Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice (SpringerBriefs in Education) 9811680973, 9789811680977

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION

Tushar Chaudhuri Renia Lopez-Ozieblo Valérie Martinez

Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice

SpringerBriefs in Education

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Tushar Chaudhuri · Renia Lopez-Ozieblo · Valérie Martinez

Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice

Tushar Chaudhuri Leibniz University Hannover Hannover, Germany

Renia Lopez-Ozieblo Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Valérie Martinez The University of Hong Kong Hong Kong, Hong Kong

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISBN 978-981-16-8097-7 ISBN 978-981-16-8098-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Preface

The project Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness or ILLSA for short was a publicly funded foreign language enhancement project in Hong Kong which ran from the autumn of 2017 to early 2021. In this rough span of about 4 years, it set out to achieve a number of objectives that at the time seemed somewhat optimistic. We were setting up a new collaboration between different universities in Hong Kong to cover different languages which was to be run completely online. The ILLSA members drawn from three large universities in Hong Kong had not worked with each other before, in some cases did not even know each other, and, in addition, we were looking to set up further collaborations with European institutions. Moreover, nothing like this had been attempted before, a truly global language project that focused not so much on the language but on the needs of language users to communicate with it with other non-native speakers. But as the project went through its organic phases of preparation, planning, conception and iterative implementation, it was greeted with unprecedented enthusiasm and received great support. As academics and researchers, we realized that the project would truly be sustainable if it were to be shared with the larger academic community. Systematic observations were built in and these evolved into this volume, which takes a transdisciplinary look at the idea of online telecollaborative learning as a pedagogy with ILLSA being its case study. Our motivation is to encourage more practitioners to carry on the initiative we started with ILLSA and that is to integrate Global Citizenship Education into online telecollaborative language learning. Supporting us on this incredible journey were our valuable team members, whom we would like to acknowledge here by name and express our heartfelt gratitude that they kept the project on-course and ongoing through all the challenges that it faced, not the least of all, the COVID-19 pandemic, which for us in Hong Kong started months before the rest of the world: Ms. Ivelina Ivanova, Senior Project Assistant, ILLSA, and Project Assistant for German Mr. Billy Chan, Mr. Cyril Lam, Mr. Vincente Gonzáles Vallejo, Project Assistants for Spanish Mr. Nathan He and Mr. Ludovic Kei, Project Assistants for French. v

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And last but not least, our former colleague Ms. Angela Ng in Hong Kong for her contributions to the Italian part of the project. A special thanks also to our Guest Author, Veronica Bordini, whose chapter shares students’ point of view first hand. The team could only be put together because of the generous funding we received from the University Grants Committee in Hong Kong under its Funding Scheme for Teaching and Learning-Related Proposals, and we are very grateful. We would also like to expressly thank the teaching and learning units of the Hong Kong Baptist University, The Polytechnic University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong for the excellent support we received in all interinstitutional coordination and administrative matters and once more for their encouragement. Finally, of course, thanks to all our international partners and collaborators, teachers and students for having embraced an idea and turning it into a reality. All that went wrong was our own sole responsibility. Hong Kong March 2021

Tushar Chaudhuri Renia Lopez-Ozieblo Valérie Martinez

Introduction

In 2016, foreign language pedagogues from three universities in Hong Kong proposed an innovative foreign languages telecollaborative project to put in touch language students in Hong Kong with their European counterparts. The main aim of the telecollaborative project on Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness (ILLSA) was to enhance the students’ language learning experience by encouraging them to interact in the target language with international students learning the same language under different conditions. This was to be achieved through a telecollaborative context to instil confidence in Hong Kong students to think and act globally. In addition, the project sought to raise the social and environmental awareness of tertiary students by asking them to reflect upon issues concerning their communities. The project was funded by the prestigious Hong Kong University Grants Teaching and Learning Scheme in 2017, and the first cycle was launched in spring 2018. Since then until the project completion, in December 2020, five cycles of the ILLSA project ran with 302 students of French, German, Italian and Spanish. These four languages are popular elective choices for undergraduate students of Hong Kong tertiary institutions, many of whom will choose to go on exchange to a European country. However, few Hong Kong students have the opportunity to interact with other target language speakers, which limits not only their language skills but also their cultural outlook towards the target community. This is a considerable barrier when trying to integrate in the exchange country. Thus, ILLSA sought to develop students’ higher-order skills in the foreign language, required to be able to pursue tertiary studies in European universities. These skills include critical analysis, negotiating and engaging in synchronous and asynchronous dialogue as well as a better understanding of the target culture. Students would then be ready to go beyond survival-level skills and create independent discourse in the target language. This discourse was to be developed with other learners of the language, based in different countries in Europe. By working together in groups of two Hong Kong students and two European students, ILLSA gave participants the opportunity to discuss not only the target culture but also how that culture was viewed by other learners. For Hong Kong students, this added a new dimension to their learning as they were able to view the target language and culture through the eyes of learners vii

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physically much closer to it. To provide a common thread to the discussions, the topics of the collaboration dealt with relevant social issues common to Asian and European societies, such as healthy and sustainable lifestyles, migration and environment, all presented under the common theme of ‘healthy cities’. These topics not only raised awareness among young students about these issues but also offered them the opportunity to use the target language in an authentic setting. To guide the discussions, ILLSA developed an online platform that presented the project in three phases through which students first introduced themselves and their context, researched socio-environmental issues affecting their communities and then, together, developed and implemented a group project to improve communities in either Hong Kong or the European city the European students were based in. The ILLSA platform allowed students to connect, collaborate and construct knowledge using the target language that they were learning at their respective institutions. The three phases were documented in a group portfolio developed as a shared document in Google drive. Socio-environmental awareness was raised through information about the target culture presented as articles and videos taken from authentic sources. The underlying pedagogical principles driving the project were Content & Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and intercultural communicative competence (ICC). The term CLIL first appeared in 1994, following the European Commission language policy that encouraged Europeans to learn two other European Union languages aside from their mother tongue (Brown & Bradford, 2017). Under the CLIL umbrella, learning institutions began to teach content subjects in a target language. This approach is believed to motivate learning of the target language by encouraging its use in a real context. Intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 1997) focuses on learning about one’s own culture(s) and developing the ability to reflect on the origin of one’s own beliefs and behaviours (Guth & Helm, 2010: 18). ILLSA encourages this sort of reflection through online telecollaboration, allowing students to exchange and discuss information through shared tools like Google and social media. This combined approach allowed us to present the target language and culture as a resource for students to engage and develop the ‘context in which the vital necessity to continue the dialogue ensures a mutual base to explore the sometimes irreducible differences between people’s values and attitudes.’ (Kramsch, 1995: 7). Therefore, in the design of the ILLSA project, we sought to incorporate: • A multimodal forum for participants to ‘exchange, compare and contrast information’, to create a ‘third space’ (Guth & Helm, 2010: 20) • The complexity of new technologies and tools that are geared towards fast and effective results • A ‘vital necessity to continue the dialogue’ that is to set tasks and goals with tangible and achievable outcomes; tangible through alignment to specific curricular learning outcomes and achievable chiefly through dialogue and collaboration and

Introduction

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• The chance to explore intracultural issues (as opposed to only intercultural rich points) embedded within the course curriculum (adapted from Chaudhuri, 2011:16). Initially, the project design sought to incorporate all these characteristics without focusing on grammar or vocabulary as the point of departure for language learning and collaborative task-solving but topics of mutual interest as discussion in the foreign language. However, as the proficiency of most of the learners was below a B1 (according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), it was felt that additional formalized language content would be beneficial. Additional language content was developed and offered through a language course on the FutureLearn online learning platform. This course was dedicated entirely to the enhancement of language skills, namely comprehension, vocabulary and grammar related to the theme of the project (healthy cities). The course was organized in an 8-week model, to be completed in parallel to the main tasks of the project and suited for individual learning. Participants practised their project language by completing a set of tests and tasks related to short videos and abstracts of articles within the weekly topic. The project was a dynamic one, each new cycle striving to address issues raised in previous ones. The project was impacted not only by the social unrests in Hong Kong in 2019 but also by the global COVID-19 pandemic. These events altered the dynamics of group work and also attitudes towards telecollaboration. As such, the last cycle, in the fall of 2020, was developed to address COVID-19-related issues, still under the overall theme ‘healthy cities’.

This Volume This volume provides an overall understanding of the ILLSA project, how it was developed, students’ reactions and our learnings. Chapter 1 explains how ILLSA was designed, elaborating on the idea of intercultural communicative competence and how ILLSA developed telecollaborative tools to develop this competence. This chapter also details the tasks that students were asked to follow; the three stages, connect, collaborate, create, mapping onto students’ projects three phases; the profile of the participants; their views on the project; issues encountered and the changes made to resolve those issues. ILLSA also provided a number of opportunities to further investigate the validity of telecollaborative learning. Data was collected at all stages of the project, from the portfolios themselves to the language content exercises followed in FutureLearn. In addition, participants filled in questionnaires and participated in focus groups and exit interviews in which they discussed their views on the project. This data was used to answer three main research questions: (1) What digital tools were used to fulfil the tasks set out by the project and their role in Global Citizenship Education;

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(2) How peer and teacher feedback was used and perceived; (3) How telecollaboration enhanced social awareness and intercultural competence throughout the project. Chapter 2 provides a brief introduction to these three research questions, which are then fully developed in each of the following Chaps. 3–5. Finally, Chap. 6 is the first-hand account of an Italian student learning Spanish. This chapter was written as a subject report and illustrates the interactions of this student, the issues she encountered, how they were resolved and her group’s final results. The account was initially written in Italian and has been translated into English, and comments from group and cycle members have been left in the original language, Spanish. This volume closes with a summary of the lessons learnt and a discussion of how telecollaborative projects could flow into more mainstream courses especially after the pandemic. Running the project as five independent cycles allowed us to improve each based on the learnings from its predecessors. This involved refining the content, engaging participants, providing more accessible admin related feedback (through student helpers), organizing spaces for them to meet virtually as well as evaluating how ILLSA could be incorporated into existing language programmes. All three Hong Kong universities involved in the project are currently applying their learnings with ILLSA to continue to offer collaborative experiences to their students and to develop new projects. We hope to continue the partnerships created during ILLSA and look forward to new ones.

References Brown, H., Bradford, A. (2017). EMI, CLIL, & CBI: differing approaches and goals. In P. Clements, A. Krause, & H. Brown (Eds.), Transformation in language education. JALT. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Multilingual Matters. Chaudhuri, T. (2011). Designing Web 2.0-telecollaborations for university students. The eExchange Giessen-Hong Kong. German as a foreign language, 2, 126–141. Online: http://www.gfljournal. de/index.php. Guth, S., & Helm, F. (2010). Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, literacies and intercultural learning in the 21st century (Vol. 1). Peter Lang. Kramsch, C. (1995). The cultural component of language teaching. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 8(2), 83–92.

Contents

1 Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness. The ILLSA Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Background and Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Design: Connect Collaborate Create . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phases and Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Practice on FutureLearn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Participants’ Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Digital Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Satisfaction with the Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . COVID-19 (Cycle 5) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cooperation Among Universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contribution of the Project to Interinstitutional Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 10 11 11 13 14

2 Beyond the Intercultural: Research Directions Within ILLSA . . . . . . Why Research ILLSA? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research on Telecollaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Research Directions in ILLSA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15 15 16 17 20 21 22 23

3 Developing Higher Education Competencies Through Telecollaborative Language Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Competencies in Higher Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Global Citizenship and Language Learning in ILLSA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Digital Competence in ILLSA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social and Civic Competencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Taking Learning into the Real World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Get Involved in Their Local, National and Global Communities . . . . . . . .

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Develop an Argument and Voice Their Opinions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39 40 41

4 Enhanced Language Use Through from Peer and Teacher Feedback, Self-directed Learning and Interaction in the Target Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peer Feedback in Computer-Mediated Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leader (Teacher) Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Feedback Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary of Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Postscript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43 43 45 46 47 47 47 54 56 57 59

5 Enhanced Social Awareness and Interculturality as Seen in the Discourses Taking Place Within the Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Enhanced Social Awareness: A Change of Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Awareness, Interculturality and Discourse Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63 63 64 66 69 70

6 A Student’s Account of Her ILLSA Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ILLSA Project [As This Section Described the Project, It Has Not Been Translated] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction to My Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Our Research on Life Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Team Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion [Translated from Spanish] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71 71 72 72 77 80 83 84

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Appendix: A Student’s Account of Her ILLSA Experience (Original Document by Veronica Bordini) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Appendice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Uncited References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Chapter 1

Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness. The ILLSA Project

Background and Funding ILLSA is an online telecollaborative project to enhance foreign language learning which enables learners of European languages at universities in Hong Kong to connect with their peers all over the world to use these languages as lingua franca to discuss issues of mutual interest and global relevance. ILLSA was publicly funded, having been chosen by the University Grants Committee (UGC) in Hong Kong as the only project among 38 funded projects to be funded for foreign language enhancement under its UGC Funding Scheme for Teaching and Learning-Related Proposals (2016–19 Triennium). The funding was received in 2017, and the project rolled out its first cycle in 2018. Since its 2018 launch with 63 students, ILLSA has held four cycles, with nearly 300 participants representing 40 different nationalities. ILLSA has involved 17 universities worldwide (in France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, the UK) and continues to build new relationships with students and academics across the globe. Following its success, the project funding for ILLSA was extended and one more project cycle was held in the autumn of 2020, this time of course under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, which also became the guiding theme of the fifth and last cycle. The project was widely reported in local newspapers as a unique good practice for foreign language learning. Indeed, ILLSA’s design was unique in many ways, starting from the fact that it was not an online platform for language learning but a platform for language learners to meet and use their target languages in an authentic but taskbased environment. It was also unique because it did not use the tandem pedagogy which is the norm in language learning telecollaborations and which involves native speakers and language learners alternating as teachers and learners. On the contrary, ILLSA connected learners from Hong Kong and learners from the EU countries and provided them with a third space outside of their respective classrooms to use the languages that they were learning and share those experiences with each other.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4_1

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1 Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness …

The project objectives included, among others, encouraging students to collaborate with each other on community actions and evaluate their own communities in the target languages, broadening participants’ global vision by exposing them to sustainability practices in Hong Kong and Europe, along with enhancing their communicative skills in the respective languages. ILLSA’s team included staff members from the three organizing universities, as well as student assistants on an ad hoc basis, who connected students in Hong Kong and Europe, offered support and guidance through the project cycle and helped to solve challenges. Local coordinators at each participating university included language teachers or academic staff members, with various degrees of involvement: from contact person, to supervisor, to teachers seeking to implement ILLSA in their curriculum. Communication between the ILLSA team, the participants and their teachers/coordinators took place primarily via email, in-person and via WhatsApp, the latter being also the most commonly used tool for private day-to-day interaction among group members.

Design: Connect Collaborate Create ILLSA was designed to support the principle of telecollaborative learning using Web 2.0 tools. Guth and Helm (2010: 20–22) argue that, ‘in particular Web 2.0 is not merely a tool for mediation but a significant social phenomenon which has generated a multiplicity of new contexts in which people interact (…)’. They argue further that, the open, collaborative and relational mindset of Web 2.0 and the multimodal, social, Internetbased 2.0 environments and tools place the emphasis on collaboration and participation in Telecollaboration 2.0. As well as increasing the different modes in which learners can communicate, exchange, compare and contrast information, 2.0 tools facilitate the collaborative construction of knowledge in the form of what can be seen as new cultural practices or artifacts such as blogs, wikis and virtual worlds, to name just a few.

ILLSA’s pedagogical design was deceptively simple and was based on a basic 3C design, where the three Cs stand for connect, collaborate and create (Chaudhuri, 2019). ILLSA connected learners of French, German, Italian and Spanish who were at the A2–B2 Level of competency as laid down by the Common European Framework of Languages and who were learning these languages at tertiary education institution primarily in the EU and in Hong Kong. These learners were then expected to collaborate on the topic of ‘healthy cities’ and create a portfolio of tasks and actions which enhanced their knowledge of healthy cities and encouraged them to be proactive in initiating social awareness actions in their respective cities and communities. The latter was presented in the portfolio as the group community project, which was designed and later evaluated collaboratively, but executed in their respective cities of learning. All this happened in the foreign language that they were learning thus justifying the name of the project as Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness or, for short, ILLSA.

Design: Connect Collaborate Create

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Before each cycle of ILLSA began, students who registered to participate in ILLSA for that cycle were divided into groups of four, two each from Hong Kong and a university in Europe. For ease of identification, each group received a number. Each cycle corresponded roughly to the fall and summer semesters in the participating regions. Students could register either with their respective teachers or directly with the ILLSA team in Hong Kong. For the participants of each cycle, ILLSA was divided into three distinct phases. All phases were required to be completed.

Phases and Tasks Phase I is the connect phase, where group members introduced themselves and their cities through short texts, photographs and infographics. They also collaborated on a mind map which collected their ideal of a healthy city and a reflective text which evaluated their own cities against their ideals and rated them as healthy cities or not. In this, they were supported by the ILLSA website (https://illsahk.wixsite.com/illsap roject) which, among others, functioned as a repository for informative texts and AV materials on healthy cities as well as suggestions and tutorials for digital tools that could be used to complete the tasks in each of the phases. Phase II is the first collaborative phase where group members conducted in-depth research on their chosen aspects of healthy cities. The project predetermined four sub-topics of healthy cities, namely A. B. C. D.

Transport Quality of life Fitness and nutrition Diversity

Each of these sub-topics had a set of tasks which needed to be completed in order to complete the phase. The groups were free to choose any one of these four subtopics and then complete the tasks set. The tasks for all four sub-topics were divided into two types. The first was a research-based task where an answer is needed to be given to a research problem set by the ILLSA team. The second task was a questionnaire which needed to be distributed to members of the community, such as fellow students, teachers, flat mates or just citizens on the street. The execution of both tasks, research and questionnaire, was required to be planned collaboratively by the intercontinental group but was executed separately by the smaller groups in the same city (see Fig. 1.1 for an example of the results produced). Results were then compiled into the ILLSA portfolio of the group. Phase III is the creative stage, where the groups had to plan a group community project. The task was to collaborate within the intercontinental group and come up with an idea to spread awareness about healthy living in cities through action in the community. The project idea should ideally have been based on one of the sub-topics chosen in Phase II and should have been guided by the research done in that phase.

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Fig. 1.1 Research task in Phase II: public transport in Giessen and Taipei (Cycle 3, Group 1, German)

The project was then executed in the individual student’s cities and its effectiveness evaluated in the portfolio. The last two phases asked students to go beyond their online research to incorporate in-person city exploration, conduct interviews and take physical actions (e.g. organize an initiative, a small campaign, etc.) with the help of and for the benefit of their community. At the end of the project, students could use their portfolios as a testament to their creative and collaborative work in ILLSA. The three phases combined allowed the ILLSA participants to explore a ‘third space’ for dialogue and negotiation outside of their classrooms (Fig. 1.2). They set specific goals which could be achieved while working collaboratively but did not expect one side to be ‘better’ than the other linguistically. This made it more of a dialogue between equals rather than a tutor–tutee scenario. The dialogue was also free from cultural relativism, concentrating more on finding common ground to deal with glocal challenges.

