LEVERAGE News 1

LEVERAGE
LEarn from Video Extensive Real Atm Gigabit Experiment

LEVERAGE News No 1, September 1996

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Pedagogical issues
Christoph Zähner, Senior Language Learning Technology Adviser at the Cambridge University Language Centre, describes the LEVERAGE approach to network-based language learning.
Network-based language learning is increasingly seen as a way of responding to the demand for ever more varied and ever more flexible opportunities for acquiring and maintaining a second language. The G7 countries, for example, have recently started an initiative with the explicit aim of providing a 'global communication platform for network-based transcultural and language learning'. Network-based learning seems to have a number of attractive aspects: the ability of users to work from remote locations and often at a time of their own choosing, access to a vast number of resources, and contact with other, geographically dispersed, users and experts. At the same time the advent of high bandwidth networks is widening the range of communication channels from traditional asynchronous text-based communication (e-mail and file transfer) to synchronous exchanges using videoconferencing and instant access to high quality audio and video resources.
The possibilities of network-based language learning seem almost unlimited but what about the learning process itself? If one believes that learning takes place in a social setting, that learning is a collaborative effort, that it involves the learner in a dialogue with teachers and peers and that it is in the context of this dialogue that the learner acquires the new joint 'cognitive system' the question arises: how can this form of (language) learning take place in a networked environment and how can we ensure that the new infrastructure supports the social dimension of learning rather than damages it?
The approach chosen in LEVERAGE tries to address these issues by emphasising the interpersonal aspects of language learning. Small groups of four to six students work on a common task which requires the collaboration of all participants. Learners of one language are put together with an equal number of learners of their native language. For example, two English-speaking students will collaborate with two French-speaking students on a common task. The character of the task will engage the students in a multitude of roles. As native speakers of their own language they function as the 'experts' in a pedagogical dialogue while as learners of the other students' native language they play the role of the 'learners'. Together, they will have to acquire and agree on a body of knowledge and then present that knowledge to the outside world.
The students' collaboration will extend over a period of about four weeks and the work will be based on a large number of materials in both languages. The materials include video, audio and text documents brought together in a hypermedia environment. The collaboration of the students will be supported by videoconferencing, e-mail and the facility to share documents of all types.
It is expected that the peer collaboration will encourage students to adopt an intersubjective attitude and to help them construct a realm of common knowledge. The interaction with their peers will push students to articulate their thinking, to resolve disagreements and misunderstandings through justification and negotiation and to plan their work by sharing out responsibility and ensuring the work converges in a common goal. In this way, it is hoped, students will engage in activities where they have to adapt their own language and use their second language to achieve a common objective. They will have to learn to construct a background of shared understanding and to expand and build on that background. The need to collaborate with native speakers of another language will hopefully not only help them to improve their proficiency in the target language but also help them raise their awareness of language as the major form of cultural mediation.
An extensive program of evaluation will accompany the project's three trials and it is hoped that the results will provide some useful insights into the possibilities and limitations of network-based language learning.