a relatively low number of technical options. In spite of such simplicity, however, digital media allow the connection of real persons: following Warschauer and Kern’s principle (2000), the interaction no longer occurs with the computer, but rather, through the computer. Research, then, has moved towards the analysis of how tools influence such interaction, and how online activities should be designed.

2.      Distance-Teaching

In this ambit we resume Hampel and Stickler’s pyramid, which was utilised by these two authors on several occasions. Hampel and Stickler (2005) illustrate an online tutor training course based on that model and applied to the platform in use in their University (Lyceum) for distance-teaching. The part relating to tool knowledge (point 2 – Specific competences on tool) was first carried out by means of a tutorial, then through an in presence meeting, during which also the knowledge of its limits and potentials was developed (point 3 – Strengths and limitations management). A workshop in two sessions then followed, in order to improve further knowledge of tools: while the first one served to illustrate more in depth the platform systems, the second consisted in a simulation: the higher levels of the pyramid are mostly developed autonomously andthrough experience.

D.      Social Networks And Mobile Technologies

Next to nothing has been written on training teachers for social networks, and research on that subject seems to be still far from defining this ambit: Blake (2013), for example, places among social applications autonomous learning in portals specialised in language learning (e.g. LiveMocha), as well as tandem learning. However, as we have already remarked, social networks represent an external element that escapes the control of educational institutions: their integration into Language Teacher Education appears, therefore, to be rather complex, and may require further steps in the reconstruction of the teaching practice itself; steps which the educational institutions may not be willing to make, unless they can clearly perceive obvious advantages deriving from them. It must, however, be noticed that social networks may constitute a source of information for language learners: Dettori and Torsani (2012), for instance, show how the Yahoo! Answers portal is used by learners to ask questions about languages. Language teachers should be aware of the potential and limits of these services for language learning.

On mobile learning the literature offers much as regards experimentations, but again little is said about teacher training. And yet research on this area, however quantitatively limited, offers useful insight into a novel domain. Traxler (2005), for instance, does not focus on pedagogical issues, but rather presents a series of point which are worth considering for teachers interested in Mobile technology. The points are interesting because, again, they show the role of the institutional context as regards technology integration and also innovation becoming widespread. Traxler’s work is also interesting as it shows how academia, institutions and researchers deal with a technology that is still developing and diffusing while it is researched as a potential tool for education.