Language Practice on FutureLearn A common concern while designing ILLSA was that the language learning might be more incidental than form focused. The lack of focus on form in the tasks designed for ILLSA might have led to language learners feeling unsatisfied with how well they

Language Practice on FutureLearn

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Dialog between Equals

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Transport Well-Being Food & Nutrition Diversity

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Fig. 1.2 Creating a third space for dialogue among equals in ILLSA

were progressing in their language enhancement. On the other hand, the authors were aware of the pitfalls of focus on form taking over the collaborative problem-solving design of ILLSA and shifting the focus to grammar and vocabulary. It was therefore agreed to add one more stand-alone component to ILLSA, which was dedicated to language-based tasks and was available to all registered participants of ILLSA. This component took the shape of a FutureLearn course, the licenses to which were bought through an independent Teaching Development Grant of the HKBU. ILLSA’s FutureLearn course was a MOOC which complemented the portfolio activities by utilizing vocabulary and specially created exercises which focused on ‘healthy cities’ and its sub-topics at an appropriate language level. Each of the eight course weeks focused on a different aspect: self-introduction; vocabulary practice; reading, listening and writing comprehension; grammar practice, and a final test. Exercises—short tests and quizzes within the project topics—were based on current news articles and videos. Participation on FutureLearn was not compulsory but was strongly recommended, as it offered individual and more in-depth language practice (see an example of various forum postings in Fig. 1.3). FutureLearn enabled each individual participant to focus on form at their own pace. Being a MOOC with social networking features, it also enabled the participants to comment on each other’s work and discuss across groups and teams. Statistical data collected through the learning analytics feature of FutureLearn suggested that all through ILLSA, FutureLearn enjoyed a high rate of participation as well as completion and was one of the top-subscribed courses compared to other FL courses offered by the HKBU. FutureLearn was the best part of ILLSA. The online exercises were perfectly targeted to introduce vocabulary relevant to the topic. I liked the way FutureLearn introduced, taught, and then had students apply the vocabulary in the exercises. (Post-project survey participant)

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Fig. 1.3 What is a ‘healthy city’? A discussion on FutureLearn (Cycle 2, French)

Exercises on ILLSA therefore combined collaborative research, individual and collaborative language practice (portfolio) and online teaching and learning over the course of 8 weeks (FutureLearn) during each semester.

Participants’ Profile The project was based in the Hong Kong SAR of China. To this point, the project has had participants from 39 different countries and territories across five continents, namely Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Czechia, Egypt, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong SAR, France, India, Ivory Coast, Japan, Lithuania, Madagascar, Mexico, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, Poland, Peru, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela, UK, and USA. The total number of student participants for the five cycles was 302. Of them, 165 come from

Participants’ Profile

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Universities in Asia (Hong Kong SAR and Taiwan) and 137 from Universities in Europe. Not all of the students enrolled in the participating language courses came from language-related disciplines such as linguistics or translation, but also included students from disciplines such as business and management, social sciences including European studies, cultural studies, political science, as well as students from environmental sciences. A particularly interesting set of students in Europe came from preuniversity courses in Germany, who were waiting to be enrolled into undergraduate studies in various universities. Their participation in ILLSA with our partners was to fulfil their chosen universities’ language prerequisites for programmes taught predominantly in German. This group was interesting due to its diversity of backgrounds as it included students from families seeking refuge and a new beginning in Europe, sometimes already having had a university degree from their home countries, but also due to the diverse objectives they had for learning the language and for participating in ILLSA.

Digital Tools On the question of which digital tools to use to facilitate the telecollaborative exchange on ILLSA, the consensus was again on simplicity and accessibility. We had to keep in mind that ILLSA’s participants would be drawn from very different educational and social contexts. Access to strong, regular or cheap online infrastructure or even hardware could not simply be assumed even if the learners were predominantly enrolled in Hong Kong and EU universities. Similarly, with the huge diversity of backgrounds of ILLSA participants, knowledge of digital tools and skills were also not a prerequisite and could not be relied on. Neither could we have expected our partner teachers, i.e. the teachers who were teaching the physical language classes, to be always on hand to guide and instruct. The ILLSA project therefore worked with three essential tools which could be freely combined with each other to suit specific learning environments. The first was the website built by us on Wix and available in all four languages of the project. It introduced the project and its activities or tasks, gave tips on how to work effectively in teams and provided extra learning and research materials to help learners solve the tasks and teachers to integrate the materials into their classroom teaching. The project structure and relevant information on the main and sub-topics are easily accessible on this multilingual website, https://illsahk.wixsite.com/illsaproject. The website leads to the Google suite of apps (Drive, Presentations, Sites and Forms among others) which were used to perform the various research-based and telecollaborative tasks of the project. This supported the team-based collaborative nature of the project, as the Google suite of apps is free and collaborative in nature and, for most end users, was familiar and intuitive to use. The research aspect of ILLSA depended heavily on Google which was presented in group portfolios, accessible by each group and teachers/coordinators on Google Drive, and updated regularly by participants as

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ILLSA: The Platform

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Fig. 1.4 Construction of the ILLSA platform with SAMR (Puentedura, 2006)

they progressed. The third tool was the MOOC course developed on the FutureLearn platform which was dedicated entirely to the enhancement of language skills, namely comprehension, vocabulary and grammar related to the theme of the project (healthy cities) and is suited for individual learning. Each of these tools could be adapted to enhance classroom face-to-face teaching, alternative assessment of language learning through portfolios or encourage self-directed learning and the training of twenty-firstcentury skills. ILLSA further endorsed sustainability and healthy living in each of the languages by sharing relevant news articles and infographics on its Facebook page: https:// www.facebook.com/theillsaproject/. The ILLSA platform can also in many ways be seen to be corresponding to Puentedura’s SAMR model (2006). SAMR, which expands as substitution, augmentation, modification und redefinition, argues that technology does not just enhance but changes how education is done (Fig. 1.4). By which is meant that we use technology not only to replace existing tasks but to create new ones previously not possible, so that technology becomes the agent to train higher-order skills to educate today’s global citizens.

Challenges The most common challenges on ILLSA revolved around maintaining regular communication among group members. Vastly different academic schedules, combined with the already demanding university workload, work commitments interfering with project participation and the time difference between Hong Kong and

Challenges

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Europe affected communication in a number of groups. In addition, the continued social unrest in Hong Kong in the autumn of 2019 led to further participation difficulties among the Hong Kong students. As a means of resolving those challenges, the project offered time extensions between the second and third phases, as well as a longer phase 4. All the phases were then redesigned due to COVID. Additional interactional challenges raised by students and/or teachers included Physical distance: Participants and teachers felt that the physical distance between participants (exacerbated by the difference in time zones) had a negative effect on the engagement of various group members. Participants were therefore encouraged to have at least one live online session to meet each other and be able to put a face to the names of group members. Although in most cases, this was only done once, it seems to have alleviated this problem. Level of required guidance: After the first cycle, it became clear that some participants required more guidance to complete the activities. Some felt that no one was leading the groups. Therefore, student assistants were engaged to provide a friendly helping hand to participants; due to the age factor, it was thought they would be a less invasive presence than one of the ILLSA coordinators. The project team also experienced challenges in the following organizational areas: Mismatch in academic calendars: The Hong Kong academic calendar starts much earlier than the European one, which means that Hong Kong students are in their final weeks of term when European students are just starting. One of the solutions was to slow down the pace of Hong Kong students by encouraging them to work on FutureLearn in the first few weeks and/or to encourage them to continue participating after the end of their semester. Hybrid course versus online course: The mix of in-person and online activities in ILLSA seems to be more efficient when at least one teacher included ILLSA as part of their class routine, following progress and giving feedback. However, that was not always possible, as was the case with most universities. Furthermore, ILLSA was designed as an online course aimed at developing self-study, self-awareness and autonomy as competences for students. As a solution, some teachers tried to incorporate only selected elements or topics of ILLSA into their curriculum, while others considered it as part of their student’s individual assessment for the semester. Language course versus content course: Courses in France contain less teaching hours than courses in Hong Kong, making it difficult to incorporate ILLSA in the teaching curriculum of French universities. Individual solutions were negotiated. French learners in other European Universities (e.g. in Germany) did not face such challenges.

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Satisfaction with the Project In spite of the challenges outlined above, a post-project student survey demonstrated that most ILLSA participants were satisfied with the project and its structure, with their own performance and with the language practice they experienced. Their views about learning through ILLSA included, among others: • ‘An easy and entertaining way of learning.’ • ‘It was a good project for me [to] learn the language by myself when I could not find any courses. Thus, I started reading more news and articles in the language.’ • ‘The project contains a lot of reading materials in various aspects which are useful to deepen my knowledge of the culture as well as vocabulary for learning the language.’ • ‘I found the project-oriented work much more engaging than an ordinary language course.’ • ‘I think the best part is the part in which there is “Learning by doing”. Many good articles [could] be found only in the language and the research and reading improves reading skills as well as knowledge in the subject. It also improves the teambuilding skills and intercultural communication skills that are a necessity later when working in a company or team.’ • ‘It is easy to use, and activities are very innovative and plenty resources are given to learn about different topics.’ Several universities had participated in more than one ILLSA cycle, which further testified to their satisfaction with the project. A survey conducted among teachers elicited responses, such as • ‘I appreciated very much this opportunity of project-based learning. The theme of healthy cities was also well chosen: close to the students, it allowed interested and authentic communication during face-to-face sessions as well as motivation to work in groups for the project.’ • ‘The issue is global. The sub-themes, directly related to everyone’s daily experience, is a topic that occupies young people. The possibility of exchanging visions and experiences among the participants, with multimedia material, the communication that can be produced and processes of empathy and respect.’ • ‘I particularly appreciate the authenticity of the communication that such a project allows.’ • ‘Project-based learning gives the possibility to learners to act in the targetlanguage and to use directly what they are learning. It is also another possibility for them to structure (on a more personal way) their learning.’ Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the project was not able to hold a cycle in early 2020 as originally planned. The total number of active learners for the last 12-month period (spring 2019–spring 2020) was 67, of whom 53 students (79%) were awarded certificates for having completed at least two out of three project phases, with 26 (39%) full completers who have successfully completed all three

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of the project phases. Of the 67, 28 (41%) completed the language component of the project on FutureLearn, which was also certified. That number of participants and completers was considered quite reasonable, given the very difficult situation of social unrest in Hong Kong since the summer of 2019, immediately followed by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, both of which severely affected student participation due to the unexpected and prolonged closure of universities.

COVID-19 (Cycle 5) COVID-19, which struck ILLSA in its last year, posed a unique and unprecedented challenge for the project. While the authors were convinced that the closure of universities and the move from face-to-face classes to online alternatives would be beneficial to the participation rates of ILLSA, the reality was quite different. Students and especially teachers were unwilling to take up the additional responsibility of a telecollaborative project which was not part of the formal curriculum, while having to rethink and redesign their existing courses in order to be able to deliver them online. The bureaucratic hurdles of simply replacing one or more of their courses by ILLSA were too great for this to become a realistic alternative. Therefore, ILLSA skipped one cycle in the summer of 2020 but used this time to develop the last cycle in the autumn of 2020 as a COVID-19-themed cycle, which was run for French and Spanish students. The design was a shorter cycle and although the basic three-phase structure of the project was maintained, the tasks were changed to speak directly to the challenges posed to city-living under a pandemic (Fig. 1.5). In other tasks, participants had to interview family members about COVID-19 and compare their data. Students had to identify which actions they could take to improve the actual situation under COVID-19. The cycle aimed to encourage students to pivot towards their community well-being under COVID-19. One group suggested creating a website to inform people about COVID-19 and to analyse societal changes under COVID-19, such as the development of the online learning in higher education institutions. The feedback received indicates that instead of students being reluctant to discuss COVID-19, they were indeed motivated to think of it from another perspective and were asked to think about a post-COVID world as well as to contribute ideas to deal with its fallout. All in all about 32 students participated in this last cycle of ILLSA, which concluded in December 2020 and coincided with the end of the funding period.

Cooperation Among Universities The partner universities, namely HKBU, PolyU and HKU, collaborated in the following ways and areas:

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In your team, design a questionnaire about the balance between "the freedom to wear a mask or not, go out at night, get together, etc." and "protect the public" Think about questions such as: Do we have the right not to wear a mask if we don't want to? Each team member: Ask 5 people to answer the questionnaire (friends / family - if necessary, translate the questionnaire into your language) Upload a summary of the responses to the portfolio (phase II, task 3). Are there differences between the answers from HK and from other cities? Together, in your group, write a text about what the differences are and why. Upload the text to the portfolio (phase II, task 3).

Fig. 1.5 COVID-19-themed task in Phase II of ILLSA Cycle 5 (machine translated from the Spanish original)

(1)

Staff recruitment and training • Recruitment of team members for each language • Student helpers • Technical support staff

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Project development • Structure and organization of the project • Research organization and development • Preparation and collection of materials for the project in each project language

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Creating and/or organizing online platforms for accessing project materials • Wix.com: for the research components of the project • FutureLearn: for the language components of the project

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Search for participants in the project in Hong Kong and in Europe • Students of higher education institutions • Universities and other UGC-funded institutions

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Promotional activities • Preparation of promotional materials in print, such as leaflets and posters • Website and social media posts • Participation in educational events (see below)

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For maintaining successful collaboration in all of the above-mentioned areas and activities, the three partner universities in the project (HKBU, PolyU, HKU) relied on their team efforts, transparent actions and open communication. The team maintained daily communication over various platforms, as well as in-person during team meetings, in order to provide timely updates on project development to each other, exchange experience and ideas and ensure that all partner universities agreed on any and all actions with regard to the project. Project materials, relevant to the entire project, were drafted by the senior project assistant, followed by discussion and/or modification by the project team until approved by all. In order to streamline the process of preparing presentations and project information materials, templates in English were created for the team to translate into the four project languages. Organizational tables, schedules and timelines helped coordinate the project for all universities at once and track progress. While each partner university chose and adapted the content of their language materials based on their preference and language level needed, those materials were subsequently shared with the entire team for reference. All team members were able to access project materials for all languages and are welcome to contribute.

Contribution of the Project to Interinstitutional Collaboration At its core, ILLSA focused on cross-cultural, international and intrainstitutional collaboration due to its structure, which directly linked students from Hong Kong and Europe through their work on the tasks of the group portfolio. The project has thus included interinstitutional collaboration on local and global level. Locally, the project was first and foremost the collaboration of three universities—HKBU, HKU and PolyU. A fourth university in Hong Kong—The Chinese University of Hong Kong—participated with students for Italian and Spanish. On a global scale, the project enabled the successful intrainstitutional collaborations of Hong Kong universities with a total of 13 universities across seven countries and territories—France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Taiwan, the UK, as well as involved student participants from 40 different nationalities across the world. By connecting together students from at least two different universities in the same group, the project has additionally contributed to the formation of a number of international student interactions, which in its turn could help promote institutional student exchange opportunities. Therefore, the idea of connect, collaborate and create in a project like ILLSA applies not only to telecollaborative tasks for students to learn but also to the enhancement of international cooperation and pushes boundaries for the entire higher education sector in the twenty-first century. This applies not only to teaching and learning but also very much to the interdisciplinary scholarship of teaching and learning. In the following chapters of this volume, we explore a little further these aspects of

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research into telecollaborative learning and the development of twenty-first-century competencies through telecollaborative projects.

References Chaudhuri, T. (2019). Teaching as learning design. Presentation for the HKBU President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. (unpublished). Guth, S., & Helm, F. (2010). Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, literacies and intercultural learning in the 21st century (Vol. 1). Peter Lang. Puentedura, R. (2006). Transformation, technology, and education. [Presentation] Available at: http://hippasus.com/resources/tte/. Accessed September 24, 2020.

Chapter 2

Beyond the Intercultural: Research Directions Within ILLSA

Why Research ILLSA? ILLSA did not start out as a research project. It still is not. In fact, it was funded as a teaching and learning project, and the funding body explicitly stated that none of the money could be used to fund research-related activities, such as hiring research assistants or subscribing to data processing software. With all project leaders being full-time teachers with added administrative responsibilities of running or coordinating full-fledged study programs, any research interests that we might have had needed to be embedded within the project itself. Due to this circumstance, the results of that research might have remained anecdotal for many audiences but would nevertheless serve as important indicators of how original project expectations might differ from the actual outcomes achieved and that this was not an aberration but a positive added value to projects like ILLSA. Before outlining our own research interests within ILLSA and how we went about satisfying them, it might be useful to quickly recap what was said about the ILLSA design in Chap. 1. Firstly, ILLSA is not a language learning platform. Students participating in the ILLSA project were already enrolled in language courses in Europe, America and Asia. ILLSA sought to give these language learners a space to communicate across borders on topics of both global and personal relevance and to use the target language, in this case French, German, Italian and Spanish, as lingua franca for that communication. Our expectation was that the participants of ILLSA would see this as an opportunity to use the target language to connect beyond the classroom to make their classroom language learning globally relevant. So, our research interests, or rather to use the more useful German term Erkenntnisinteresse, focused not on whether learners’ grammar or syntax improved after participating in the project but rather what kind of interactions in the foreign language happened to support the explicit outcomes of the project, which were

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4_2

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To enhance the students’ language learning experience by encouraging them to interact in the target language with international students who are learning the same language under different conditions. To set up an online platform for students enrolled in language courses in Hong Kong UGC-funded institutions and students enrolled in similar courses at universities in Europe. To enhance the existing language courses by offering students new language enhancement opportunities within their campus normally only available to those students who participate in international student exchange programmes or are awarded scholarships for attending summer language schools in the target countries. To instil confidence in Hong Kong students to think and act globally and subsequently encourage them more to participate in international exchange programmes offered by their universities. To equip and train teachers of foreign languages with the latest tools and pedagogies of technology enhanced language learning.

(Excerpt from the original funding application)

Research on Telecollaboration Traditionally, research on telecollaboration has been focused on similar interactions but has concentrated mainly on the development of intercultural competence or intercultural communicative competence (ICC), especially in e-Tandem settings. In fact, the most widely used definitions of telecollaboration include the word intercultural competence. In the context of foreign language education, ‘telecollaboration’ refers to the application of online communication tools to bring together classes of language learners in geographically distant locations to develop their foreign language skills and intercultural competence through collaborative tasks and project work. (O’Dowd, 2014: 340)

But as was pointed out in the previous chapter, IC is not the only outcome of online telecollaboration. In fact, telecollaboration practitioners agree that telecollaboration helps students ‘to enter into a new realm of collaborative enquiry’ (Kern et al., 2004: 254), develop ‘new online literacies’ (Guth & Helm, 2010: 19), or to ‘enter into contact with individuals or groups in the real world’ (Dooly & O’Dowd, 2012: 19). In this and the following chapters, we attempt to bring the different affordances of telecollaboration we were able to observe during the execution phases of ILLSA into sharper focus than is usually the case in similar reports of language-based telecollaborations. A comprehensive overview on such telecollaborative projects mostly in Europe and America and mostly in school contexts can be found in O’Dowd (2014) which is a very insightful text for anyone wanting to use this pedagogy for their own practice. One more overview on emerging trends in telecollaborative learning is found in O’Dowd (2016). Further, different telecollaborative projects are outlined

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and discussed in Dooly and O’Dowd (2018) from a teachers’ perspective. Common to all these overviews and reports however is that they have the project itself in their focus and do not go beyond the phenomenon of telecollaboration to investigate what kind of twenty-first-century competencies are being developed in these telecollaborative projects. One reason for that could be the overriding focus on intercultural aspects of all the reviewed projects and the desire to establish telecollaboration as an effective pedagogical tool for developing intercultural communicative competence.

Research Directions in ILLSA Contrary to the examples found in the literature on telecollaboration, ILLSA was designed as an online telecollaborative project to raise awareness about healthy urban living in a target foreign language. Very early in the project cycles, it was evident from the body of the students’ work developing within ILLSA, and keeping in mind its theme, three obvious research directions could be identified as ILLSA started and progressed, namely 1. 2. 3.

