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Analysis of individual conversational volatility in tandem telecollaboration for second language learning

Smeaton, Alan F. orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-1028-8389, Dey-Plissonneau, Aparajita orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-1429-6861, Lee, Hyowon orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-4395-7702, Liu, Mingming orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-8988-2104 and Scriney, Michael orcid logoORCID: 0000-0001-6813-2630 (2022) Analysis of individual conversational volatility in tandem telecollaboration for second language learning. In: 21st European Conference on e-Learning - ECEL, 27-28 Oct 2022, Brighton, UK. ISBN 9781713862482

Abstract
Second language (L2) learning can be enabled by tandem collaboration where students are grouped in video conference calls while learning the native language of other student(s) on the calls. This places students in an online environment where the more outgoing can actively contribute and engage in dialogue while those more shy and unsure of their second language language skills can sit back and coast through the calls. We have built and deployed the L2L system which records timings of conversational utterances from all participants in a call. We generate visualisations including participation rates and timelines for each student in each call and present these on a dashboard. Students can self-reflect and perhaps target improving their levels of engagement for subsequent calls. We have recently developed a measure called personal conversational volatility for how dynamic has been each student’s contribution to the dialogue in each call. This measures whether a student’s contribution was interactive with a mixture of interjections perhaps interrupting and agreeing with others combined with longer contributions, or whether it consisted of regular duration contributions with not much mixing. We present an analysis of conversational volatility measures of a sample of 19 individual English-speaking students from our University at lower intermediate-intermediate level (B1/B2) in their target language which was French, in each of 86 tandem telecollaboration calls over one teaching semester. Our analysis shows that students varied considerably in how their individual levels of engagement changed as their telecollaboration meetings progressed. Some students got more involved in the dialogue from one meeting to the next while others did not change their interaction levels at all. The reasons for this are not clear from the data we have and point to a need for further investigation into the nature of online tandem telecollaboration meetings. In particular there is a need to look into the nature of the interactions and see if the choices of discussion topics were too difficult for some lower intermediate students and that may have influenced their engagement in some way.
Metadata
Item Type:Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Event Type:Conference
Refereed:Yes
Subjects:Computer Science > Artificial intelligence
Computer Science > Computational linguistics
Humanities > French language
Social Sciences > Education
Social Sciences > Educational technology
Social Sciences > Teaching
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Computing
DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Engineering and Computing > School of Electronic Engineering
DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies
Research Initiatives and Centres > INSIGHT Centre for Data Analytics
Published in: Proceedings of 21st European Conference on e-Learning ECEL. 21(1). Academic Conferences Ltd.. ISBN 9781713862482
Publisher:Academic Conferences Ltd.
Official URL:https://doi.org/10.34190/ecel.21.1.590
Copyright Information:© 2022 The Authors
Funders:Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under Grant Number SFI/12/RC/2289_P2 (Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics), co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
ID Code:27331
Deposited On:25 Oct 2022 13:36 by Alan Smeaton . Last Modified 19 Apr 2023 11:38
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