Paper short abstract:

The presentation reports an implementation of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) whereby Japanese students interested in Japanese education at a Japanese university learned from Italian students about the benefits and potential problems of "foreigner talk" and "Yasashii Nihongo".

Paper long abstract:

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) has been endorsed in Japan in order to internationalise Japanese universities and prepare students for a globalised world. It is perhaps most commonly used for language learning via language exchange. However, this language exchange may inadvertently promote native-speakerism (Holliday, 2018), the belief that it is the native speakers of a given language who know best and are thus entitled to teach the language. In reality, non-native Japanese speakers often know better about learning Japanese, and those who are interested in Japanese language education can learn a great deal from them. For this reason, I designed COIL activities whereby students at a Japanese university who were enrolled on a Japanese language education module collaborated with postgraduate students majoring in Japanese at Ca' Foscari University of Venice via SNS (e.g. Line, Whatsapp) to discuss the benefits and potential problems of "foreigner talk" and "Yasashii Nihongo (plain Japanese)" in Japanese. Both Japanese and Italian students based their discussion on Shin Eun-Jin's (2007) and Kimura Goro Cristoph's (2019) papers on "foreigner talk" and "Yasashii Nihongo". The Japanese students' records of their COIL activities and learning showed that they found that the second language (L2) learners of Japanese were knowledgeable and experienced discussion partners and that they learned a great deal from the learners' perspectives. In particular, the activities focused on L2 learners' affective dimensions such as anxiety and joy associated with using L2. For this purpose, Japanese students wrote about using English as L2 in English and shared their writing with the Italian students (proficient in English) to receive feedback. The Italian students shared their experience of feeling disappointed or hurt when spoken to in excessively slowed-down or simplified Japanese despite their ability to use Japanese. The Japanese students learned that it was important not to use simplified language merely based on the interlocutors' appearance (suggesting their "foreigner status") and that it was crucial to accommodate the language by judging their needs on a case-by-case basis.

Paper short abstract:

This study examines the importance of the role of the facilitator in collaborative online international learning (COIL) and analyses the role of the COIL facilitator. Our facilitation method is shown to be effective and to lead to positive outcomes.

Paper long abstract:

This study examines the importance of the role of the facilitator in collaborative online international learning (COIL). In our research on COIL-assisted cross-cultural communication in 2019, positive outcomes were observed for both Portuguese learners and Japanese collaborators. In addition, in our study, COIL sessions were observed over a long period of time, in contrast to previous studies. These positive outcomes arose due to the effectiveness of the facilitation method used in the course of the study.

This study analyses the role of the COIL facilitator by considering the problems of previous research in this area and by clarifying the role of the facilitator. In this paper, we examine five different facilitation paradigms: 1. Teachers and teachers (co-facilitation); 2. Teachers and Japanese collaborators; 3. Teachers and learners; 4. Japanese collaborators and learners; and 5. Learners and learners. Previous studies have examined techniques for enhancing strong relationships and improving productivity among groups of learners by various facilitation methods, but research which examines the impact of strong group relationships on group productivity has not previously been done. Another interesting aspect of our research was that the occupations of the learners and of the Japanese collaborators were diverse, which led to some interesting findings.

In this study, the five facilitation paradigms are shown to be effective for collaborative learning and to lead to positive outcomes in improving the Japanese language skills of learners. In addition, both teachers and collaborators are found to gain knowledge and awareness of both cultural and cross-cultural topics. Furthermore 'Social presence',that is, "[being] intimately connected to the learning context" (Garrison, D.R. and Anderson, T.(2003)) is important for both learners and collaborators in cross-cultural communication. We find that 'Social presence' leads to enhanced awareness of participants of members of society and it improves the cultivation of plurilingual and pluricultural competences.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation will report on the results of an action research study into peer-learning between international and local students.　This research focuses on examining how distant peer-learning can be enhanced by using ICT tools and translanguaging methodology to foster information literacy.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will report on the results of an action research study into distant collaborative learning between international and local students on two separate campuses at Japanese universities since 2004.

This research focuses on examining how distant collaborative learning can be enhanced by using ICT tools and translanguaging methodology to foster information literacy.

There are two approaches to information literacy teaching in language education. One concerns information technology　education (such as computer literacy) and the other deals with media literacy (for critically decoding information). These abilities are rarely integrated and treated as a unified form of information literacy.

In the present study, students' peer-learning helped to cultivate information literacy comprehensively from information acquisition to transmission. Students conducted a project that involved collaborative learning between international students and local Japanese students. They collected data using various sources, shared information that they obtained and checked the reliability of the information as they sifted through it. In addition, it was necessary to convey information clearly. Students could thus develop their general information literacy in terms of both acquisition and transmission of information.

Course surveys were conducted several times to collect students' assessment of what they learned from the course to examine how the present application of teaching methodologies and ICT tools fostered students' information literacy.

As the results will show, some differences could be observed in the students' evaluation of this collaborative learning. For instance, some students evaluated the class highly while others did not. The students' ability to communicate by distance using ICT tools mostly didn't work well. The students who evaluated the class highly understood that they needed to use different strategies for distance communication than for face-to-face communication. They understood how to use ICT tools to facilitate communication well. On the other hand, the students who evaluated this class poorly regarded their problems as technical issues or related it to their language ability.

The presentation will close by offering advice to teachers on how to enhance students' information literacy with the goal of helping students understand that they need to use different strategies for distance communication than for face-to-face communication.