Enhanced use of digital tools by students enrolled in universities to fulfil the tasks set by the project and their role in Global Citizenship Education Enhanced language use arising primarily from peer and teacher feedback, selfdirected learning and interaction in the target language Enhanced social awareness and intercultural competence as seen in the discourses taking place within the project.

Enhanced use of digital tools by students enrolled in universities to fulfil the tasks set by the project and their role in global citizenship education. Identifying the issue Since the now famous debate on digital natives and digital immigrants was kicked off by Prensky (2001), it has been pointed out regularly that digital natives do not necessarily possess the skills required for effective information literacy or for effective digital literacy which are skills that need to be attained in a planned and guided context (Prensky, 2010; Thomas, 2011). ILLSA’s participants were drawn from a variety of backgrounds with inequalities evident in their educational backgrounds or even access to digital tools and the Internet itself. At the same time, ILLSA was an online telecollaborative project, whose success depended on its participants being able to use a range of digital tools and information literacy skills to process the input through knowledge gathering in phase one to research inputs in phase two and collaborative inputs in phase three. So, the question asked here was which tools would ILLSA’s participants choose and how would they be used to complete the tasks set. This was however not the only objective of ILLSA. A further very relevant question to this context was how these tools were helping the students to understand

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more about ILLSA’s chosen theme of healthy cities and whether they were able to use these tools to showcase their developing global citizenship characteristics. Reasons for looking at it The tasks in the ILLSA project demanded specifically that students use digital tools not only to interact and communicate with each other but also to present their work in a specific format. The three-phased design demanded that students collect information, do research and present that research in a coherent way. To enable students to do this, the website suggested a set of digital tools and provided online tutorials that could be used by them. These were not mandatory but were merely a scaffolding for those who might not be familiar with such components. So ILLSA became the perfect platform to investigate the issues outlined above. The portfolios provided a rich source of data as we could observe the tools chosen and how they were used. This was also an aspect of telecollaborative projects which is easily overlooked in project reports or even analyses. Expectations Expected outcomes of the usage of digital tools were creativity of thought and action while presenting and processing information in the portfolios. We expected to see which specific tools would be used to solve which tasks and whether different teams would use different tools. We also wanted to see if the tools we suggested were new to the users and whether these tools were likely to be used for higher education contexts further. As the Google suite of apps was the underlying technology for the project, we also expected to see evidence of collaboration such as editing protocols or chat protocols, feedback and negotiation. But most importantly, we wanted to see if the presentation tools were helping the participants to organize their thoughts and perceptions while discussing global topics and at the same time giving them the skills required to survive in the research-driven, collaborative academic environment that they found themselves in. Enhanced language use arising primarily from peer and teacher feedback, selfdirected learning and interaction in the target language. Identifying the issue Learning-centred approaches advocate that given the opportunity to produce language in real contexts, learners will unconsciously acquire the language. The process of interaction itself will lead to meaning making to solve the task at hand and to the production of the necessary language. On the other hand, learner-centred approaches provide students with activities that focus on specific meanings where form and function are presented together to create that meaning (for a review, Kumaravadivelu, 2003). Through ILLSA, we were creating both of these learning opportunities: the portfolio was a real-life task requiring unsupervised interaction;

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while FutureLearn provided students with specific tasks (such as introducing themselves) where form and function had to come together to comply with specific semisupervised communicative tasks. We wanted to explore how interaction and, in particular, feedback would develop in these two contexts and its benefits on the language (if any). Reasons for looking at it In the classroom, students are physically aware of the presence of the teacher, and this can affect how they interact with peers. ILLSA was a unique opportunity to observe some of those interactions from a distance, without interfering with the learning process. The project allowed for the collection of much data, always with the consent of the participants, including their written work, the recordings of the synchronous meetings and the ‘paper trail’ left behind in FutureLearn, emails and social media messages. Students’ answers to the questionnaire and their subsequent comments in the focus groups allowed us to explore their actions and perceptions to better understand their attitudes towards peer and teacher feedback. Expectations We expected to observe peer feedback in the unsupervised synchronous sessions and in the discussions. As the range of proficiency levels was fairly wide, within languages and even in the smaller four students groups, we expected the more proficient students to take the initiative and provide feedback to those less proficient. We also expected to see some acknowledgement of others’ and teachers’ feedback in the semi-supervised FutureLearn sessions and inclusion of the feedback within the material produced by the students. Overall, we expected a positive attitude towards feedback, as most of the participants had volunteered for the project and were keen to improve their language skills. However, we were aware of the multiculturality factor that grounded the project and were also keen to identify preferences or behaviours that could be culture related. Enhanced social awareness and intercultural competence as seen in the discourses taking place within the project. Identifying the issue Enhancing student social awareness is one of the main teaching objectives of the ILLSA project. Collecting, analysing and discussing data on healthy cities were the pedagogy implemented to help students achieve a social awareness on their environment. Throughout the ILLSA project, students were guided to identify community challenges as well as to design a project that would have an impact on their environment. In order to study the enhancement of student social awareness after having completed a cycle of the project, we defined three main research questions as follows: 1. 2. 3.

What do students think of ‘their city’ after completing ILLSA project? What is a healthy city for them? Do they have new agency towards the impact that they could have on their or others environment?

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To explore these research questions, students’ discourse was collected by focus groups. Students’ discourse gives us the opportunity to study students’ representations and imaginaries on their environment. Students’ discourse allows us as well to study students’ representations and imaginaries on others. What are the impacts of the ILLSA project on students’ representations when encountering others? Reasons for looking at it Theories of enunciation and dialogism allowed us to compare and analyse the participants’ discourse and their prosodic realization (Martin & Rose, 2003). We aimed at finding a pattern in participants’ discourse, of different focus group implemented, which may have translated a specific dynamic towards social awareness and interculturality from students’ perspective after having done the ILLSA project. Dervin and Liddicoat (2013) declare that a linguistic approach when researching on interculturality and education allows the researcher to study the intercultural dynamic created between participants. Expectations We expected to underline few markers in students’ discourse, emerging from focus group, that may have revealed a certain dynamic from the participants of the ILLSA project towards social awareness and interculturality. For Dervin and Risager (2014), linguistic markers in the discourse can reveal process of identification, moving identities and ruptures in the relation with others. We will discuss in Chap. 5 how we observed markers of self-reflection in students’ discourse as an indicator of enhancement of social and intercultural awareness.

Data Collection As ILLSA used a primarily hands-off approach to the solving of the tasks by the participants, we were not constantly watching every move made by the learners. It was only after the completion of each cycle that we sent a questionnaire to participating teachers and students alike to know more about what they did and how they felt about having achieved what was expected of them or their students during the course of the project. Using the learning analytics from the FutureLearn platform we saw who is doing what and how much on that platform. After the main project cycles were completed, we sent out questionnaires to students and teachers involved for a final evaluation. Based on those questionnaires, focus group interviews were conducted. But perhaps most importantly, we analysed students’ work in the project to gain some insight into what kind of learning had occurred during the project.

The Data

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The Data The above instruments, though basic, enabled us to collect a wide range of data pertaining to our individual as well as our common research interests regarding telecollaboration. The final questionnaire included 34 different items which included both scaled and open-ended questions. The items were categorized as follows: I.

General information: • • • • • • •

II.

Level of satisfaction with ILLSA • • • • •

III.

Age Native language Project participation language (French, German, Spanish, Italian) Reason for learning Native city City of research (if different) Field of study at university

Overall project satisfaction Structure Level of difficulty of tasks The FutureLearn experience Level of group collaboration

Awareness about healthy cities • Knowledge about healthy cities • Perspectives on healthy cities • Change of behaviour

IV.

Language • Interaction in groups, language used, etc. • Vocabulary on healthy cities • Feedback on grammar and vocabulary

V.

Use of digital tools and higher education skills.

To explore the second research question on peer and teacher feedback, we carried out focus groups with one or two students at a time. In some cases, these were conducted online synchronously but we also obtained some written answers. The main questions we asked were grouped under these headings: • Describe and evaluate the ILLSA experience. • Describe how ILLSA fitted into your overall language learning process. • Describe how you worked together in your group (language used/type and resource of interaction). • Describe and evaluate the feedback experience (received and given).

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Regarding the research questions on cultural awareness arising in students discourse, in order to collect the data, the focus groups were implemented with five students at a time. All focus groups were conducted online for 50 min. The researcher did not interfere during the focus group as to let the group interactions operate without interventions and to let the discourse emerge for the research purpose (Dervin, 2015). The questions discussed by participants during the focus group were 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

Please present yourself. Have you done a physical exchange before and/or do you plan to do one after the situation with COVID-19 ease? Why did you choose to study French language? Why did you choose to study in the city of the ILLSA project? Give three words that may describe the city before doing your project. Give three words that may describe the city after you did your project. Is there any change on how you perceive this city now? If yes, which ones? For you, what is a healthy city? What other project you wish you could implement to improve your and others environment? Do you think that you have improved your language competences after doing the ILLSA project? In which aspects? If yes, please give examples. Do you think that you have acquire greater confidence in working and collaborate with people that are overseas, from a different culture? If yes, please give examples. Do you think your competences in using digital tools for learning online were improved? If yes, please give examples. How would you rate this kind of project? Would you recommend it to another student? If yes, why?

Conclusions The detailed analysis of the feedback received from the above, together with our analysis of the portfolios and the conclusions drawn, allowed us to answer some of the research questions we had posed. These led to interesting new insights into telecollaborative interactions in all three of our research paradigms as well as to the confirmation of some expected results already discussed in the literature. Although not all of our expectations described above were met, our observations clearly point towards a need for a paradigm shift as to the nature of research being done (or the lack of it) as far as online telecollaboration as a pedagogy is concerned. These are described in detail in the next three chapters.

References

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References Dervin, F. (2015). Introduction. In F. Dervin (Ed.), Analyser l’identité (pp. 4–14). L’Harmattan. Dervin, F., & Liddicoat, A. J. (2013). Introduction: Linguistics for intercultural education. In F. Dervin & A. J. Liddicoat (Eds.), Linguistics for intercultural education. Language learning & language teaching (pp. 1–25). John Benjamins. Dervin, F., & Risager, K. (2014). Researching identity and interculturality. Routledge. Dooly, M., & O’Dowd, R. (2012). Researching online foreign language interaction and exchange. Peter Lang. Dooly, M., & O’Dowd, R. (2018). Telecollaboration in the foreign language classroom: A review of its origins and its application to language teaching practice. In M. Dooly & R. O’Dowd (Eds.), In this together. Teachers’ experiences with transnational, telecollaborative language learning projects (pp. 11–34). Peter Lang. Guth, S., & Helm, F. (2010). Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, literacies and intercultural learning in the 21st century (Vol. 1). Peter Lang. Kern, R., Ware, P., & Warschauer, M. (2004). Crossing frontiers: New directions in online pedagogy and research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 243–260. Kumaravadivelu, B. (2003). Beyond methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. Yale University Press. Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: Meaning behind the Clause. Continuum. O’Dowd, R. (2014). Intercultural communicative competence through telecollaboration. In J. Jackson (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of language and intercultural communication (pp. 340– 356). Routledge. O’Dowd, R. (2016). Emerging trends and new directions in telecollaborative learning. Calico Journal, 33(3), 291–310. Prensky, M. (2001). Fun, play and games: What makes games engaging. Digital Game-Based Learning, 5(1), 5–31. Prensky, M. R. (2010). Teaching digital natives: Partnering for real learning. Corwin Press. Thomas, M. (2011). Deconstructing digital natives: Young people, technology, and the new literacies. Routledge.

Chapter 3

Developing Higher Education Competencies Through Telecollaborative Language Learning

Telecollaborative language learning has traditionally been associated with the development of intercultural (communicative) competence skills. This is also the most obvious starting point of such collaborations which take place normally between two culturally and geographically distanced groups. The development of ICC can then be the focus of such interactions, and negotiation of meaning could be guided through tasks which are specifically designed to this end. We will deal with this aspect in ILLSA and how it is connected to social awareness in the fifth and final chapter of this book. In this chapter, however, we would like to delve deeper into the aspect of how, guided through the ILLSA design and its embedded tasks, participants learnt and used twenty-first-century skills to work collaboratively using the target language. And in this process, some key competencies required in higher education were demonstrated.

Competencies in Higher Education The development of skills required to do well in a higher education context is one of the central aspects of ILLSA as the participants of ILLSA were all students enrolled in language courses of tertiary education institutions. Most of these participants had either started studying at their respective institutions (first- or second-year students) or were preparing to join a university of their choice at the time of their participation. In each case, they were in a context, where their own foremost objectives were to brush up and or enhance their language skills and at the same time work on using digital tools to do research and effectively communicate and report on such research. In this context, it might be useful to refer to ILLSA as an ‘e-learning community of inquiry where autonomy and collaboration are not contradictory ideas but the essential elements of a unified and qualitative shift in how we approach higher education.’ Garrison (2011: 4). © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4_3

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It might also be useful here to spend some time to define what is meant by development of higher education competencies in the context of ILLSA, as there exist diverse models both for the terminology and for the wordings of the skill descriptors. In terms of terminology, one can use the term core or key competencies to include a set of skills, knowledge and attitudes which apply to different education or workplace contexts. In higher education contexts, this set of core or key competencies are used to define outcomes for individual courses or study programmes and could also be used to formulate graduate attributes for a whole institution. There is an argument however against using the term competencies and for using the concept of capabilities instead which takes into account the actual individual freedom available to the human being to choose the kind of life he or she would like to lead and get the education required for it (Lozano et al., 2012). This is particularly important for ILLSA which allowed its participants to break out of the competency descriptors of their language courses and their textbooks-dictated syllabi and use a third space to engage with their local and global communities in the target language. For the purposes of ILLSA and consequently for this book, we are going to use the European model of the Reference Frameworks to define skills and competencies. The most well known of these frameworks is the CEFR or the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages which lays down the levels of foreign language competencies and the skills required to achieve those levels. Two more relevant frameworks for ILLSA are the European Reference Framework for Lifelong Learning and the Common Framework of Reference for Intercultural Digital Literacies. Another important European framework for the purposes of this book is the Reference Framework for Democratic Culture which specifies ‘the tools and critical understanding that learners at all levels of education should acquire in order to feel a sense of belonging and make their own positive contributions to the democratic societies in which we live’. While the CEFR is essentially a competenciesbased approach, the rest are a mix of the competencies and capabilities approaches. These frameworks together afford an important paradigm for us with which to look at the work done by students in ILLSA, it being an online language enhancement project with a social awareness goal. On the one hand, the CEFR helped us determine the level of language competency required to successfully participate in the ILLSA project and communicate it to our partners in Europe; on the other hand, it also helped teachers and us to compare the outputs to their existing levels and determine if the ILLSA project was having any impact on language enhancement. At the same time, the Framework for Lifelong Learning and the Framework for Democratic Culture allowed us to review the activities and the tasks of ILLSA with a holistic approach to learning within ILLSA, instead of us looking at them purely from the point of view of attaining competency levels of the target language. Similarly, the Intercultural Digital Literacies Framework enabled us to evaluate the digital outputs within the portfolios from an intercultural learning perspective. Finally, with social awareness being the focal point of ILLSA, what we were essentially looking at while taking that holistic approach was the embedding of Global Citizenship Education into a language curriculum at the tertiary level.

Global Citizenship and Language Learning in ILLSA

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Global Citizenship and Language Learning in ILLSA The following quote from the former Secretary General to the UN Ban Ki Moon sets the agenda for how educational goals should be defined for the higher education sector in the twenty-first century. Education gives us a profound understanding that we are tied together as citizens of the global community and that our challenges are interconnected. (UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon International Peace Day Message 2016)

It also sets the agenda for a so-called Global Citizenship Education which has in recent years become a collective term for most of the skill sets and competencies discussed in the different frameworks above. While learning a new language in itself opens avenues into new cultures and communities, value gets added to it if along with it, proper space and time are devoted towards making it democratic, free and attuned to the needs of the twenty-first century. The Framework for Lifelong Learning (FLL) lists eight competencies to enable lifelong learning: 1. Communication in the mother tongue | 2. Communication in foreign languages | 3. Mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology | 4. Digital competence | 5. Learning to learn | 6. Social and civic competences | 7. Sense of initiative and entrepreneurship | 8. Cultural awareness and expression

At least three of these competencies (1, 2 and 8) have a direct relation to language learning and three more (4, 5 and 6) speak directly to the competencies that ILLSA incorporates in its design. In other words, Global Citizenship Education in the context of the ILLSA project is embedding digital literacy and social awareness into a digital language learning context in which the participants • • • •

think about their values and what is important to them take learning into the real world get involved in their local, national and global communities develop an argument and voice their opinions. (Oxfam on the definition of Global Citizens)

Table 3.1 matches these qualities of a global citizen as defined by Oxfam to the ILLSA implementation plan. In the following sections, we look at the aspects of digital and social competence using the respective frameworks a little more closely and review the ILLSA outputs using the portfolios as student output in general and also by referring to some of the self-evaluations of students done after the project to illustrate how these skills developed within ILLSA.

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Table 3.1 Global citizenship in ILLSA ILLSA phases

ILLSA phase descriptors

ILLSA phase tasks

Oxfam global citizens

Phase I: Introduction Students get to know and knowledge their project partners gathering and introduce themselves on the platform. They use the materials provided to inform themselves more about the topic and solve small tasks to express their respective points of view and create artefacts such as mind maps

Students create their Think about their own blog entries on the values and what is online platform to important to them introduce themselves to their project partners • Students go through the course introduction and FAQs to learn what to do and expect • Students use online materials to learn more about the topic of their project, e.g. healthy living • Students solve short tasks such as short article writing, creating word clouds and creating virtual mind maps In this phase, students can look at the responses of their European/Hong Kong partners and react to them

Phase II: Research tasks

Students work on a sub-topic they have chosen for their group • Students take a closer look at their topics and conduct task-based research and collect data, e.g. answer questions like: How healthy is your city lifestyle? • Tasks: Health mapping, case-based investigation, reading comprehension, solution finding, critical thinking, digital poster design, short article writing and short newspaper report

In this phase, students choose from a list of given topics to conduct independent research based on guided questions and some materials for reference. Research is conducted within their respected communities and then compared and contrasted to the communities of their partners

Take learning into the real world Get involved in their local, national and global communities

(continued)

Digital Competence in ILLSA

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Table 3.1 (continued) ILLSA phases

ILLSA phase descriptors

ILLSA phase tasks

Oxfam global citizens

Phase III: Collaborative group community project

In this final phase, the students negotiate a group project to be conducted parallely in their own community. They evaluate and report on the community project in a portfolio

Based on their research Develop an argument in Phase II, the groups and voice their negotiate on a topic opinions that they would use for the collaborative group community project where they have to come up with an idea on how to promote healthy living in their communities • The partners put the mutually agreed upon idea into practice in their respective communities (in Europe or in Hong Kong)

The three phases of collaborative learning

Digital Competence in ILLSA Within FLL, Digital Competence is defined as follows: (…) the confident and critical use of Information Society Technology (IST) for work, leisure and communication. It is underpinned by basic skills in ICT: the use of computers to retrieve, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via the Internet. (7)

In this concise form, the definition does not take into account the competencies of digital citizenship which are more precisely described in the Intercultural Digital Literacies Framework (IDLF) and include meaning making, intercultural and collaborative competencies in its four-dimensional descriptors (Fig. 3.1). ILLSA’s tasks challenged the participants to engage with all four of the above dimensions of using digital tools. Starting from Phase I, where participants are asked to produce meaning-making resources such as infographics (Fig. 3.2) to represent themselves and their cities, to metareflective tasks in Phase 2 on healthy cities such as mind maps and finally to the collaborative tasks in Phase 3 which needed transversal skills of managing context, collaboration and information to design intercontinental community projects, ILLSA’s tasks laid the foundation of using ‘highly integrated, complex, dynamic and context-dependent skills’ (IDLF, 44) to effectively connect, collaborate and create in a digital environment. ILLSA suggested a number of digital tools, such as ones to create the infographics above; however, many participants took a step further and identified alternative apps that would allow them to collaborate easily online. One such tool was Padlet, a shared

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Fig. 3.1 Excerpt from the common framework of reference for intercultural digital literacies

wall which, in the example below, was used to develop the answers to Phase II; see Fig. 3.3.

