Currently, most universities integrate digital media in their courses in order to support, facilitate and organise teaching and learning. Digital media are expected to motivate

new generations of learners and to provide students with easy and flexible access to learning in a global environment.

However, the challenge for teachers is not only to understand the potential of these new technologies but to manage and mediate in new social environments where learning is often dependent on ‘disembodied’ linguistic interaction and negotiation. In this sense the teacher must establish new kinds of social presence relying on his/her ability to negotiate the interactional roles in the digital classroom.

The project involves an intercultural group of language teachers and is both developmental and research based, focusing on participants’ experience with and assessment of the live online environment as a context for language learning and teaching. The research is based on interviews with teachers (trainees) as well as on online observations and has included several relevant languages, for instance English, German and Turkish.

Bente Meyer, Interactional roles in digital fora – teaching teachers to teach online. Paper given on April 2, 2012 at CALPIU’12 -- Higher Education across borders: Transcultural interaction and linguistic diversity, Roskilde

Abstract

Publications and Presentations

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