Conceptualizing an inquiry-based lingua-cultural learning through telecollaborative exchanges

Introduction

In one of the early essays about the role of the Internet in foreign language instruction published in 1993, William J. Wyman pointed out that network technology would soon enable us ‘to do things differently, to learn in new ways, to see old things in new ways’ (Wyman 1993, 28). This was the time when, in Wyman’s own words, a group of foreign language teachers invited to his workshop were serious when asking him questions, such as ‘How much will it cost me (or my department) to send email to Russia?’ or ‘By the way, can I send email to Russia?’ (26). More than 25 years later, foreign language teachers and their students can not only send emails to any person in any country in the world, but also engage in discussions; exchange ideas; make presentations; practice their speaking, writing, reading, and listening skills; and instantly get feedback from their partners through real-time communication applications (Guth and Helm 2010).

In the academic literature, this form of interaction is known as telecollaboration, with some authors labelling it ‘an online intercultural exchange’ (O’Dowd 2007) or ‘Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education’ (Belz and Thorne 2006). Telecollaboration is an important aspect of foreign language education because it highlights the importance of intercultural learning and communicative competence in the process of foreign language acquisition (Byram 1997; O’Dowd 2012). Telecollaboration allows instructors to engage students through synchronous and asynchronous communication with representatives of other cultures in geographically distant locations by using free and accessible communication tools such as email, Skype, Zoom, or Google Hangouts. Such projects, ideally facilitated by their respective institutions, provide learners the opportunity to learn about other cultures and their socio-linguistic norms and patterns through interactions with peers while staying within the supportive context of their foreign language classroom (O’Dowd 2012).

Thus, the main objective of such telecollaborative exchanges is not merely to provide a platform for language practice, but to promote the development of intercultural communicative competence among learners (Byram 1997) through interaction, exchange (Belz and Thorne 2006), and structured tasks (O’Dowd and Waire 2009). In other words, the aim of online exchanges and, more broadly, foreign language instruction, is no longer to produce near-native speakers but, in the words of Byram (1997, 12), intercultural speakers who can ‘see and manage the relationships between themselves and their own cultural beliefs, behaviours, and meanings [...] and those of their interlocutors’. Therefore, it is suggested that telecollaboration pieces together language and inter- and intra-cultural learning to help learners become more effective communicators (Belz and Thorne 2006).

However, our examination of existing telecollaboration cases suggests that the intra-cultural learning aspect of online exchange is the least academically researched. In other words, while the foreign language and intercultural learning aspects of telecollaboration have been extensively studied by scholars and practitioners, intra-cultural learning has not been sufficiently addressed by field experts. Telecollaboration places greater emphasis on the development of intercultural communicative competence but, in the majority of the works reviewed, rarely takes into account the possibility that learners engaged in online intercultural exchanges may not have sufficient awareness of their own lingua-culture. Latest research in telecollaboration reveals that many teachers and facilitators continue to ‘teach the same thing in a different way’ (Kern, Ware, and Warschauer 2004), failing to help learners revisit the cultural precepts and phenomena within their own cultures.

In the telecollaboration context, we approach intra-cultural learning as a process of (re)discovering novel, sharable knowledge related to one’s own culture, language, and communicative patterns. It is an important constituent in evidence-based intercultural knowledge sharing between online exchange partners. The introduction of a functional framework for incorporating intra-cultural learning into telecollaborative projects could increase the effectiveness of online intercultural exchanges. We agree with Kern, Ware, and Warschauer (2004) that telecollaboration presents an opportunity for educators to use Internet-mediated tools not so much to teach the same thing in a different way, but to help learners carry out collaborative inquiry and acquire authentic knowledge by viewing their expanding identities and communication strategies as resources in the process.

In this study, we develop the notion of ‘inquiry-based telecollaboration’, as a practical framework for nurturing learners’ intercultural knowledge with the goal of developing their intercultural communication skills. Our study suggests that the practical application of inquiry-based telecollaboration could facilitate the development of foreign language learners’ essential skills of lingua-cultural inquiry and evidence-based knowledge sharing.

Literature review

Inquiry-based model of telecollaboration

Existing telecollaboration cases reveal that online intercultural exchange necessitates the presence of two or more linguistically and culturally distinct groups of individuals whose goal is to learn about each other’s language and culture through various Internet-mediated activities, such as information exchange, comparison and analysis, and collaboration and product creation (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. Conventional online exchange and telecollaborative tasks.

In this conventional form, learners on both sides consider themselves representatives of their culture and native speakers of their language, viewing each other as possessors of authentic cultural and linguistic knowledge. We encounter four problems related to this approach. First, the cultural knowledge that a host member shares with a foreign member is often subjective, especially related to activities involving interpretation, contextualisation, comparison, and negotiation of meaning. However, online exchange may be less susceptible to subjectivity when partners engage in a rather technical language exchange, such as vocabulary learning, sentence construction, and practising correct pronunciation and grammar.