Social and Civic Competencies The FLL defines social and civic competencies as …personal, interpersonal and intercultural competence and cover all forms of behaviour that equip individuals to participate in an effective and constructive way in social and working life, and particularly in increasingly diverse societies, and to resolve conflict where necessary. Civic competence equips individuals to fully participate in civic life, based on knowledge of social and political concepts and structures and a commitment to active and democratic participation.

The FLL also links these competencies to specific knowledge, skills and attitudes. Social competence is linked to personal and social well-being which requires an understanding of how individuals can ensure optimum physical and mental health, including as a resource for oneself and one’s family and one’s immediate social environment, and knowledge of how a healthy lifestyle can contribute to this. The core skills of this competence include the ability to communicate constructively in different environments (…) The competence is based on an attitude of collaboration, assertiveness and integrity.

Social and Civic Competencies

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Aufgabe 1.1: Stellen Sie die Stadt, wo sie leben, vor. Benutzen Sie eine Infografik dabei

Quelle: -

Statistiken von Department of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Taipei City Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei

Woche 1

Quelle - https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gie%C3%9Fen https://www.giessen.de/Wirtschaft/Wirtschaftsstandort/Zahlen_und_Fakten/

9

8

Fig. 3.2 Task realization Phase I ILLSA (German): present the city in which you live as an infographic. Links to tutorials and free infographic producing websites such as Canva were provided to the participants. Noticeable is that the students in Giessen (Germany) and Taipeh (Taiwan) both also quote their sources of information at the bottom of their infographics, a fundamental skill while working with resources in higher education

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Fig. 3.3 Example of digital tools—Padlet. Participants used Padlet to share material online in an attractive and easy manner to answer one of the tasks in Phase II ILLSA (Spanish)

This set of competencies is asked for and demonstrated in the ILLSA portfolios almost to the word. The guiding topic of the ILLSA project was ‘Healthy Cities’. Under this umbrella topic, issues of sustainable and healthy lifestyles as well as nutrition and diversity were discussed as research topics. In all tasks, collaboration was central to their fulfilment. A closer look at the mind maps in Fig. 3.4 reveals a much larger idea of a healthy city than what the topic itself would suggest or what we were expecting in terms of ‘physical or mental health’. Both mind maps in the above examples go beyond the social and into the political introducing democracy and citizens’ participation into the nascent conversation and fulfilling the FLL’s definition of socially competent citizens as being individual equipped ‘to fully participate in civic life, based on knowledge of social and political concepts and structures and a commitment to active and democratic participation’. One might even be tempted to deconstruct the mind maps and attempt to identify exactly students of which cities would have introduced what kind of concepts into the mind maps. Readers familiar with both Asian and European cities and their aspirations might well be able to draw a line right through the middle of these mind maps and assign each half to a particular city. ILLSA therefore encouraged the use of collaborative digital tools to enter into a global discussion and give personal meaning to the universal topic of health and well-being. In the following sections, we continue to explore how in the following phases students took learning into the real world, got engaged in their local and global communities and finally developed an opinion and voiced their arguments through a digital environment.

Social and Civic Competencies

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Aufgabe 1.2.: Was ist eine “gesunde Stadt”? Erstellen Sie eine Mind Map zum Thema

Woche 2

10

Fig. 3.4 Collaborative mind maps. Brainstorming on the topic: what is a healthy city? Phase I ILLSA (German)

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Taking Learning into the Real World Phase II of the ILLSA project required students to conduct collaborative research on four sub-topics of the central theme of healthy cities. The four sub-themes were A. B. C. D.

Transport in healthy cities Well-being in healthy cities Nutrition and fitness in healthy cities Diversity in healthy cities.

Research is conducted according to guided tasks on the portfolio. Figure 3.5 shows the tasks for the sub-topic A (transport in healthy cities). The research tasks were divided into two sections. Each section had two tasks, and the teams could choose one task from each section. But the entire intercontinental team had to agree on the tasks and how they were to be conducted. The objective behind these tasks was not only to encourage participants to start engaging in empirical action-based research early in their tertiary education but also to integrate non-digital, non-cyberspace activities into the project to enable the students to connect up their learning in the classroom, e.g. the use of correct language and research skills to the community outside and understand that the digital environment is there to support community action and that education only has meaning when it is taken to the real world. Though we only have anecdotal insights into the negotiation process of the teams (mainly through Facebook groups or group notes), the portfolios are a rich source of information, as to how the tasks were conducted and what they achieved in terms of higher education skills in all three of the objectives of ILLSA, namely language enhancement, use of digital tools and social awareness. Figures 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 illustrate this quite well. This particular team from the city of Leipzig in Germany and from Hong Kong chose the sub-topic B (well-being) and researched on what factors contributed to well-being in a city like Hong Kong or Leipzig. While the Hong Kong team reported its questionnaire results as an analysis and a table, the Leipzig team listed the top four answers with a note on what the city of Leipzig does to foster these factors. The groups then analyse their respective results and summarize their findings in a table with differences and similarities and also discuss the reasons for the difference in their results. In the following examples (Fig. 3.9), the teams from Giessen in Germany and Hong Kong opted for the sub-topic transport. They looked into the pros and cons of cycling in a city, which was an interesting issue for both Giessen and Hong Kong, with both cities fighting for more rights and space for cyclists. As was the task, they did a questionnaire for the community and then chose to visualize the results of their questionnaires using the Google application and added an analysis in the target language. But they also did a bit more than what was expected and colour coded the responses to one of the questions pertaining to Hong Kong (Fig. 3.10) and then added another text to explain the colour coding and the results of their analysis of the question (Fig. 3.11).

Taking Learning into the Real World

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Research in the city A1. How does cycling fit into your urban lifestyle? Each team has to ride bicycles to 3 different places through the city and then present 3 advantages and 3 disadvantages of this means of transport in their portfolio. Discuss your experience with the other team in the Facebook group on your topic and share the differences and similarities in the portfolio. or A2. How mobile is your city? Each team must use the same 3 public transport modes (e.g. a bike + a bus + a subway) in each city to travel 30 minutes around the city. Compare modes of transport using the template table here and choose the best route through your city. Share your results with the other team in the Facebook group on your topic. What is similar, and what - not? Also share in the portfolio. Questionnaire A3. Work with the other team to create a questionnaire with 10 questions to evaluate sustainable mobility in your cities. Distribute it to 15-20 people in each city. Put the results in a table in the portfolio. Discuss your findings with the other team in the Facebook group on your topic and share the differences and similarities between the opinions of those asked in the portfolio. or A4. Work with the other team to create a 10-question questionnaire about the impact of congestion on the environment and human health. Distribute it to 15-20 people. Put the results on a chart in the portfolio. Discuss your findings with the other team in the Facebook group on your topic and share the differences and similarities between the opinions of those asked in the portfolio.

Fig. 3.5 Phase II research tasks (translated from the German). https://illsahk.wixsite.com/illsaproj ect/aufgaben-phase-2-verkehr

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Fig. 3.6 Results of Phase II (research on sub-topic B Well-being)

“.....” Fragebogen (B3) Welche Faktoren sind wichtig? 1. 2. 3. 4.

Gesundheit Arbeit Sozialer Kontakt Bildung

Was tut die Regierung?

1.

Die Stadt Leipzig ist unabhängig von der Bundesregierung, aber trotzdem muss ein Gesundheitssystem zur Verfügung aller Leipziger/innen haben, damit Gesundheit gefordert und gefördert wird. Ein gutes Beispiel der Unterstützung von der Stadt ist das Universitätsklinikum Leipzig: https://www.uniklinikum-leipzig.de/

Woche 4

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Fig. 3.7 Presentation of results of Phase II (research on sub-topic B Well-being)

In many cases, students went beyond their communities and enlisted the help of their contacts around the world to give truly global answers to some of the issues being investigated. In Fig. 3.12, this Spanish learning team set up a questionnaire to identify respondents’ views on what they considered important to have a good quality

Taking Learning into the Real World

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Unterschiede und Ähnlichkeiten Unterschiede ❏

❏

❏

Wohnung ist immer eins der wichtigsten Thema Hongkongs wegen der Fläche der Stadt u. des ziemlich hohen Preises der Wohnungen. Aber trotzdem ist das Problem bei der Wohung nicht so schlimm für die Leipziger.

Infolge vor allem des hohen Preises der Wohnung u. des Lebensunterhalts, u. das relativ niedrige Niveau der Sozialhilfe, wird das gute Gehalt auch nötiger für die Hongkonger als die Leipziger. Deswegen werden die Freizeitmöglichkeiten nicht so wichtig wie die Leipziger denken für die Hongkonger.

Ähnlichkeiten ❏

Für die beiden Gruppen ist die soziale Beziehung für ein gutes Leben ganz wichtig.

❏

Das Bildungssystem, die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung sowie das Arbeitsangebot stehen auch relativ hinten an der Liste (unwichtiger)

❏

Für die beiden steht das Faktor Arbeitsbedingung relativ mitten an der Liste (allgemein).

Sehr interessant ist es auch, dass vielleicht für die Leipziger die Gesundheit nicht stark auf die Lebenszufriedenheit bezieht.

Fig. 3.8 Analysis of results of Phase II (research on sub-topic B Well-being)

Fig. 3.9 Analysis of results of Phase II (research on sub-topic A Transport)

of life. The answers came from respondents in four countries in Asia, America and Europe. In all the examples above, it is evident that the students, who were at the time of participation still in the A2–B1 levels of the CEFR and in the first to the third semesters of their university undergraduate study, were already hitting goals of higher

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Fig. 3.10 Analysis of results of Phase II (using colour codes)

Fig. 3.11 Presentation of results of Phase II (example of colour-coding)

education skills of empirical research and data anlysis, expected of them only in the final years of undergraduate or even at the start of graduate study. Doing this in a target language, they were also going above and beyond the framework descriptors of language proficiency of A2 or B1 and attain a level of discourse which we firmly believe is only possible in authentic telecollaborative settings which like ILLSA offer an equal and democratic space to discuss issues which are real to the participants.

Get Involved in Their Local, National and Global Communities

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Fig. 3.12 Beyond the local: questionnaire to identify global respondents’ views on what they considered important to have a good quality of life

Get Involved in Their Local, National and Global Communities Last but not the least, an essential step after research is to get involved and suggest consequences for local, national and global authorities to take action. This is also what the portfolio of this particular group reflects. In their final portfolio entry (Fig. 3.13), clear concepts are listed to encourage and improve cycling as a viable mode of transport even in big cities. These range from more inclusive politics to smart solutions to encourage renting bikes in a city like Hong Kong.

Develop an Argument and Voice Their Opinions To develop an argument and voice their opinions is the last logical step to take after phases one and two. This was the objective of phase three or the group community projects. Here also we noticed that students use a variety of digital tools and social media to raise awareness about healthy cities in their communities. The following examples illustrate how students engaged with their communities to raise environmental and social issues and find solutions. Example 1: A German–Hong Kong team studying Spanish focused on public spaces. After selecting specific public spaces, the team identified the stakeholders, carried out a needs–analysis in relation to those public spaces, developed a vision to improve them and shared a number of measures that the city could take. Figure 3.14 shows one

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Fig. 3.13 Get involved in their local, national and global communities

Fig. 3.14 Description of Phase III task and photos taken at a stakeholders’ consultation (Spanish)

of the stakeholders’ consultations that were carried out and describes the suggestions given by the attendees to improve a specific public area. Meanwhile, the team also created a Facebook page and invited stakeholders to post photos of their favourite public spaces and suggest activities that could be carried out in these spaces. The team collected 61 collaborations from Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and various countries in Europe.

Conclusion Higher education competencies in the twenty-first century are a large array of interdisciplinary skills, knowledge and attitudes which range from multilingual skills and

Conclusion

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digital literacy and leading up to intercultural competence which would support the actions of a value-oriented, socially aware and globally connected citizen. In the three phases of ILLSA, students have demonstrated all these skills in a 10-week window embedded within their academic semesters, which allowed them to think about their cities and communities, research them, share those thoughts and research with their peers on another corner of the globe. From creating public spaces to organizing fitness and nature activities, and using YouTube channels and Facebook pages to voice out the opinions developed through the research phases, students of ILLSA have collaborated with partners from all over the globe and have created a community of inquiry which is in parts virtual and in parts physical and which after the corona pandemic shows a new normal in which higher education in the new decade of the twenty-first century needs to embrace.

References Garrison, D. (2011). E-learning in the 21st century: A framework for research and practice (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis. Lozano, J., Aristizábal, A., Peris, J., & Hueso, A. (2012). Competencies in higher education: A critical analysis from the capabilities approach. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 46, 132–147. Oxfam: What is Global Citizenship? https://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/who-we-are/what-is-glo bal-citizenship/. Accessed September 23, 2020.

Chapter 4

Enhanced Language Use Through from Peer and Teacher Feedback, Self-directed Learning and Interaction in the Target Language

While the ILLSA project has provided an opportunity to language students to interact online in their various target languages, it has also been rich in data, allowing us to carry out a number of observations as to how participants communicate among themselves and use the various technologies. This chapter explores how synchronous and asynchronous peer and teacher feedback takes place in instances of oral and written telecollaboration between students and teachers. The analysis focused on participants’ attitudes to feedback from both students and teachers of modern European languages in Europe and Hong Kong. Through this research project, we aimed to identify and explore the impact of attitudinal and behavioural factors in an intercultural engagement process leading to successful telecollaborations. Data was collected in both qualitative and quantitative formats, the latter collated from questionnaires and the former from participants’ comments elicited during interviews with former participants and from participants’ postings during the project. The corpus was taken from the first three cycles of the ILLSA project, and it aimed to answer the following questions: 1. 2. 3.

Is feedback (from peers or teachers) considered effective in improving overall content/linguistic issues? What are the conditions that elicit the most feedback? What are the reasons for not providing or accepting peer feedback?

Introduction An increasing amount of professional work is managed online (Chun et al., 2016) with a resulting need to be able to work collaboratively online, within and outside organizations (Godwin-Jones, 2018). Hence, to be successful in their chosen fields, graduates ought to be have the necessary skills and experience to work with others and to be able to communicate both formally and informally through written and oral © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4_4

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information technology-assisted tools. Collaborative work is that carried out by one of more authors developing one single text. It differs from co-operative work in that all participants are involved in all stages of the process, contribute to the decision-making and share ownership of the co-constructed text (Storch, 2013). An essential element in the collaborative process is being able to provide and accept leader (teacher) and peer feedback. One of the objectives of ILLSA was to enhance students’ language learning experience by encouraging them to interact in the target language with international students who are learning the same language under different conditions. This was achieved through a collaborative project where teams of four students developed and implemented an idea related to the sustainable development of their cities. Participants were university students of European modern languages (French, Italian, German and Spanish), the target language (TL), and came from three Hong Kong universities (Baptist University, The University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University) and a number of European universities in Germany, France, Spain, UK and Italy. In each cycle of the project, language teams (admin staff, facilitators and teachers for each of the four languages) worked with different countries and universities in Europe and Hong Kong, with varying degrees of involvement from the non-ILLSA teachers, although students were encouraged to manage their own learning process. ILLSA required collaborative work from all participants to complete the group project and the portfolio. Participants had to agree on a topic, develop and implement it. The portfolio contained both individual entries (their presentations) and explanations as to how the project was to be implemented and its results. The first ILLSA cycle was implemented in April 2018, and it was immediately obvious that there were a number of student internal and external factors driving successful collaborations within the groups. The most successful group was that of European participants learning French at one German university where the language was integrated within a course on sustainable issues. Participants were thus majoring in environmental studies (or similar) and at the same time were learning French. Participants learning other languages did not usually benefit from a formal integrated content-language approach. In some cycles, individual teachers of Spanish selected to use the material provided by ILLSA to enhance the contents provided in their language classrooms, but this was not done systematically. Therefore, each cycle was different, and each language was also presented differently in each country. This meant that there were many variables that needed to be taken into account when analysing participants’ and teachers’ comments. One of the factors impacting the success of the project was students’ motivation and engagement to provide and accept feedback (Dörnyei, 2016), an area underresearched (Bitchener & Storch, 2016; Godwin-Jones, 2018; Han & Hyland, 2015; Jackson, 2018). Through this research project, we sought to identify and explore attitudinal and behavioural factors impacting feedback in collaborations.

Peer Feedback in Computer-Mediated Communication

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Peer Feedback in Computer-Mediated Communication Computer-mediated (CM) collaborations in language learning (Dooly, 2008, for a review) make use of Web 2.0 multimodal social tools (Guth & Helm, 2010) that facilitate knowledge building. More ‘conventional’ web-based tools such as wikis, Google Docs for writing (Storch, 2017) and Skype for oral communication are replaced or enriched by newer applications such as Instagram’s multiconference facility, WhatsApp and more recently by Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Face-to-face exchanges are mostly collaborative (Rouhshad & Storch, 2016; Tan et al., 2010), there tends to be a greater level of engagement with the feedback provided (Storch, 2017), and it is usually possible to observe the effect of the feedback in the production of the interlocutor. However, in CM written work, although students notice mistakes more than in face to face (Payne & Whitney, 2002), there is a risk of the work being co-operative, not collaborative. That is, students might be receiving feedback, but they do not acknowledge or integrate it into their production. This is usually the case if the feedback is not mediated adequately or if students have not been specifically briefed on the collaborative nature of the task (O’Dowd, 2007). Li and Zhu (2017) suggest that the reluctance to engage in the task and participate is minimized in longer collaborations that allow participants to create a social presence (Storch, 2017 cf. Short, Williams and Christie 1976). Ziegler and Mackey (2017) report that face-to-face and CM interactions between peers have been identified as positive for comprehension, vocabulary, pragmatics and proficiency development, grammar, accuracy and complexity. Interactional peer participation, hereon ‘feedback’, supports acquisition through negotiation, potentially benefitting not only the producer of the feedback but also the recipient (Russell & Spada, 2006; Ziegler & Mackey, 2017). Feedback can make salient a linguistic feature, providing opportunities for identifying the gap between the mother tongue (L1) and the TL and allowing for a critical analysis of the output produced leading, or not, to its modification (Chapelle, 1998; Gass, 2003; Swain & Lapkin, 1995). Aside from these points, peer feedback provides students with alternative ways to express their ideas and facilitates the development of critical thinking skills in a non-threatening environment, helping, in the process, to create and develop relationships between participants (Liu & Hansen, 2002; Storch, 2017). In this study, we tracked both language-related feedback and content feedback (interactions related to how to complete the project). Previous studies report that peer feedback in language learning tends to focus on content rather than on syntax (Elola & Oskoz, 2016; Kessler, 2009; Mak & Coniam, 2008). Attention to grammar is limited to errors that interfere with meaning as students report to being reluctant to provide grammar-related feedback to avoid causing embarrassment (loss of face) to fellow students or due to a lack of confidence in their own language abilities (Guardado & Shi, 2007; Tsui & Ng, 2000). Only on grammar-focused tasks does this behaviour change (Kost, 2011), although many students still indicated a reluctance to correct mistakes (40% of participants, in a study with learners of Spanish, Lee (2010)). Aside from the teaching focus of the task

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(grammar driven or not), another factor that has been identified as altering feedback behaviour is the group size (Storch, 2017). With dyads, it is common to find one editor and one scribe (paying little attention to the editor’s feedback), especially when one of the participants is more dominant, due to personality or proficiency level (Storch & Aldosari, 2013). Smaller groups, of three or four, are reported to work best (Fernández Dobao & Blum, 2013) as participants exchange roles. Despite all of the evidence noting the benefits of peer feedback, student engagement does not always take place, either as a provider or an accepting receiver (Bitchener, 2017; Ferris et al., 2013). Dörnyei (2010) states that student engagement is a combination of three factors identified by Ellis (2010): cognitive—how the student notices feedback, makes the connections that led to its processing (Gass, 2003), a cognitive process related to the analytic abilities of the individual (Bitchener, 2017); behavioural—how the revision is elicited; and attitudinal—the affective response and attitude towards the feedback. This could relate to the nature of the task or the grouping of students, but also to social factors such as the type of interaction with peers, personal goals or attitude towards learning (Dörnyei, 2016; Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Yu & Lee, 2014).

