The use of the webcam for teaching a foreign language in a desktop videoconferencing environment

Abstract

International audienceThis paper explores how language teachers learn to teach with a synchronous multimodal setup (Skype), and it focuses on their use of the webcam during the pedagogical interaction. First, we analyze the ways that French graduate students learning to teach online use the multimodal resources available in a desktop videoconferencing (DVC) environment to monitor pedagogical interactions with intermediate level learners of French in a North-American university. Then, we examine communicational and pedagogical aspects of this process which involves orchestrating different modalities and deploying various regulations for "semio-pedagogical" purposes. We define semio-pedagogical skills as the capacity to mediate a pedagogical interaction by combining or dissociating modalities (written, oral, and/or video) that are adapted to objectives and to the cognitive requisites of the task. We posit that these skills have to become part of the professional repertoire of future teachers, as they will increasingly be required to exploit the multimodal potentialities of online communication in their teaching. The study draws on screen capture recordings of teacher trainee-student interactions and is completed by semi-directive interviews with teacher trainees (n = 5). It aims (1) to identify the importance of webcamming in the share of the pedagogical range available to teachers and (2) analyze the non verbal dimension of pedagogical communication via DVC. The outcome of this study is the identification of five degrees of utilization of the webcam medium: there a certain gradation in the way webcamming is used (with a more or less significant use of image) when compared to other modalities. The different uses that are identified vary according to the perceived usefulness of webcamming to monitor teaching and to the teacher trainees' capacity to manage different workspaces

The Impact of the Webcam on an Online L2 Interaction

“…On the one measure that approached statistical significance with a medium effect size, it was the students in the audioconferencing condition whose understanding of the native English-speaking teacher was better than that of the students in the videoconferencing condition, a result that runs counter to our hypothesis. Indeed, earlier research findings from the field of language teaching and learning had argued that being able to see the interlocutor's image should facilitate understanding, thanks to social cues such as laughing or nodding, and should make participants feel physically and psychologically closer to one another (e.g., Chamberlin Quinlisk, 2008;Develotte et al, 2010;Yamada & Akahori, 2009). Yet this did not seem to happen in the present study.…”

“…Thus the originality of the present research is its focus on an online teacher student interaction that aims to further our understanding of the value of two different synchronous conferencing tools for second language teaching (Dejean-Thircuir, Guichon, & Nicolaev, 2010;Develotte, Guichon, & Vincent, 2010).…”

“…Affective behaviours are, for these authors, one element to take into account to assess the degree of social presence in distant learning environments. Develotte et al (2010) have studied the use of the webcam for teaching a foreign language using screen capture recordings of teacher-student interactions and semi-directive interviews. They concluded that "webcamming creates presence at a distance, installs an obvious connection between the participants and, furthermore, develops the quality of the pedagogical relationship" (2010, p. 309).…”

L'analyse des corpus multimodaux en ligne : état des lieux et perspectives

“…Ainsi en 2007-2008, nous avions noté (Develotte, Guichon, Vincent, 2010) qu'une seule des tutrices portait, de temps en temps, son regard sur la webcam de façon à donner l'illusion à ses apprenants qu'elle les regardait 18 . En 2011-2012, nous constatons que la plupart des tuteurs ont pris conscience de l'importance de cet effet de présence et que l'affordance de la webcam est meilleure dans ce contexte précis de communication pédagogique à distance.…”

ReCall Special Issue: Multimodal Environments in CALL

“…Most scholars analyse this concept from a social semiotic perspective (Kress & Jewitt, 2003;Kress, 2010), based on van Leeuwen's socio-semiotic theory (2004), or through a multimodal interactional analysis approach (Norris, 2004), both regarding language use in general (Bednarek & Martin, 2011;Jing, 2011; Kojima, Brown, Rothermel, Carlson & Matzuzaki et al, 2012) and CALL in particular (Guichon & McLornan, 2008; Levy & Stockwell, 2013). According to Levy, digitally mediated communication is creatively multimodal, including "multi-purpose, multifunctional technologies that involve layers of complexity and application in L2 learning that are unique among the technologies of the modern world" (Levy, 2009: 779).Multimodality in desktop videoconferencing has been analysed with a particular focus on gaze and eye contact (Satar, 2013), webcam framing (Codreanu & Combe Celik, 2013), webcam use and gestures (Develotte, Guichon & Vincent, 2010) and eye movement (Stickler & Shi, 2015). Regarding multimodality in virtual worlds, scholars have researched the interaction between avatars and objects (Panichi, 2015) as well as the role of non-verbal communication (Wigham, 2012;Wigham & Chanier, 2013), the virtual scenario and avatar actions affecting exchanges (Jauregi, Canto, de Graaff, Koenraad & Moonen, 2011) and social presence (Satar, 2015).…”