The second problem arises when the limited online interactions further augment learners’ stereotypical view of their partners’ culture. This impacts learners on both sides: foreign members solidify their stereotypes based on limited information gained through a short exercise, while host members remain convinced that these stereotypes concerning certain aspects of their lingua-culture are well-grounded because of insufficient intra-cultural knowledge. The third problem is related to foreign member generalising issues based on their interaction with a limited number of ‘host’ members.

The fourth and perhaps more salient problem is that the majority of telecollaborative tasks reported to date tend to initiate intercultural contacts without addressing the host members’ lack of knowledge about their own lingua-culture. This creates a learning environment in which foreign members may find it difficult to acquire authentic knowledge about the target culture, and host members might miss the opportunity to expand their knowledge reservoir of their own culture, which lies at the core of building intra-cultural competence. An integral part of becoming an intercultural speaker is intra-cultural learning; that is, learning about one’s own culture and developing the ability to reflect on the origin of one’s own beliefs and behaviours.

These combined problems present a challenge in the effective use of Internet-mediated tools for developing intercultural communicative competence. The modern multimedia-rich Internet offers enough terabytes of knowledge on any of the world’s cultures and languages to render the whole idea of online intercultural exchanges more burdensome to some learners, unless there is a framework that could help online exchanges pro-actively develop intercultural communicative competence. The question that we pose here, therefore, is: how could telecollaborative activity be re-designed to minimise the impact of these factors on the development of intercultural communicative competence aimed at online exchanges? Addressing this question brings us to intra-cultural communication and learning, or to be exact, their paucity in the design of most contemporary telecollaborative projects.

One important yet insufficiently explored area concerns the relationship between inquiry and the creation of a new lingua-cultural knowledge. In our proposed model, we closely examine inquiry-based learning because it represents a more systemic and scientific way of constructing new knowledge by following certain procedures, methods, and practices (Keselman 2003). Inquiry-based learning according to Pedaste et al. (2012) is a process of discovering new causal relations, with the learner formulating hypotheses and testing them by conducting experiments and/or making observations. Several studies support the effectiveness of inquiry-based learning as an instructional approach, suggesting that it can improve different skills, such as identifying problems, formulating questions, collecting and analysing authentic information, and presenting results and conclusions (Alfieri et al. 2011; Furtak et al. 2012).

Because our main concern about the effective implementation of telecollaboration as a medium of intercultural learning is the possible lack of host members’ knowledge of their own culture, the inquiry methods, especially those related to observation, identifying problems, formulating questions, and conducting experiments (interviews, surveys, etc.) provides a framework for the construction of intra-cultural knowledge aimed at elevating learners’ self-reflection and self-awareness. This telecollaboration model thus introduces an important new phase in the online exchange process that is designed to help host members discover authentic intra-cultural knowledge through inquiry within their own lingua-cultural environment (see Figure 2).

Figure 2. The inquiry-based model of telecollaboration (macro level).

An inquiry-based model of online intercultural exchange can promote active learning because participants are expected to collect authentic knowledge by engaging members of their own community and then share the findings with their online exchange partners. Inquiry-based activity creates authentic contexts, and research in cognitive science highlights its role in effective learning (Greeno, Collins, and Resnick 1996). Edelson, Gordin, and Pea (1999) claim that authentic activities provide learners with the motivation to acquire new knowledge, an opportunity to incorporate it into their existing knowledge, and conditions in which to apply this knowledge in real life. While the transmission and reception of knowledge in conventional online intercultural exchange is passive, an inquiry-based model is active. As a practise aimed at discovering authentic perspectives within one’s own culture (stereotypes, perceptions, beliefs, norms of behaviour) and language (patterns of verbal and non-verbal communication, geographic peculiarities of language), inquiry-based telecollaboration also promotes informed intercultural communication.

It is important to mention that in our proposed telecollaboration model, the ‘inquiry phase’ and the ‘online exchange phase’ are not mutually independent processes; they are organically intertwined to provide a cohesive learning experience for online exchange partners. To understand this connection, one should recognise that inquiry itself is a process containing smaller, logically connected units (phases) that guide learners and draw attention to important features of scientific thinking. This set of connections represents an inquiry cycle (Pedaste et al. 2015).

Various academic studies of inquiry-based approaches to learning and teaching have attempted to propose different versions of an inquiry cycle. For example, in their meta-analysis of the strengths of over 30 inquiry-based learning frameworks, Pedaste et al. (2015) suggested five distinct general inquiry phases: orientation, conceptualisation, investigation, conclusion, and discussion. An inquiry cycle developed by White and Frederiksen (1998) also identified five inquiry phases, labelled question, predict, experiment, model, and apply.

Despite the numerous variations in learning cycles, the one used in this study is the 5E Instructional Model (Bybee et al. 2006; Bybee 2009) in which each phase is highlighted using five words: engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation. This approach is useful for inquiry-based telecollaboration design because it provides a format for online exchange that builds on what learners already know. Since the average host members already possess some knowledge of their lingua-culture, the 5E Instructional Model helps them revisit that knowledge from other angles and find new patterns and relationships. Moreover, the experience of undergoing all five phases enables online exchange participants to develop their understanding of a concept across time.