Leader (Teacher) Feedback Teacher feedback can refer to both content and language use. The ILLSA project was designed to develop student autonomy as far as content was concerned; therefore, most teacher feedback was language related. Language feedback in second language teaching is still a much discussed topic as views range widely. At one extreme, some scholars consider errors should be corrected (Brown, 2007; Larsen-Freeman, 2000) while others argue that error correction is not necessary and might interfere with learning (Krashen, 1981). Communicative approaches defend a middle ground where not all errors need correction, especially if the feedback will interfere with the learners’ fluency. We took this approach, as our task was first and foremost a communicative one. Oral corrective feedback has been categorized as follows: recasts, elicitation, repetition, explicit correction, clarification requests, metalinguistic information and translation (Panova & Lyster, 2002). The effectiveness of feedback varies by type, although its benefits are not well understood beyond the immediate response after the feedback was provided (Rezaei et al., 2011, for a review). Lyster and Ranta (1997) report that recasts, repeating the learners’ utterance without the error, are the most frequent type of corrective feedback, although its effectiveness varies with individuals and the context (Han, 2002). The effectiveness of written feedback has also been questioned (Sheppard, 1992) although explicit form-focused instruction together with feedback has been found to be successful (Ellis, 2009; Hyland, 2011; Lopez-Ozieblo, 2021). As the ILLSA project sought to develop learning autonomy and collaboration, most of the corrective feedback was limited to implicit recasts, based on what students

Leader (Teacher) Feedback

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posted in the fora, the ILLSA teacher answering comments by repeating part of the participant’s structure. In two cycles with French and Spanish students, where the ILLSA work was integrated with the regular language classroom, teachers also provided explicit correction that included metalinguistic explanations in some cases.

Methodology The ILLSA project was divided into two main tasks, an online module supported by the learning platform FutureLearn, to be completed individually by the students, and a collaborative project (the portfolio) that was guided by a series of instructions provided by the ILLSA website. Participants were also encouraged to use social media tools such as Facebook and WhatsApp to communicate among themselves or with their cycle leaders. Each language and cycle was managed differently: in some cases, participation was mandatory in order to pass a specific institution’s language course, and the language teacher was also the cycle leader or worked closely together with the ILLSA cycle leader. In other cases, participants joined individually without the supervision of a language teacher. Participants gave their consent to share their work for research purposes, all examples given below have been anonymized. The corpus for this study was obtained from the online interactions of participants and cycle leaders over the first three cycles (running during 2018 and 2019), as well as from questionnaires and face-to-face interviews carried out by the researcher for this study. We analysed the interventions of all involved—participants, teachers and cycle leaders—regardless of the platform (face to face, FutureLearn, project or social media). The data was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively to develop a holistic picture of feedback attitudes.

Results This section presents the results from the quantitative analysis of the answers to questionnaires gathered from participants (27) and teachers (5), as well as from the qualitative analysis of those and the comments collected at interviews (10 participants and two teachers) and participants’ postings in FutureLearn and social media.

Feedback Questionnaires Overall, participation varied by cycle and language (see Fig. 4.1). For the first three cycles, there was a total of 232 participants enrolled, with slightly more Asian students (124) than European participants (108)—in one of the cycles, there were also some Korean participants (see Fig. 4.2).

48 Fig. 4.1 Number of student participants per language per cycle. Source Annual ILLSA report for UGC, year 2

4 Enhanced Language Use Through from Peer and Teacher … 70

61

60 50 40

35 30

30

25 17

20

22

19

16

15

10 0

Cycle 1 French

Fig. 4.2 Number of student participants cycles 1–3 (Asian and European Universities). Source Annual ILLSA report for UGC, year 2

Cycle 2 German

Cycle 3

Spanish

140

Italian

124

120

108

100 80 59

60 40

49 35

30 31

28

20 0

Cycle 1

Cycle 2

Asian universities

Cycle 3

Total

European Universities

After each cycle, participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire describing their overall experience. Three of the questions explored participants’ views on feedback. There was a similar number of responses from participants in Hong Kong and Europe, although the overall response rate was very low, 11.6%, in itself a reflection of overall attitudes towards providing feedback. Although the data set is not enough to allow any conclusions, in addition to other observations and feedback obtained, it helps to shape an initial overall image. The questionnaire was quite long (23 questions) and contained both multiple choice and short paragraph answers, which might also explain the low response rate. Participants were asked whether they had exchanged feedback within their groups, if yes, how they felt about receiving and giving it and whether they would have liked more feedback overall from their teachers or ILLSA cycle leaders. Participants’ teachers were also asked to fill in similar questionnaires, and five teachers responded and commented on the feedback they gave participants. Most participants answered that they did not exchange feedback on language-related matters, such as corrective feedback on grammar or vocabulary (46.2%), or did not remember if they had done so (15.4%); see Fig. 4.3. This corresponds with the observations from the teachers and ILLSA cycle leaders who did not report many language-related interactions. Most participants made use of WhatsApp to stay in touch with each other, negotiate the topic they would be working on and also to ask procedure-related questions.

Results Fig. 4.3 Percentage of respondents who exchanged language-related feedback during the project

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I exchanged feedback 15.4% I did not exchange feedback I don't remember

38.5%

46.2%

Email, on the other hand, was used to exchange content information but also as a fall back option when group members did not respond to WhatsApp. Under FutureLearn, there were a number of discussion groups, and participants were asked to input either information about themselves, explain the meaning of a word or expression found in the input text or to give a personal commentary answering a specific question. The second type of comment, explaining the meaning of a word, requested students not to repeat any word meanings, and this rule was followed, indicating that participants were reading each other’s postings. However, there were no ‘likes’ given to any of the postings, except for those provided by the cycle leader, questioning whether the content of the posts had been processed as well as read. The first and third types of comments, personal information and opinions were always answered by the cycle leader, Billy, who provided a short comment and follow-up questions. Language feedback One of the aims of ILLSA was to get participants to interact in their target language. Of the 27 student respondents, all but six tried to do so while those six defaulted to their common language, English. These cases were all low proficiency-level students. When language-related feedback was exchanged, this was mostly during face-toface classroom time when participants were working on the project. In WhatsApp, when unsure about their language structures or those of others, participants adopted a number of strategies that included ignoring obvious errors, such as the one in example (1) were the question should have been ¿Qué tenemos que hacer? (What do we have to do?) and the answer is given in correct Spanish (Now we are working on this project in another PowerPoint) Example (1) Q: Que somos hacer? A: Ahora nosotros estamos trabajando en este proyecto en otro Powerpoint or translating their own text messages, like the one in example (2) which was recorded in a WhatsApp chat group where the previous exchanges had been in Spanish:

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Example (2) Q: Did you all finish all the exercises already? A: Has terminado todas las ejerjios? There was no peer language feedback in any of the FutureLearn discussions. The ILLSA cycle leader, Billy, only provided implicit corrective feedback. The only time teachers provided explicit language feedback was when the ILLSA work was also evaluated as part of the language subject. Then, a draft might be annotated by the teacher for the students to correct. When answering Facebook or FutureLearn entries, cycle leaders did not explicitly provide any corrections to the students’ text. As can be seen in example (3), Billy repeats the expression ‘puerto viejo’ correcting the gender of the adjective but does not make it obvious there had been an error. Usually, the corrections were few and focusing on basic content that the student should understand without a full explanation. Example (3)

We agree with critics of this type of corrective feedback that students might not pick up on the correction and thus miss a valuable learning opportunity. On the other hand, explicit notes about errors in the form or lexicon, directing students to revise their text without actually providing the correct answer, seem to work much better, as students have to think about the error and are usually keen to get it right. An issue with FutureLearn and other MOOCs is that they do not offer the possibility of providing annotations to students’ work. This means having to copy and paste entries onto Word or PDF, annotate them and then send them to the student privately by email. A tool allowing annotations directly onto discussion entries would be extremely useful.

Results

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Content feedback In terms of feedback related to the content, we also observed that implicit comments were ignored. In example (3), Billy’s follow-up question was never answered by the student, and this was quite common; see also example (4). As most questions posed by the cycle leaders were designed to direct students’ attention to another possible area to develop—in example (3) relating to urban renewal and in example (4) to public transport—the lack of engagement by the students is troubling. Example (4)

Part of the issue might be that participants did not always read others’ postings and so seldom acknowledging Billy’s or other participants’ comments in their own answers, as in examples (4) and (5). In example (5), both participants are answering a question about Amiens and yet the second participant (first posting) does not refer to the preceding comment, repeating some of the information. Perhaps a better instruction for the exercise would have included a note to not repeat answers previously given by others.

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Example (5)

Once participants started working on their portfolios, there was little contact with the cycle leaders. Participants, in their groups, developed their own projects independently and were reluctant to report issues relating to team members’ contributions. Cycle leaders had to specifically ask groups to ensure all group members were contributing. Members not contributing impacted negatively to the motivation and engagement of other team members and reflected in this comment by a group member who had lost his partner—example (6). Subsequent cycles tracked participation more closely which lead to better results. Example (6) To be honest, I have no clue as to what is going on. No one is asking me about this project and my partner is not answering me [translated from Spanish]. In some cases, however, losing team members seemed to have the opposite effect, bringing the remaining team closer together. This was the case in four of the groups we followed up; in three of these, just two participants from the same language class remained active in the project, and they worked both face to face and through WhatsApp. In the fourth group, both remaining participants were in Europe, but in different locations, one of them commented that—example (7):

Results

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Example (7) At that point [after realizing there will be just two of them working together], we started writing messages and we were immediately in harmony, both with a great desire to work together. We helped each other a lot in creating the infographic about our cities, Parma and Seville, although it was an individual task [translated from Italian]. In all four cases, participants reported forming a close bond with their partners. This closer bond was not reported by any of the larger teams. Perhaps a better team strategy might be to pair one Asian with one European first, ask them to carry out some exercises together and then bring together two couples. General views on feedback Attitudes towards peer and teacher/cycle leader feedback were overwhelmingly positive. None of the questionnaire respondents minded receiving feedback from others (these were also the observations from the teachers). On the contrary, respondents commented they would have liked more feedback and noted their appreciation when receiving it (see comments below, copied as per the original): Example (8) The language level of me and my teammates were quite different, and we learned the language in different ways. Therefore, we had different vocabularies and grammar knowledge. I think it was great to learn from each other, so we all have improvements throughout the communication. Example (9) There was very little language feedback, which was disappointing. I would have preferred to been provided constructive corrections or help finding a word rather than feeling like I was floundering by myself. We were all learners, so I personally would not have taken offense to being corrected. It was worse when your teammates left you to struggle. Ironically, participants were reluctant to give feedback, because they were not sure of getting it right themselves or fearing causing offence: Example (10) It is fine for me to receive grammatical correction, but when I am correcting others I feel like I need their approval every time to make a change. Example (11) I did not mind the feedback and it actually allowed me to better my Spanish. I have been one that is not comfortable with giving feedback in Spanish because I am still working on bettering myself.

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Fig. 4.4 Percentage of respondents who would have liked more feedback

30%

35%

13% 22%

No, I do not think more guidance/feedback was needed. Related to the content Specific feedback to my comments Related to the overall process

Example (12) I did not mind to receive a feedback as it is part of the learning. Sometimes I felt not 100% comfortable to give feedback as I did not know how the person will react. When asked about the type of feedback, 30% thought they did not need additional feedback. However, a large portion (35%) reported they would have liked more information about the overall process. See Fig. 4.4. Participants seldom approached the cycle leader to clarify procedure-related questions, preferring instead to direct them to other team members, who might not have been able to answer clearly either; see example (1). This issue had been identified after the first cycle, and student helpers engaged for each language to provide a more approachable contact point to participants. The success of this move varied depending on the levels of engagement of the student helpers. A better solution seems to be to have a closer follow-up of each group by either the cycle leader or the language teacher. This might encroach on the independence of teams, but it enhances productivity. When we looked at attitudes to feedback by cultural background of the participants (identified by their reported mother tongue), it became quite obvious that the Hong Kong students (in Fig. 4.5 labelled as ‘Chinese’) required closer monitoring than their European counterparts.

Summary of Findings ILLSA was designed to take advantage of computer-mediated collaborations in the learning of the language. Participants were encouraged to use Web 2.0 multimodal, social tools in particular Google Docs for writing and Skype or similar for oral

Summary of Findings

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Others (5)

15% 25% 18% 38% 36%

Chinese (13) English (5) German (2) French (2) 0%

15% 25% 18%

60%

69%

40%

18% 13% 9% 20%

40%

60%

80%

Related to the overall process Specific feedback to my comments Related to the content No, I do not think more guidance/feedback was needed.

Fig. 4.5 Feedback needs by L1

communication to build knowledge (Guth & Helm, 2010) and complete their collaborative project. To complete the project, participants would have needed to engage in extended negotiations; therefore, it was expected that there would be significant peer feedback during that phase of the project. Seeking to minimize group external involvement, the ILLSA cycle leaders and teachers did not provide content-related feedback, unless specifically asked. Participants report to having used mostly WhatsApp and email to communicate. Very few groups made use of oral communication, via Skype or others. If they did, this was limited to just one session. However, at the local level in both Europe and Hong Kong, group members sometimes attended the same language classroom. Whenever that was the case, those participants reported meeting face to face and to having a more lively WhatsApp exchange as well. These interactions were sometimes in the L1 and, in cases of higher proficiency level, in the TL as well (there might be a correlation between the age of the participants and the language used, as more mature participants reported to have tried to use the TL as much as possible). When asked to comment on language-related feedback, participants agreed that they did not mind receiving it, whether from peers or teachers. They welcomed teachers’ feedback, and (in the case of the teachers involved in ILLSA) this was never taken as a criticism but as an opportunity to learn. Feedback from other ILLSA team members was viewed as unobtrusive but also positive, as it meant that someone was reading the posts left in the various discussion boards. In most cases, peers had a similar proficiency levels, and they seldom corrected each other. None of the participants interviewed reported being aware of correcting or having been corrected by a group member, in terms of the use of the TL even though all respondents commented that they would not mind being corrected by a peer. We

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confirmed existing results noting a preference for content rather than syntax-related feedback (Elola & Oskoz, 2016; Kessler, 2009; Mak & Coniam, 2008) as well as a reluctance to provide feedback related to self-confidence and lest it caused offence to others (Guardado & Shi, 2007; Tsui & Ng, 2000). As the few real-time interactions among our participants were not recorded, we cannot confirm their behaviour in oral exchanges but we can confirm a reluctance to correct each other in text-based exchanges where language-based errors, even basic ones, went unmentioned and uncorrected. We did not find any differences that could be linked to cultural or individual preferences. Kost (2011) observed that this reluctance to correct peer errors was altered in grammar-focused tasks, and Storch (2017) noted that the size of the group also alters feedback dynamics. Most of our groups had four participants, the optimum size according to Fernández Dobao and Blum (2013), and yet there was an overall lack of grammar-based feedback. This could be related to the secondary role that language played in the task, the main goal being to develop a sustainability-related project. In cases where groups were reduced to dyads, feedback was reported to have been exchanged in both directions extensively and where participants developed a friendship bond. It might be the case that language-related feedback is fewer in dyads, but content-related exchanges were more prolific in these cases. In any case, the fact is that dyads worked better than the groups of four question’s previous observations. It might be that in the virtual environment, the dynamics of dyads increase efficiency. This is a point worth further exploration. Despite all our efforts to engage students and encourage collaboration, feedback between participants varied, confirming the observations of many other studies (Bitchener, 2017; Ferris et al., 2013). This could relate to the nature of the task or the grouping of students, but also to social factors such as the type of interaction with peers and teacher, personal goals or attitude towards learning (Dörnyei, 2016; Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Yu & Lee, 2014). Our participants were all volunteers, therefore self-motivated, and they all recognized the benefits of the course. A number of participants had issues with time and commented that they would have liked to be able to spend more time on the project. As ILLSA was, in most cases, an extra-curricular activity, as the semester wore on, some of the participants prioritized their credit subjects over ILLSA. The best completion rates were observed in those… cases where participants received course credits for completing the activities.

Conclusion To conclude, our observations from ILLSA suggest that feedback from peers and teachers enhances the development of content, but its effects on improving the language learning are not clear. Participants are reluctant to correct each other and do not seem to notice corrections made to their own contributions. However, they are quite forthcoming with ideas that relate to content. Feedback improves as the relationship between participants tightens. In the cases we observed, this might be linked

Conclusion

57

to having the chance to meet in person. All participants wanted to receive languagerelated feedback but most indicated that they liked the hands-off approach taken by the ILLSA team members (minimizing feedback). Participants indicated loss of face (theirs and that of others) as one of the reasons for not providing language-related feedback to peers. Having learnt from previous cycles, we are running one last shorter cycle where ILLSA will coordinate group members from the beginning, setting up an initial oral session for each group and carrying out a closer follow-up. We believe this more hands-on approach might elicit more language-related queries and perhaps more peer discussions about the language as well as the content.

