Patterns of Interaction Between Moderators and Learners during Synchronous Oral Discussions Online

Abstract

This paper describes research with French university graduate student moderators in a Master’s program on using technology to teach French as a foreign language and advanced undergraduate students learning French at an American university who used Second Life software and Moodle to carry out oral tasks synchronously. For fall 2011, the researchers designed five tasks (étapes) that paralleled the undergraduates’ course curriculum. Transcripts of two of the six groups of moderators and learners show that the unintended different styles of moderator behaviors influenced learner interactions with each other and with the moderators. The authors show that students were less able to engage with each other independently when faced with more rigid questioning behaviors by the moderators.