The 5E Instructional Model emphasises not only students’ hands-on knowledge acquisition and learning, but also the role of instructors in facilitating this process, which is why it is known as an instructional model. The role of teachers is reflected in a widely cited definition of telecollaboration as ‘institutionalised, electronically mediated intercultural communication under the guidance of a lingua-cultural expert (i.e. teacher) for the purposes of foreign language learning and the development of intercultural competence’ (Belz 2003).

Even in the context of conventional telecollaborative projects in which a teacher's active involvement in conducting online tasks is not necessary because learners typically interact entirely with their distant partners (O’Dowd 2013), there is considerable need for instructors’ indirect participation and regular guidance. Right from the early stages of the project, teachers are responsible for designing tasks, choosing tools, and establishing the rules of engagement and a timeframe for self-reflection and group feedback in order to enable productive collaboration and communication between two or more socio-linguistically and culturally distinct groups of learners (Lewis, Chanier, and Youngs 2011). Because inquiry-based telecollaboration adds an additional layer to the design of an online exchange project, that is ‘intra-cultural inquiry’ phase, teachers’ guidance becomes even more significant.

The inquiry cycle contains multiple units that can be rolled out across both ‘inquiry’ and ‘online exchange’ phases (as shown in Figure 3), thereby creating a holistic framework that connects intra-cultural learning with the process of developing intercultural communicative competence. Below, we describe the five phases of inquiry-based telecollaboration that have been modified from the 5E Instructional Model. To illustrate the main points of our approach, we shall also use the hypothetical example of a telecollaborative project conducted between two groups of college students based in Japan and the US on the socio-cultural topic of ‘Parenting culture in Japan and the US: differences and similarities’. We assume that both groups have upper-intermediate knowledge of their exchange partners’ language, that is, Japanese and English, respectively. During this hypothetical project, participants virtually interviewed their partners, with the aim of practicing linguistic skills and acquiring deeper knowledge about their culture.

Figure 3. The inquiry-based model of telecollaboration (micro level).

Where next?

Since its early emergence in the 1990s, telecollaboration has been gaining popularity among foreign language and culture learners mainly because of its broad use of communication technologies and the Internet to connect with lingua-cultures globally. With technological advancements, which began placing greater emphasis on user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability for end users, as reflected in the phenomenon known as Web 2.0, it was inevitable that telecollaboration would soon follow suit. In 2010, a group of renowned experts joined forces and published a volume titled ‘Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, Literacies and Intercultural Learning in the 21st Century’ (Guth and Helm 2010), reflecting the prevailing role of communication technologies and the Internet in the design and effective execution of telecollaborative projects.

On the contrary, the broader aim of inquiry-based telecollaboration is to deemphasise the role of technology and the Internet in intercultural education, intending instead to accentuate the importance of acquiring authentic lingua-cultural knowledge and, in Byram’s words, develop ‘critical cultural awareness’ (1997, 35). Technology is only a medium, albeit an important one, whose underlying goal is to help learners access such lingua-cultural knowledge in a fast, engaging, and cost-effective way.

In this article, we pointed out that the effective implementation of telecollaboration as a medium of intercultural learning is often affected by the insufficiency of virtual exchange members’ knowledge of their own culture (Ismailov 2021a). Therefore, the inquiry methods, especially those related to observation, problem identification, question formulation, data collection and analysis provide a framework for the construction of intra-cultural knowledge and elevate learners’ self-reflection and self-awareness skills. Some recent related studies also pointed to the possibility of broader application of such learning models in both face-to-face classroom and virtual teamwork environments (Ismailov and Laurier 2021; Ismailov 2021b). Such socially interactive activities could not only enhance students’ intercultural learning and communication, but most crucially improve their engagement and motivation to learn (Ismailov and Ono 2021).

Despite its relatively straightforward design, several questions still remain regarding the real-life implementation of the proposed model of telecollaboration. Therefore, future research on inquiry-based telecollaboration should address the issues that can be placed on four different levels, in accordance with the inventory of possible reasons for the breakdown of conventional telecollaborative exchanges (O’Dowd and Ritter 2006): the individual level (learners’ attitudes and motivation during ‘inquiry’ and ‘online exchange’ phases), the classroom level (how inquiries and exchanges were organised and implemented in both classes, and which telecollaborative tasks proved effective when incorporated within the inquiry model), the socio-institutional level (different levels of access to technology, challenges in designing inquiry and experiments, institutional attitudes toward online learning), and the interaction level (the quality and outcomes of intercultural communication that occurred between exchange partners). Answers to these questions may be found through continuous comprehensive studies that could potentially shed light on other crucial aspects of Internet-mediated intercultural exchanges.

Data availability

No data is associated with this study.