Postscript The fourth cycle of ILLSA coincided with the outbreak of the social unrest in Hong Kong and the beginning of COVID-19, and this meant that many participants did not finish the cycle and the data related to it has not been taken into account. The fifth cycle was developed for Spanish (coinciding with the write up of this chapter), into which many of the comments mentioned above were taken into account to improve students’ experience. The changes and results are described in this section. Improvements For the fifth Spanish cycle, we revamped the content, developing additional audiovisual material divided into four modules and hosted in edX (an online education platform, similar to FutureLearn but allowing more flexibility in terms of the type of exercises and formatting of the content presented). The content of the modules linked COVID-19 and the environment, asking students to reflect on the COVID19 measures implemented in their locations; how these were affecting them and the environment; and lessons learnt from what was working and what not. The cycle was shortened to five weeks, rather than eight, and the cycle leader (also the teacher of the Hong Kong students) took a very active role, providing encouragement and feedback, always online as COVID-19 prevented face-to-face teaching. For the Hong Kong students, ILLSA was part of the overall evaluation. Students in Europe (Germany, Italy and UK) volunteered to participate, and their contribution was not evaluated. There were five Europe–Hong Kong teams with a total of 20 students, 13 from Hong Kong. All 20 students completed all the activities in edX and the portfolios (the first time that all the activities had been completed). The cycle leader facilitated the initial synchronous meetings for each group and continued to actively encourage progress. Results The results were very positive, and students worked together in their groups much better than in previous cycles. Four out of the five portfolios were developed with participants working together, collaborating, rather than each developing one aspect

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of the task. There was more activity in the fora, with more posts getting a response than in previous cycles, and sixteen out of the twenty participants responded the ILLSA questionnaire (11 from Hong Kong). The majority of the students reported that they had communicated in a mixture of English and Spanish (75%, 12 out of 16), trying to use Spanish as the medium of written communication but using English when speaking to each other (although the sessions where the cycle leader was present were conducted in Spanish). Sixtyeight per cent of the participants confirmed receiving or giving feedback (1 did not remember), and their attitudes towards the process were positive (see Examples below): Examples (13) [sic] • I did not mind receive feedback, since this was a learning process. • yes I received a feedback from my classmate and it was very useful. • after we filled the answers of the questions, we will proofread each other’s works and try to make comments like how to make up a better point. • I think the feedback were good to me because I can know and focus my weakness and improve it. • We correct each other’s sentences and we were happy to do so. However, despite the additional interaction and oversight provided by the cycle leader, participants still felt they would have liked more feedback, particularly about the content. Feedback on students’ content was provided through the fora, but not for every post (an area where we can improve). When asked, all the respondents confirmed they would like additional grammar explanations, which were not included. Of particular interest to us was the overall need for feedback on the process, which decreased slightly to 29% (from 35% in previous cycles) (see Fig. 4.6). There was also a decrease among the Hong Kong students (from 69% in previous cycles to 53% in this cycle). This was a positive outcome, but the effect of the changes was not as strong as we expected, suggesting that there might be an inherent need for ‘more’ within this student body that cannot be easily answered. For this cycle, each step had been clearly detailed, and the cycle leader was more involved than in previous cycles; however, this did not seem to eliminate the need for further instructions and reassurance. Oral and written interactions were again led by the more proficient students who took it upon themselves to guide the process. There was very little evidence of corrective feedback in the oral sessions (or in the fora posts), although participants reported that corrections (without explanations) were given when exchanging written material. WhatsApp was again the most used tool, together with Zoom and the Google portfolio itself, and there was very little email interaction. Most students appreciated the opportunity to interact with others and to meet new people; however, some felt confused by the lack of corrective teacher feedback as ‘we may not know if we have the mistakes [sic]’. Nevertheless, the learning-centred aspect was appreciated despite the language barriers: ‘I think it’s a great idea to

Postscript

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Fig. 4.6 Fifth cycle (Spanish) percentage of respondents who would have liked more feedback

emerge yourself in the language you are trying to learn, even if you don’t understand everything.’ Overall, we felt that the last cycle had been more successful (better completion rates and positive comments) than previous cycles. We have the portfolios as proof that collaboration had taken place; however, we felt that tasks such as this require prior feedback-sharing training, as well as careful planning, to ensure improvements to students’ language learning.

References Bitchener, J. (2017). Why some L2 learners fail to benefit from written corrective feedback. In H. Nassaji & E. Kartchava (Eds.), Corrective feedback in second language teaching and learning: Research, theory, applications, implications (pp. 130–140). Routledge. Bitchener, J., & Storch, N. (2016). Written corrective feedback for L2 development. Multilingual Matters. Brown, D. B. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching (6th ed.). Pearson. Chapelle, C. (1998). Multimedia CALL: Lessons to be learned from research on instructed SLA. Language Learning & Technology, 2(1), 22. Chun, D., Kern, R., & Smith, B. (2016). Technology in language use, language teaching, and language learning. The Modern Language Journal, 100(S1), 64–80. Dooly, M. (2008). Telecollaborative language learning: A guidebook to moderating intercultural collaboration online. Peter Lang. Dörnyei, Z. (2010). Researching motivation: From integrativeness to the ideal L2 self. Introducing Applied Linguistics: Concepts and Skills, 3(5), 74–83. Dörnyei, Z. (2016). Motivational currents in language learning: Frameworks for focused interventions. Routledge. Ellis, R. (2009). Corrective feedback and teacher development. L2 Journal, 1(1).

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Ellis, R. (2010). Second language acquisition, teacher education and language pedagogy. Language Teaching, 43(2), 182–201. Elola, I., & Oskoz, A. (2016). Supporting second language writing using multimodal feedback. Foreign Language Annals, 49(1), 58–74. Fernández Dobao, A., & Blum, A. (2013). Collaborative writing in pairs and small groups: Learners’ attitudes and perceptions. System, 41(2), 365–378. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.02.002 Ferris, D. R., Liu, H., Sinha, A., & Senna, M. (2013). Written corrective feedback for individual L2 writers. Journal of Second Language Writing, 22(3), 307–329. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw. 2012.09.009 Gass, S. M. (2003). Input and interaction. In C. J. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), The handbook of second language acquisition (Vol. 24, pp. 224–256). Wiley. Godwin-Jones, R. (2018). Second language writing online: An update. Language Learning & Technology, 22(1), 1–15. Guardado, M., & Shi, L. (2007). ESL students’ experiences of online peer feedback. Computers and Composition, 24(4), 443–461. Guth, S., & Helm, F. (2010). Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, literacies and intercultural learning in the 21st century (Vol. 1). Peter Lang. Han, Y., & Hyland, F. (2015). Exploring learner engagement with written corrective feedback in a Chinese tertiary EFL classroom. Journal of Second Language Writing, 30, 31–44. Han, Z. H. (2002). Rethinking the role of corrective feedback in communicative language teaching. RELC Journal, 33(1), 1–34. Hyland, K. (2011). Learning to write: Issues in theory, research and pedagogy. Learning-to-Write and Writing-to-Learn in an Additional Language, 31, 17–35. Hyland, K., & Hyland, F. (2006). Feedback in second language writing: Contexts and issues. Cambridge University Press. Jackson, J. (2018). Interculturality in international education. Routledge. Kessler, G. (2009). Student-initiated attention to form in wiki-based collaborative writing. Language Learning and Technology, 13(1), 79–95. Kost, C. (2011). Investigating writing strategies and revision behavior in collaborative wiki projects. Calico Journal, 28(3), 606–620. Krashen, S. D. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. University of Southern California. Larsen-Freeman, D. (2000). Techniques and principles in language teaching. Oxford University Press. Lee, L. (2010). Exploring wiki-mediated collaborative writing: A case study in an elementary Spanish course. Calico Journal, 27(2), 260–276. Li, M., & Zhu, W. (2017). Good or bad collaborative wiki writing: Exploring links between group interactions and writing products. Journal of Second Language Writing, 35, 38–53. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jslw.2017.01.003 Liu, J., & Hansen, J. G. (2002). Peer response in second language writing classrooms. University of Michigan Press. Lopez-Ozieblo, R. (2021, January). Improving second language writing across the disciplines: Resources for content teachers. In M. Carrió Pastor & B. Bellés-Fortuño (Eds.), Teaching language and content in multicultural and multilingual classrooms. CLIL and EMI approaches (pp. 191– 222). Palgrave McMillan. Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake: Negotiation of form in communicative classrooms. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 37–66. Mak, B., & Coniam, D. (2008). Using wikis to enhance and develop writing skills among secondary school students in Hong Kong. System, 36(3), 437–455. O’Dowd, R. (Ed.). (2007). Online intercultural exchange: An introduction for foreign language teachers (Vol. 15). Multilingual Matters. Panova, I., & Lyster, R. (2002). Patterns of corrective feedback and uptake in an adult ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 36(4), 573–595.

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Payne, J. S., & Whitney, P. J. (2002). Developing L2 oral proficiency through synchronous CMC: Output, working memory, and interlanguage development. Calico Journal, 7–32. Rezaei, S., Mozaffari, F., & Hatef, A. (2011). Corrective feedback in SLA: Classroom practice and future directions. International Journal of English Linguistics, 1(1), 21. Rouhshad, A., & Storch, N. (2016). A focus on mode. Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning: Pedagogical Potential and Research Agenda, 45, 267. Russell, J., & Spada, N. (2006). The effectiveness of corrective feedback for the acquisition of L2 grammar. In J. M. Norris & L. Ortega (Eds.), Synthesizing research on language learning and teaching (Vol. 13, pp. 133–164). John Benjamins Publishing. Sheppard, K. (1992). Two feedback types: Do they make a difference? RELC Journal, 23(1), 103–110. Storch, N. (2013). Collaborative writing in L2 classrooms (Vol. 31). Multilingual Matters. Storch, N. (2017). Peer corrective feedback in computer-mediated collaborative writing. In H. Nassaji & E. Kartchava (Eds.), Corrective feedback in second language teaching and learning: Research, theory, applications, implications (pp. 66–79). New York. Storch, N., & Aldosari, A. (2013). Pairing learners in pair work activity. Language Teaching Research, 17(1), 31–48. Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (1995). Problems in output and the cognitive processes they generate: A step towards second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 16(3), 371–391. Tan, L. L., Wigglesworth, G., & Storch, N. (2010). Pair interactions and mode of communication: Comparing face-to-face and computer mediated communication. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 33(3), 27–31. Tsui, A. B., & Ng, M. (2000). Do secondary L2 writers benefit from peer comments? Journal of Second Language Writing, 9(2), 147–170. Yu, S., & Lee, I. (2014). An analysis of Chinese EFL students’ use of first and second language in peer feedback of L2 writing. System, 47, 28–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2014.08.007 Ziegler, N., & Mackey, A. (2017). Interactional feedback in synchronous computer mediated communication. A review of the state of the art. In H. Nassaji & E. Kartchava (Eds.), Corrective feedback in second language teaching and learning: Research, theory, applications, implications (pp. 80–94). Routledge.

Chapter 5

Enhanced Social Awareness and Interculturality as Seen in the Discourses Taking Place Within the Project

Introduction At the core of the ILLSA project was the aim to equip students from Higher Education Institutions with language competences and social awareness, so participants would be able to navigate in a liquid world, a mobile world that requires flexibility and adaptability (Bauman, 2000). Furthermore, as mentioned in Chap. 3 of this volume, ILLSA relates to a Global Citizenship Education that allowed students to: think about their values and what is important to them, take learning into the real world, get involved in their local, national and global communities, develop an argument and voice their opinions (Oxfam on the definition of Global Citizens). The ILLSA project was conceived to embed these objectives in a digital learning environment. Madhavi (2019) underlines the importance of social media to create environmental awareness in sustainable higher education system. The ILLSA project supports the online learning throughout different means such as a Website, eportfolios, online meetings and more. These different e-platforms allow students to exchange, analyse, collaborate and engage, not only on environmental awareness in sustainable higher education institutions, but also on contextual well-being and healthy cities. The ILLSA project set up a learning environment that facilitates virtual mobility, dialogue and self-reflection among participants on important contextual topics. In this chapter, the authors in analysing e-portfolios are observing how the ILLSA project facilitates social awareness. We will comment on how dialogue and dynamic interactions develop among participants in the virtual ILSSA project context. Interactive, intercultural and co-constructed exchanges would provide a safe place where students could dialogue, self-reflect and voice their opinion (Martinez, 2016). Furthermore, in order to test the hypothesis that the ILLSA project helps to enhance social awareness and interculturality, two focus groups were organized to collect participants’ discourse. Interculturality is the ability to embrace diversity and allow moving identities to emerge which are constantly co-constructed via © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4_5

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encounters (Dervin, 2015). Dialogism and discourse analysis will provide in this chapter a methodology to observe co-constructed dialogue and markers of selfreflection towards social awareness. Dervin and Liddicoat (2013) indicate that a linguistic approach when researching on interculturality and education allows the researcher to study the intercultural dynamic dialogue co-created in between participants. Discourse collected via focus groups may allow us to analyse interculturality and dialogic interactions at work in between participants of the ILLSA project. The authors aim as well to study social awareness emerging through participants’ discourse.

Enhanced Social Awareness: A Change of Perspectives The ILLSA project provided e-learning activities to students to be carried out as part of an e-portfolio to reflect on what is a healthy city. For example, after constructing a mind map on their e-portfolio to define characteristics of a healthy city (Fig. 5.1a, b), students wrote a paragraph to think about their city and if this is a healthy city. Further in the e-portfolio, students were asked to write a paragraph and to reflect if the place where they lived at the time of the learning (project) cycle was indeed a healthy environment. This gave the students the opportunity to set a contextual approach on the general mind map. Below is an example of a student, Student 1, expressing his views on his environment (French version). He says that for him Hong Kong is not a healthy city, that it is actually a ‘sick city, dying’. For this student, on the environment aspect, the space attributed for lodging is insufficient. He adds that thousands of poor people live in subdivided apartments and that the air pollution level is severe as well. Student 1 Pour moi, Hong Kong n’est pas une ville saine, en fait, la ville est malade, sinon en train de mourir. Sur le plan d’environnement, l’espace pour l’habitation est insuffisant. Des milliers de pauvres vivent dans les appartement subdivisés. La pollution de l’air est très sévère aussi. Cependant, le problème le plus sérieux est les manifestations contre l’amendement de la loi d’extradition qui ont lieu actuellement. La société est séparée par les deux positions politiques. Malheureusement, le gouvernement répond aux citoyens par envoyer la police pour traiter toute l’opposition avec violence.

However, the team partner in Hong Kong working on the same portfolio had a different comment on Hong Kong as a healthy city. Student 2 En général, je pense que Hong Kong est une ville saine. Dans les rues de cette ville, on peut voir beaucoup de gens marcher ou faire du vélo à différents endroits. On peut aussi trouver une variété de restaurants sains qui ne coûtent pas trop cher! Malheureusement, je crois que Hong Kong n’est pas en bonne santé mentale. La raison pour lequel est le niveau de stress en ville. De nos jours, beaucoup de citoyens, notamment les jeunes, sont stressés en raison de la charge de travail et de la situation politique.

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Fig. 5.1 a, b Two examples of detailed mind maps from one team group, extracted from one portfolio, both illustrate theoretical ideas that participants have about healthy cities.

Student 2, in the abstract above, shared that he thinks Hong Kong is a healthy city. These students added that we can see in the streets of Hong Kong people walking or riding bikes in different places. He chose to illustrate a healthy city by the number of restaurants and the low price of meals. Student 2 presented a problem in Hong Kong, mental health, underlining the level of stress in Hong Kong especially for young people in regard to the workload and the political situation.

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The e-portfolios allow a comparison of other partners’ point of view on the same topic. They allow also a comparison between the theoretical approach (the mind map) and a more contextual approach (the reflection on one’s environment). For Gillespie and Cornish (2010), the ‘inter’ builds the ‘intra’, and the integration of one’s perspective and others’ perspectives creates a dynamic co-construction dialogue where voices can develop and multiply. This process refers as well to interculturality where the co-enunciation and the co-construction permit diverse and rich encounters towards dialogue and awareness. Adallah-Pretceille (2003) underlines that language acquisition needs to be embedded in culture but the author warns us as well of the danger to compare cultures from an essentialism perspective where differences are more important that commonalities among individuals. The ILLSA project advocated for a non-essentialism perspective on culture in order for students to develop skills allowing them to move on a postmodern world where for Elliot and Urry: ‘such mobile lives demand flexibility, adaptability, reflexivity’ (2010: 4).

Social Awareness, Interculturality and Discourse Analysis In order to further observe the change of perspectives at work during the ILLSA project and to observe the possibilities of an enhanced social awareness, two focus groups were organized after the end of the ILLSA project. The benefits of organizing focus groups not only after but also before the implementation of a project will be discussed in the conclusion of this chapter. The two focus groups, with five participants each, lasted sixty minutes each and took place on Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic situation. All the data collected is anonymous and for research purposes only. The author acknowledges that focus groups organized on site versus on Zoom may not have the same research impact on collected data. However, at the present time, literature on this matter is not yet available. Therefore, we opted for the same process implemented in the previous research (Martinez, 2016), where intervention by the researcher during the focus group was minimized. The idea was to let the discourse emerge from the participants without prompts from the researcher. Dervin and Risager state that ‘we believe that holding the shed loosely with our research participants when working on identity and Interculturality is essential’ (2014: 33). To support interactions and dialogue, the following questions were asked at each focus group: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Please present yourself. Have you done a physical student exchange before and/or do you plan to do one after the situation with COVID-19 eases off. Why did you chose to study French language? Why did you chose to study in the city of the ILLSA project? Give three words that may describe the city before doing your project. Give three words that may describe the city after you did your project. Are there any changes to how you perceive this city now? If yes, which ones?

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8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

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For you, what is a healthy city? What other project do you wish you could implement in order to improve your environment and that of others? Do you think that you have improved your language competence after doing the ILLSA project? In which aspects? If yes, please give examples. Do you think that you have acquired greater confidence in working and collaborate with people that are overseas, from a different culture? If yes, please give examples. Do you think your competences in using digital tools for learning online were improved? If yes, please give examples. How would you rate this project? Would you recommend it to another student? If yes, why?

Thereafter, the participants interacted without the intervention of the researcher. The transcription of the focus group supports our methodology based on discourse analysis and dialogism. The authors opted to further analyse the impact of the ILLSA project on social awareness throughout the implementation of focus groups because as Makova recommends (in Dervin, 2015: 137), it is needed to analyse ‘the way in which discourse is constructed’. The author, in implementing two focus groups, wishes to create a safe place for the participants of the ILLSA project where discourses can emerge and reveal identities, emotions and perspectives at works in between individuals. Dialogism and discourse analysis are as well two methodology tools that the author refers to, to observe co-constructed discourse and perspectives at stake among participants of the focus groups. For Martin and Rose (2003), discourse analysis would let the researcher observe linguistic markers and meaning beyond these linguistic markers. For Vion (2010: 3), the theory of enunciative and dialogism is to research how the language is co-constructed between instances in order to comment the meaning addressed in between participants of a dialogue. When analysing the transcription of the focus groups, we can observe changes of perspectives in students’ discourse. For example, during the focus group 2, if we refer to Student 1, previously mentioned above, in answering the question ‘Give three words that may describe the city before doing your project’ and ‘Give three words that may describe the city after you did your project’, this student expresses: Student 1 For me, I’d say before the project, I would describe Hong Kong um as busy and Hong Kong people are a bit self-centered and also diversified. Yeah. And after the project, I would say, um, Hong Kong people are actually they they care for different communities. And also, I would say is Hong Kong is Busy and also um welcoming. Yeah.

This student reused the word ‘before’ and ‘after’ from the questions acknowledging a before and an after in the way he conceived Hong Kong. ‘Actually’ is also a marker of change of perspective here. The comments from the same student have in common the word ‘busy’, but it seems that one negative adjective ‘self-centred’ come in opposition of a second one ‘welcoming’. It is interesting to note that the question was about a city but the student answer with the terms ‘Hong Kong people’. There is a generalization in this student’ discourse on individuals that came as a group in order to define a city. Therefore, we could consider an enhanced awareness

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by a change of perspectives but regarding interculturality, a perspective on a group of person, all regrouped by the same adjectives category, could indicate a solid stance in opposition to liquid, mobile and intercultural encounters as described in reference to interculturality. To examine the dialogic at work in focus group 2, we will consider what the previous student says (before student 1) whom we call Student 3, and what the next student (after Student 1) says, whom we call Student 4. Student 3 And I find hard to answer this question because it is a project that was organized in the middle of the corona crisis. So for me it is easier to describe my city before Corona and during Corona so I will describe my city before Corona and during Corona. And so before Corona.it was a very larger city with a lot of people in the streets and we had also some demonstrations from from […] of future and we have a lot of bars and so people can go out, and afternoon, and so, and during corona the whole atmosphere changed and it has become more like that there there is not as much people on the street as before Corona and all the shops are closed and Now it is a little bit sad to go through the streets now.

Student 4 Yeah, I think my perspective my perceptions of Hong Kong is a little bit different from Student 1 and before I do this project. I think my perceptions of Hong Kong would be busy. Yes, of course, and Commercial, lot of commerce going on. And then there is this beautiful nature. Sorry, I can’t summarize in words, maybe phrases has beautiful nature, but after the project I’ve found that Hong Kong is not quite sustainable and not very aware of some possible measures to to to improve sustainability and yeah but Hong Kong is always busy. Yeah. That might be three phrases.

We underline that both students do not associate individuals with the city and that many changes of perspectives seem to have happened after the ILLSA project, although the use of some adjectives persists to describe Hong Kong such as ‘busy’. We underline as well the use by Student 4 of the term ‘perspective’ and ‘perception’. Here, this student acknowledged that his personal point of view may differ from others. Student 4 addressed others that may not voice the same perspective. The multiplicity of perspective and voice addressed in the discourse of Student 4 may indicate an enhanced awareness and a dynamic co-constructed dialogue which relate to interculturality. Besides, we note for Student 3 the need to relate to the context and the need to reframe the question as to describe ‘her city’ ‘after’ and ‘during corona’. This student is part of the Cycle 5 of the ILLSA project which was modified to better suit the COVID-19 pandemic context. During this final cycle of the ILLSA project, the e-portfolios were modified to reflect the COVID-19 pandemic context. It was also necessary to note that during this final cycle (Cycle 5), more synchronous activities were suggested to students such as Zoom meetings to support more dynamic, fluid and mobile encounters in order to create a space where multiple perspectives can emerge towards interculturality and social awareness. The students from this last cycle were as well asked to write a short paragraph on their Zoom meeting. One of the teams wrote on their e-portfolio about the other students from their team:

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Nous observons de grandes similarités dans les mesures qui ont été prises pour se protéger du COVID-19. Ils respectent les mesures et les instructions pour rester à la maison et de garder une distance avec les autres. Ils sont aussi conscient de l’importance de maintenir une bonne hygiène. Ils se lavent les mains souvent et toujours porte le masque quand ils sortent.

The discourse in place in this paragraph is revealing the desire to find commonalities between participants; however, the use of the pronoun ‘we’ and ‘them’ seems to trace a frontier between ‘us’ and ‘them’. For Hannerz (1999), this phenomenon corresponds to the otherization of others where others are always different and often stereotyped. Here lays the danger of stigmatization of the other when encounters occur. Nonetheless, we define in this chapter interculturality as a process where non-essentialist encounters develop in a co-constructed dialogue. These few examples of discourse analysis, from e-portfolios and from the focus group transcriptions, show how social awareness and interculturality might be enhanced by online learning activities where voices and multiple perspectives are encouraged to emerge from students’ discourse. While social awareness and interculturality do not always emerge from students discourse in e-portfolios and transcriptions of focus groups as observed, it is important to note that interculturality and social awareness are moving phenomena that are unstable as competence.

Conclusion In analysing e-portfolios and organizing focus group, it has been aimed to observe how the ILLSA project could have enhanced social awareness and interculturality for participants. E-portfolios, virtual mobility, collaboration and activities that create a safe place for multiple perspectives to emerge from participants, and in between participants, can be implemented to facilitate self-reflection towards social awareness and interculturality. Dervin and Layne advocate for ‘A renewed idea of interculturality, which takes place between multifaceted individuals in relation to historicity, intersubjectivity, and interactional contexts’ (2013: 2). The ILLSA project implemented activities that facilitated intersubjectivity and provided a discursive place where reflexivity could take place. These measures enhanced social awareness and interculturality. In organizing focus groups after ILLSA, our intention was to collect students’ discourse emerging in the dynamic of the group. Discourse analysis and theory of dialogism are important methodologic tools to support analysis and feedback on the ILLSA project. We hope that readers will find methodological support to implement future projects. However, we realize that some improvements could be put in place when implementing a project such as the ILLSA project. First, focus groups could be organized before and after the project, in order to collect more data and permit longitudinal analysis. Besides, synchronous activities might be one of the improvements regarding the implementation of a project like the ILLSA project, as mentioned in participants feedback, see Chap. 2. Synchronous communication could allow more dynamic co-constructed encounters where co-constructed reflexivity can take place so participants could conceive inter and intramultiple perspectives.

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From students’ discourse collected on the e-portfolios and from the focus groups transcriptions, we can observe discursive markers of multiples perspectives and nonessentialist encounters as mentioned previously. Yet, these phenomena are instable and alternate with more solid vision of others’ identities in participants’ discourse. We understand that these phenomena are always on the making and from one dialogic dialogue to another, and different participants’ discourse would be co-constructed with therefore different results on linguistic markers of enhanced social awareness and interculturality. Nonetheless, we would like to underline the need to prepare students before a (virtual) mobility as many scholars have recommended already (Abdallah-Pretceille, 2003; Dervin, 2008; Jackson, 2013; Martinez, 2016). AbdallahPretceille (2008: 224) declares that contact between individuals is not sufficient to guaranty intercultural encounters. A preparation prior to a (virtual) mobility on key concepts, as well as interactive activities taking place between participants before the (virtual) mobility, could better prepare participants to interculturality and social awareness, and these phenomena could better develop during and after the implementation of a project such as the ILLSA project.

References Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2003). Former et éduquer en contexte hétérogène. Pour un humanisme du divers. Anthropos. Abdallah-Pretceille, M. (2008). Mobilité sans conscience… In F. Dervin, M. et Byram, (Eds.), Echanges et mobilités académiques. Quel Bilan? (pp. 215–233). L’Harmattan. Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Polity Press. Dervin, F. (2008). Métamorphoses identitaires en situation de mobilité. University of Turku. Dervin, F. (2015). Introduction. In F. Dervin (Ed.), Analyser l’identité (pp. 4–14). L’Harmattan. Dervin, F., & Layne, H. (2013). A guide to interculturality for international and exchange students: an example of Hospitality? J. Multicult. Discours., 8(1), 1–19. Dervin, F., & Risager, K. (2014). Researching Identity and Interculturality. Routledge. Dervin, F. & Liddicoat, A. J. (2013). Introduction: linguistics for intercultural education. In Dervin, F. & Liddicoat, A. J. (Eds.), Linguistics for intercultural education. Language Learning & language teaching (pp. 1–25). John Benjamins Elliot, A., & Urry, J. (2010). Mobilie lives. Routledge. Gillespie, A. & Cornish, F. (2010). Intersubjectivity: towards a dialogical analysis. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 40(1), 19–46. Available on eprints.lse.ac.uk/38709 (visited on February 2, 2015). Hannerz, U. (1999). Reflections on varieties of culturespeak. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(3), 393–407. Jackson, J. (2013). Education abroad. In J. Jackson, (Ed.), The Routledge of Language and Intercultural Communication (pp. 449–464). Madhavi, T. P. (2019). Importance of social media to create environmental awareness in sustainable higher education system. In Narula, S., Rai, S., & Sharma, A. (Eds.), Environmental Awareness and the Role of Social Media (pp. 72–81). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-52918.ch004 Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: meaning behind the clause. Continuum. Martinez, V. (2016). Construction de l’Est et de l’Ouest : vers des compétences interculturelles. Un exemple de recherche à Hong-Kong en situation de mobilité académique. University of Turku. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-29-6339-3 Vion, R. (2010). Polyphonie énonciative et dialogisme. Actes du Colloque International Dialogisme: langue, discours, 8–10 September 2010. Montpellier, France.

Chapter 6

A Student’s Account of Her ILLSA Experience

Introduction The present study describes and analyses each of the phases that made up the Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness (ILLSA) project, and this was developed by a partnership between the Hong Kong Baptist University, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the University of Hong Kong. [According to the ILLSA Website] ‘This academic collaboration, together with the partnership of a number of European Universities has made possible the rapid internationalization of the project’. The main objectives of the project are to provide a platform for the practice and consequent strengthening of learners’ linguistic skills in a foreign language, to deepen awareness of issues related to ‘healthy cities’ and to encourage research, communication and exchange of ideas among the participants through the four project languages: Spanish, German, Italian and French. The desired result is the creation of a Group Community in which one’s linguistic autonomy and involvement in the issue of sustainability can grow. Two reasons led me to participate in this project: first, the opportunity to practice and improve my language skills in Spanish; second my growing interest on the issues of sustainability, physical and mental health, cultural diversity and environmental protection. This report is divided into four chapters: the first introduces the project and a general description of its structure [not translated]. The second section relates my personal experience: the first phase of the project, the topics covered, the group work and my own contribution. The third section focuses on the second phase, in which I describe our choice of a specific topic addressed by the research work and how we developed it. The fourth chapter focuses on the most concrete part of the project, namely the community project, its planning, organization and implementation by the By Veronica Bordini (translated from the Italian by R. López-Ozieblo, the original can be found in the Appendix). © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4_6

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group. I conclude with my comments on the results of our project. An appendix with screenshots of the portfolio slides and WhatsApp conversations is also included [see the Italian version].

The ILLSA Project [As This Section Described the Project, It Has Not Been Translated] Introduction to My Experience The Assignment to Group 6 and the First Week of Work After registering for the project, I was contacted by email by the coordinators of the ILLSA team, who introduced me to group six. The Hong Kong team was made up by three female students from Hong Kong Baptist University: D., R. and N. The European team was made up by two Dutch students, from The Hague, attending The Hague University of Applied Sciences: H. and RR., and me, a student of the course ‘Modern Civilization and Foreign Languages’ of the University of Parma. The first person I came into contact with was RR., who sent an email asking for my cell phone number in order to create a WhatsApp group together with the other group members. Within a few hours, we had established contact with each other and exchanged our first ideas about the project; we were very excited to start this journey together. The next thing to do was to complete the registration for FutureLearn, following which we could start the activities for the first week. We received an email from the ILLSA team specifying the name of the course to enrol in: ‘Healthy Cities: Spring 2019’, also lasting eight weeks. Access was very easy for everyone, and no problems were encountered; after selecting the Spanish language course, we were ready to start. The first module of the course presented an overview with the main course objectives: to improve our vocabulary and grow our awareness of ‘healthy cities’, as well as our confidence in the use of the foreign language to communicate during the subject. To help us on this journey, there were exercises, texts and videos regarding the following topics: transport, quality of life, nutrition, physical activity and diversity in healthy cities. During this course, not only would we increase our existing language skills, but we would also have the opportunity to exchange our views with other university students in Hong Kong and European cities, thus expanding our perspective as part of the goal of global awareness. The first week included the exercise ‘Meet & greet!’, and this was described in English to ensure all participants understood it. The task was to create a post in the target language, made public to all course participants, to share some general information about ourselves. The reference questions were the following:

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‘Who are you and where on the globe can we find you right now? What is your native language and which other ones do you speak? What are your hobbies and interests? What is your absolute favourite thing about the city you live in?’

The most beautiful and inspiring thing was to read hundreds of comments by many students of different origin, all written in different languages. We all shared a small part of ourselves, introducing ourselves and expressing our interests. I copy below four examples, one for each language group. Hallo, zusammen! Ich heiße Y. Ich bin 22 Jahre alt. Ich komme aus Taiwan und wohne in Taipeh. Meine Muttersprache ist Mandarine. Ich spreche auch Englisch, Polnisch und natürlich Deutsch. Ich höre Musik gern. Meine Lieblingssache in Taipeh ist das praktische Verkehrsmittelsystem. Ciao a tutti! Mi chiamo V., ma tutti mi chiamano V. Vengo dal Madagascar, un’isola dell’oceano Indiano. La mia lingua madre è il malgascio, la nostra lingua ufficiale è il francese e ora per studiare mi servo della lingua italiana. Parlo un po’ anche l’inglese. Sono arrivata in Italia 7 mesi fa per studiare scienze politiche. Sono al primo anno nell’università di Sophia che si trova in una città chiamata "Loppiano". La cosa che mi piace di più di questa città in cui vivo è la tranquillità e l’ambiente. Vivo in un luogo dove l’aria è fresca. Non c’è ancora inquinamento. Mi piace viaggiare, cucinare e ascoltare la musica. Salut! Je m’apelle AA., j’ai 28 ans. J’habite à Lunebourg, une petite ville près de Hambourg, dans le nord d’Allemagne. À Lunebourg, j’aime la belle vieille ville historique, les nombreux petits cafés accueillants et la quantité d’espaces verts. À l’université de Lunebourg, j’étudie les sciences de la durabilité, les sciences de l’espace et la philosophie. J’aime beaucoup apprendre des nouvelles langues. En plus de l’anglais, je parle un peu chinois, russe et français. Dans mon temps libre, j’aime faire du jogging ou de la natation et chanter dans une chorale. Hola! Me llamo J., tengo 19 años (20 en dos semanas!) y vivo en La Haya. Estudio “European Studies” en La Universidad en La Haya y tengo clases de Español. Hablo Holandés, Inglés, Español y un poco de Francés. Viví en Valencia durante 4 meses para aprender Español porque no era posible en mi escuela secundaria. Mis aficiones son salir con amigos, viajar y ver series. Me gusta conocer a nueva gente de culturas diferentes y entonces este proyecto me gusta mucho!

This activity gave us an idea of how this project may really have been geared towards internationalization, the sharing thoughts and ideas and the development of a sense of community. Our ILLSA coordinator and assistant, Professor Billy TP Chan, replied to all the students who commented in Spanish, welcoming us to this project and showing us his particular interest in wanting to interact with us as much as possible. He asked us for more information about our cities and encouraged us to explore relevant and interesting information through the FutureLearn discussion but also during the creation of the portfolio. The first activity of the latter, in fact, was very similar to that of ‘FutureLearn’, as it too asked group members to introduce themselves in the target language. I added my presentation: Hola, me llamo Veronica y tengo 23 años. Soy de Italia y hablo italiano, inglés, español y alemán. Vivo en Carpi, que es una pequeña ciudad en la región de ‘Emilia-Romagna’, en el norte del país. Estudio ‘Lenguas Extranjeras’ en la Universidad de Parma, otra ciudad de la misma región. Mi pasión más grande es viajar. El español es mi idioma favorito, me

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6 A Student’s Account of Her ILLSA Experience encanta el sonido, cómo habla la gente, y también el país. De hecho, decidí estudiar en España durante seis meses a través del proyecto Erasmus, y me enamoré totalmente.

My European group members RR. and N. also added theirs: Hola, soy RR. y tengo 22 años. Soy de Holanda y hablo holandés, inglés, español y un poco de italiano. Me encanta viajar. Vivo cerca de la ciudad de Utrecht. Estudio español porque hay tantos hermosos países de habla española y personas que me gustaría conocer a través de este idioma. Mi ciudad favorita es por supuesto La Habana. La ciudad tiene un ambiente alegre y caribeño. Hola, me llamo N. Tengo 20 años y soy holandesa. Hablo holandés, inglés y español. Vivo en Leiden que está situado cerca de La Haya. Voy al gimnasio 6 veces por semana y me encanta viajar también. Estudio español porque viví en España durante siete meses y me enamoré de la lengua.

Within the section for the Hong Kong team D. and R. added their presentations: Hola, me llamo D. y tengo 21 años. Soy de Hong Kong. Hablo cantonés, mandarín, inglés y un poco de español. Estoy estudiando traducción en la Universidad Baptist porque me encanta aprender idiomas. Mi actividad favorita es viajar. Espero conocer la cultura de otros países. También espero que a todos les pueda gustar la cultura de Hong Kong. Es una ciudad con mucha diversión. Hola, me llamo R. y tengo 21 años. Soy de Hong Kong. Hablo cantonés, mandarín, inglés y un poco de español. Lo mismo como Daisy, estudio traducción en la Universidad Baptist. Espero aprender más sobre idiomas y comunicación. Me encanta viajar y ver películas. Porque puedo aprender más sobre los otros países y sus normas. Por supuesto, espero quedarme en los lugares que me gustan también. Me encanta el United Kindom y voy a pasar mi verano allí.

This activity gave me the opportunity to get to know my group members better. After this first contact, the following activity consisted of placing our locations on a shared map. It is truly encouraging to see how large the physical distance between us is, but how physical distance is actually irrelevant, since we still have the opportunity to work together and to exchange different points of view and our cultures, using our target language knowledge and skills. In this case, Spanish being our cultural glue. The last activity of the first week included presenting the city in which we live through an infographic. RR. and N. presented their city, The Hague, together: La capital de los Países Bajos es Amsterdam. Holanda es uno de los pocos países donde el gobierno no está situado en la capital. El gobierno está situado en La Haya. Organizaciones internacionales como la Corte Internacional de Justicia y la Organización para la Prohibición de las Armas Químicas también están situado en La Haya y por eso La Haya es una ciudad muy importante. Nuestra universidad también se encuentra en La Haya y eso es perfecto porque uno de los platos principales es la política. La Haya es nuestra (RR. y N.) ciudad durante este proyecto.

In the same section of the portfolio, I also added my presentation about Parma, which I selected for the project as it is the city where I live now during my university studies: Parma es la ciudad donde se encuentra mi universidad y será también la de este proyecto. Es la segunda ciudad más grande de mi región, sede de la Autoridad Europea de Seguridad

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Alimentaria y de la Autoridad de la cuenca de distrito del río Po. Es sede también de un departamento de investigaciones científicas. En 2015 recibió el reconocimiento de ‘Ciudad creativa UNESCO para la gastronomía’, conocida en todo el mundo por sus productos como el ‘Parmigiano-Reggiano’ y el ‘Prosciutto di Parma’. El arte y la música también son valores importantes que caracterizan a esta ciudad: cada año en el mes de octubre se celebra el ‘Festival Verdi’ y en el 16 de febrero de 2018 Parma fue nombrada capital italiana de la cultura para el año 2020.

D. and R., two of the Hong Kong members of my group, posted their description of Hong Kong. Hong Kong se encuentra en el sureste de China. Es uno de los lugares más ricos y más desarrollados de China e incluso del mundo. Hay mucha gente en Hong Kong. La población de Hong Kong alcanzó los 7 millones en 2009. La gente de Hong Kong habla principalmente cantonés. Algunos también hablan inglés y mandarín. A muchos turistas les encanta visitar a Hong Kong. Se caracteriza por ser un híbrido de Oriente y Occidente. Especialmente, Hong Kong es conocido como ‘el paraíso de la comida’ donde puedes disfrutar de diferentes cocinas. Además, hay una red de transporte altamente sofisticada. Es conveniente para visitar los paisajes hermosos en Hong Kong

For me, this activity presented a brief virtual introduction to these new cities, which I do not know but I would very much like to visit. Our curiosity grew, including our desire to cooperate and interact.

The Second Week and the Change to Group 3 The activities for the second week on the FutureLearn platform sought to expand vocabulary relating to sustainability. A general definition of a sustainable city was given as. Una ciudad saludable es aquella que se compromete a ofrecer como prioridad un entorno saludable y un proceso continuo de desarrollo para conseguir y mantener la salud. Según el Preámbulo de la Constitución de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), “la salud es un estado de completo bienestar físico, mental y social, y no solamente la ausencia de afecciones o enfermedades”. Bajo esta definición, el concepto de salud no solo toma en cuenta los factores genéticos y curativos sino también los aspectos socio-económicos y ambientales. [ILLSA Futurelearn site, text adapted from WHO].

In addition, the main objectives of the Network of European Healthy Cities were given as. la equidad, la promoción de la salud, la participación comunitaria, la colaboración intersectorial, la atención primaria, la cooperación internacional [ILLSA FutureLearn site, text adapted from WHO European Healthy Cities].

After this presentation, there was a quiz to check our understanding, and this was followed by a test of vocabulary, consisting of six questions about the meaning of certain terms and meanings. They are all very useful activities both to strengthen our linguistic skills and to expand our knowledge of words, as well as to deepen our understanding of the topics covered.

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Meanwhile, for the portfolio, we are asked to express an opinion about our city: whether we live in a healthy city. Afterwards, we had to work as a team to create a mind map on the general concept of healthy cities. The software suggested in the portfolio, iMindMap, allowed us to create a virtual mind map and then attach it to the slide. In the portfolio section for the European team, I expressed my opinion about the city of Parma: Pienso que Parma no es una ciudad totalmente saludable. En 2018 se ha analizado que la contaminación del aire en la región de Parma, Emilia-Romagna, ha alcanzado niveles muy peligrosos, y las ciudades más grandes son las que tienen los peores resultados. Los transportes urbanos en la ciudad son muchos, pero ninguno es ecológico, así que todavía sube la contaminación. Los alimentos son buenos, pero en Italia también existen las ganaderías intensivas, así que no siempre sabemos por cierto lo que vamos a comer, si los productos tienen alta calidad o no. Por el otro lado, afortunadamente en Parma hay muchos parques y muchas zonas verdes, hay muchos productos de alta calidad (sabiendo elegirlos), la ciudad es sede de la Autoridad Europea de Seguridad Alimentaria y la calidad de la vida es alta, porque Parma se encuentra en la sexta posición de la graduatoria italiana.

D., from the Hong Kong team, posted: Pienso que Hong Kong no es una ciudad saludable porque hay demasiados edificios altos (especialmente los comerciales y residenciales) pero muy pocas tierras verdes. Además, la red de transporte sofisticada empeora la calidad del aire. Apenas podemos respirar aire fresco. También es uno de los factores que empeoran el calentamiento global. Hong Kong será mejor con más árboles plantados.

While R. stated: Es malo que Hong Kong no sea realmente una ciudad saludable. La gente en Hong Kong trabaja largas horas y con frecuencia tiene una gran carga de trabajo. Tienen poco tiempo para una buena comida y ejercicio. Además, la calidad del aire es mala en Hong Kong porque el transporte está ocupado todo el tiempo. Tampoco hay suficientes medidas gubernamentales para proteger el medio ambiente.

Following this first exchange of views and before I could proceed further, I was contacted by email by our coordinator, Billy, who asked me if I would be interested in changing groups. My current one had six members, three from Europe and another three from Hong Kong, while Group 3, the one I was being asked to join, only had one student from Europe and two other members from Hong Kong. I agreed to the change and transferred all the texts I had already written and added to the previous portfolio to that of new group. Professor Billy also added me to a new WhatsApp group, and I got to know my new European partner: A. This was her introduction in the new portfolio: Hola, soy A. y tengo diecinueve años. Soy de California en los Estados Unidos pero vivo en Texas. Hablo inglés y un poco de español. Me gusta probar nuevas cosas. Para este semestre, vivo en Sevilla, España, para estudiar. Estudio español porque me gusta el idioma y muchas personas hablan este idioma en los Estados Unidos. Mi ciudad favorita es Sevilla porque la ciudad es muy interesante y bonita.

We started writing messages and were immediately in harmony, both with a great desire to work together. We helped each other a lot in the creation of the infographic on our cities, Parma and Seville, although it was an individual task. We

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created them through the Website: https://www.canva.com/it_it/creare/infografiche/. We exchanged many messages sharing our ideas, then moved on to developing the mind map. We used the resources and information obtained from FutureLearn for that week to create the map image, and then, we attached it to one slide. To conclude the activities for the second week, I read A.’s comment about the city of Seville, and I must say that she made me very curious, since she expressed a much more positive opinion than the one I had of the city and also than other comments I had come across on Seville: Creo que Sevilla es una ciudad saludable porque mucha gente utiliza el transporte público, va montado en bicicleta, y camina. No hay mucho smog en el aire. Todas las mañanas, los trabajadores de las tiendas limpian el suelo por la basura. Hay papeleras de reciclaje en la mayoría de los lugares. También hay una gran cantidad de productos frescos para elegir.

Our Research on Life Quality The Third Week and Choosing a Subject to Research During the third week, we commenced the second phase of the project. A. and I were very enthusiastic, full of ideas and initiatives. We began with the FutureLearn vocabulary activities. There were three articles to read and at the end of each, a text comprehension quiz. The first article was about an app, Ciclogreen, that encourages sustainable mobility. The app transforms the kilometres that people travel in a sustainable way (on foot, by bike or by public transport) into points that can be exchanged for free items or for discounts on some products and services. According to the source, the newspaper El País, 15,000 users have already participated in the scheme. The second article, from the same source, ‘Cuatro kilos más por ir a trabajar en coche en lugar de en bici’ [Four kilos more as a consequence of commuting by car and not by bike] describes a study carried out by seven European capitals about the relationship between health and public transport use. The results indicate that people who routinely travel by cars weigh, on average, four kilos more than those who travel by bicycle, warning us that a sedentary lifestyle kills about five million people per year and increases the risk of chronic diseases such as cancer, heart attacks and strokes. The third and final article, once again taken from the newspaper El País, speaks of ‘el drama de los the ancianos abandonados por sus familias en un hospital’ [the drama of old people being abandoned by their families in hospitals]. That is, how elderly people are a burden on their family, to the point of being left completely alone in hospitals, with no one to look after them except for doctors and nurses. At the end of the third week’s activities, we were asked to write a new word we had learned through each article. I wrote for the first article the word ‘reto’, which meant ‘challenge’; the verb ‘concienciar’, which means ‘to sensitize, to take conscience’; and for the third ‘dar de alta’, which means ‘to discharge someone’. A. added the verb ‘engañar’, meaning to ‘deceive’; for the second article the noun

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‘desplazamiento’, which means ‘displacement’; and for the last article the adjective ‘sangrante’, ‘bleeding’.1 Moving onto the portfolio work, A. and I had to start our research phase. There were four different themes, but we had to choose only one for our work. The four research topics were el transporte, la calidad de la vida, la salud y nutrición, la diversidad [transport, quality of life, health and nutrition and diversity]. We began to interact on WhatsApp. A. was very interested both in the topics of quality of life topic and in diversity, but I was very undecided because I wanted to have a better understanding of them all. In the end, we decided, by mutual agreement, that what inspired us most was the second topic: calidad de vida. This was to be the topic for the social project to be carried out during the third phase. After making our decision, we began the readings assigned for that topic. There were two articles, the first was the one from the FutureLearn platform, ‘Cuatro kilos más por ir a trabajar en coche en lugar de en bic’, which we had already read and analysed. The second was an article entitled ‘¿A qué dedican los españoles su tiempo libre?’ [What do Spanish people do during their free time?], which reported on the results of a study by the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) [Center for Sociological Research], researching the most popular activities by Spanish citizens in their spare time. During rest days, 56.7% of the interviewed dedicate their time to their families and for 55%, the priority is to rest; other activities considered important are seeing friends and having fun. When referring to free time in general, people prefer to take a walk and watch television, 71.8% and 68.9% of interviewees, respectively; in third and fourth place are listening to music and reading books, followed by surfing the internet and using social networks. With regard to travelling, the Spanish prefer to vary their destinations (77.9%) and make long journeys of 5–14 days (30%) and shorter ones of 3 or 4 days (27.6%). In addition, 12.7% are unable to travel due to health, economic or family reasons. The article concludes with interviewees’ opinions after a period of vacation, as they return to normal life. The majority are neutral about returning to their routines (37.5%), 32.1% are happy to go back to these, 21.7% fear having to face reality again, and only 2.3% have a sense of indolence, discomfort or resignation. Having completed the reading activity, the project asked us to research the views of the residents of our cities. We created a questionnaire with a list of ten aspects we considered important in order to be able to lead a good quality of life in our cities. Following the creation of the questionnaire, the next step was to ask about 15–20 friends and/or family members to classify the importance of each aspect on a scale of 1–10, depending on their importance. To finish, we had to compare the three most salient aspects and state our conclusion in one slide to be added to the portfolio.

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Tam (2009).

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The Fourth Week and the Results of the Research Questionnaire The FutureLearn activities for the fourth week included reading four articles, each accompanied by a dozen multiple choice questions to test our understanding of the text. The first article was the one previously mentioned ‘¿A qué dedican los españoles su tiempo libre?’; the second article, taken from the Website of the El País magazine, ‘Las ciudades, cada vez más cerca’ [Closer cities] discussed how new means of transport such as high-speed trains have brought Spanish cities closer together. The third article talked about childhood obesity, encouraging cities to become more healthy to fight child obesity. Today’s diets, rich in calories, together with the lack of outdoor spaces and time constraints to exercise are among the main causes that underlie obesity. The last article related to gender diversity; it was obtained once again from the Website of the newspaper El País and was entitled: ‘Machismo a la vuelta de cada esquina’ [Machismo in every corner]. The main theme was that women are afraid because they are repeatedly victims of harassment and aggression; many women feel they have to lower their skirt to cover their legs, go around in groups or pretend to be on the phone when they meet ‘strange’ people on the street. This shows the fear of being subject to violence, whether physical or as an invasion of their privacy, and unfortunately, this, above all, affects young girls between 11 and 17 years old that is to say, still adolescents. All this violence places women in a position of curtailed freedom, and for this reason, public institutions should intervene, as stated in the article by the director general of Prevención y Atención a la Violencia de Genero [Prevention and Awareness of Gender Violence] of the Madrid city administration, María Naredo. Society must not remain silent, and on the contrary, it must react, because certain rights must be protected. At the end of this reading activity, FutureLearn added one last vocabulary task, similar to the one we did last week. For the first reading, I listed the verb ‘encoger’, which means ‘shrink’; for the second article, I added the verb ‘encabezar’, which means ‘direct or lead’; for the third, the adjective ‘obesogenic’, which refers to ‘a set of external factors which can lead us to an overweight or obesity condition’2 ; and finally, for the last article, the phrase ‘echar piropos’, which means to ‘compliment’. For the first article, A. transcribed the verb ‘dinamizar’, which means ‘to motivate’; for the second she added the word ‘desgana’, meaning ‘reluctance’; for the third reading the word ‘pautas’, meaning of ‘rules’; and finally, for the last article, the word ‘acoso’, which means ‘harassment’.3 For the portfolio, A. and I started creating our questionnaire. Thanks to WhatsApp, we were able to stay in touch and exchange our ideas about what aspects to cover with regards how to maintain a good quality of life. The ones that came to my mind and that I immediately shared with my partner, asking for her opinion, were: hacer deporte y movimiento, seguir una dieta de alimentación sana, hacer reciclaje [to exercise and 2

‘Ambiente obesogénico, qué es y cómo controlarlo para comer más sano’ [online]. Accessed from: https://www.directoalpaladar.com/salud/ambiente-obesogenico-que-es-y-como-controlarlopara-comer-mas-sano [1 November 2019]. 3 Tam (2009).

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to move, follow a healthy diet and to recycle]. A. liked my ideas right away and added three other aspects that she thought were important: el acceso a la educación, buena comunicación, equilibrio saludable entre trabajo y vida [access to education, good communication and work–life balance]. I immediately replied telling her that I agreed and together we then added the remaining aspects to include in our questionnaire: el respeto por el ambiente, el compromiso cívico, construir relaciones y tener seguridad y refugio [respect for the environment, civic compromise, relationship building and access to safe environments and to shelter]. At this point, having all the necessary elements for the questionnaire, we decide to start its creation on Google, and we exchange our email addresses so that we could both share and edit it. The title of the questionnaire was to be ‘La Calidad de la Vida’ [quality of life]; the importance of every aspect we had identified was to be evaluated on a 1 to 10 scale. Once finished, we copied the link of the questionnaire and sent it to a dozen friends and family members each, and we waited for the results. After a couple of days, we had received answers from about twenty people, we attached the image of the results to a slide in the portfolio, and after examining them, we wrote our conclusion: Según los resultados de nuestro cuestionario, las dos cualidades más importantes para una buena calidad de vida son: acceso a la educación y un equilibrio saludable entre el trabajo y la vida. El tercero más importante es un vínculo entre tener seguridad y refugio, respeto por el medio ambiente, buena comunicación y acceso para encontrar información. Estos aspectos le permitirán vivir una vida educada, saludable y segura. Estamos de acuerdo con los resultados y creemos que estos pueden llevar a trabajar sobre los otros aspectos que hemos enumerado. Sin embargo, pensamos que todos los aspectos que surgieron son importantes para una vida ideal.

Team Project The Fifth and Sixth Weeks: The Idea for the Social Project The third phase began in the fifth week. On the FutureLearn platform, the type of activity changed to four different videos, at the end of which there was a content comprehension test. The first video was about el tiempo libre [spare time], the second was titled ‘Antes y ahora’ [before and now] and dealt with industrial and technological changes that have taken place in cities; the third, ‘Las ciudades más baratas de España’ [the cheapest cities in Spain], presented an analysis of cities by cost of living, and the last video referred to cultural diversity. The activities relating to the sixth week were writing practice. The first exercise asked us to summarize, in between 80 and 100 words, the types of transport available in our cities, what we liked and disliked about public transport and five aspects relating to the future of transport. A. wrote. En mi ciudad, el transporte público es caracterizado por tranvías, el metro, autobuses, coches, y bicicletas. El gran sistema de transporte público hace que sea más fácil moverse por la ciudad. Tienen pases que usted puede comprar que le permiten acceder a un precio más

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barato. Para mi universidad, el uso de una bicicleta es más fácil para el transporte, sin embargo, sin el pase es muy caro. En el futuro, creo que mi ciudad tendrá una estación de metro más extensa. Nos daría más acceso a otras partes de la ciudad. Los precios se volverán más baratos y los tiempos de viaje se volverán más rápidos. Además, los buses se volverán más rápidos y serán un medio de transporte preferido.

I wrote En Parma los transportes principales son los trenes, los autobúses y los trolebúses. Yo viajo mucho por tren y también me gusta porque me relaja, me encanta ver los paisajes escuchando buena música mientras estoy viajando. La única pena de los trenes es que muy a menudo están de retraso. Los autobúses y trolebúses me gustan poco, porque siempre están llenos de gente y a menudo hay malos olores. En el futuro creo y espero que estarán transportes más ecológicos, que serán más rápidos y también más puntuales.

The instructions for the second exercise were ‘El gobierno piensa invertir e500 millones para mejorar tu ciudad. Debes escribir una carta para explicar cómo usar este dinero para mejorar las condiciones de vida en tu ciudad’ [government is thinking about investing 500 million Euros to improve your city. Write a letter to explain how this money should be used to improve conditions in your city]. I wrote Estimados ciudadanos, finalmente nuestro gobierno quiere ayudarnos a mejorar las condiciones de vida de nuestra ciudad, por esto yo querría expresaros las ideas centrales que tengo para nuestra comunidad. Primero, agrandaría y aumentaría las zonas verdes en la ciudad, para mejorar el impacto ambiental y para ofrecer la posibilidad a las personas de hacer más deporte y un lugar de relajación. Segundo, organizaría jornadas dedicadas al trabajo voluntario, para que las personas se unan y trabajen juntas conociendo qué ventajas preciosas puede ofrecer el trabajo en grupo y ayudar a los otros, ofreciendo un buen ejemplo para toda la población. Tercero, programaría eventos culturales por cada fin de semana, de cualquier tipología, para promover la cultura y la curiosidad. Cuarto, un día por semana no haría circular los coches por el centro, solamente podrían circular transportes ecológicos, para salvaguardar el ambiente y la salud. Quinto, construiría bares, discotecas y otros edificios donde para entrar es obligatorio dejar el móvil afuera, para que se aprenda de verdad qué bueno es relacionarse con los otros entreteniendo una buena conversación. Un saludo cordial, Veronica.

The third exercise asked us to ‘Participas en una campaña para promover la dieta sana en tu ciudad. Una persona con problemas de obesidad te ha escrito para pedirte consejos. Escribe un correo electrónico a esta persona’ [you are participating in a campaign to promote a healthy diet in your city. A person with obesity-related health problems has written to you to ask for your advice. Write an email to this person]; A. wrote Hola, recibí su mensaje sobre la necesidad de consejo y estoy contenta de que usted está pidiendo. Necesitas comenzar una rutina de ejercicios. No tiene que ser muy intensa al principio, pero, ir a caminar alrededor de su ciudad, pasear a su perro al parque, y más. Comience pequeño y luego trabaje su camino paso a paso. Es importante comer bien y mantenerse alejado de demasiados dulces. Céntrese en comer grasas saludables como el aceite de oliva y los aguacates en lugar de la mantequilla y la manteca. Además, observe el tamaño de su porción. Espero que este consejo te ayude y te deseo lo mejor. Sinceramente, A.

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I wrote Buenos días señor, he leído su correo y me alegrará mucho ayudarle para su dieta. Primera cosa: elimine la mayoría de los azúcares, porque molestan al intestino. La dieta tiene que ser equilibrada y muy variada, por eso no coma una comida particular muchas veces durante la semana. Varie siempre. Abunde de fruta y verduras, que contienen fibras y beba mucha agua durante todo el día. No vaya a cenar al restaurante más de una vez por semana, y aquella también recuérdese de no exagerar. El deporte es fundamental para una dieta regular. Haga ejercicios en el gimnasio, a lo mejor con un entrenador personal. Haga ejercicios en el parque también, camine mucho, si vive en un piso alto no tome el ascensor, haga siempre las escaleras. Si le gusta, utilize mucho la bicicleta. Nadar y correr también son actividades muy aconsejadas, sobretodo por el corazón, por lo que una persona con problemas de obesidad tiene que preocuparse. Por problemas adicionales, consulte al médico. Un saludo cordial, Veronica.

Having finished the platform activities, A. and I started to interact through WhatsApp to develop a good idea for our proyecto social [social project]. A. proposed we select one aspect related to calidad de la vida [quality of life] to use it as a base from which to develop a project idea. I agreed, so we reviewed our questionnaire and realized that the aspect of acceso a la educación [access to education] was the one considered to be the most important by the respondents. At this point, we had an idea: why not make small public libraries? Small boxes distributed throughout the city for people to donate and exchange books, articles and magazines. People could place scientific articles about the climate change emergency, how to follow a healthy diet, and advertise events or voluntary activities. The idea fascinated us, and A. told me that in America there are already public boxes of this type in some areas, showing me some photos in the chat; we believed we had made the right choice.

The Last Two Weeks: Our Social Project in Action We decided to develop this idea, and together we composed a text justifying our choice: Como los resultados de nuestro cuestionario subrayan que el acceso a la educación es la cualidad más importante para una buena calidad de la vida, hemos decidido realizar nuestro proyecto social relacionándolo con ese objetivo: aumentar el nivel de acceso a la educación entre toda nuestra población. Nuestro proyecto social desarrolla la idea de poner estanterías en lugares públicos de nuestras ciudades, en las que la gente podría donar y cambiar libros, revistas, papeles informativos sobre la emergencia climática que estamos viviendo, sobre el respeto por el ambiente y muchos otros temas, para que cualquier persona tenga la posibilidad de aumentar y profundizar su propia cultura, su propia conciencia y compartirla con su propia comunidad.

We added this description of our Proyecto social to the last slide of the portfolio: Nuestra idea es poner estas estanterías en los lugares más comunes, públicos, donde la gente puede encontrarlas fácilmente, y donde cualquier persona puede alcanzarlas sin ningún problema. Creemos que puede ser también una buena opción para relacionarse con los otros y compartir ideas, a lo mejor escribiendo dentro de los libros algunas notas importantes según nuestra opinión, o subrayando algunas frases, temas y palabras. El objetivo central,

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sin embargo, es de promover un alto nivel de educación alcanzable para todos. Además, si alguien prefiere ver una película en vez de leer un libro, podría buscar algunos materiales multimediales dentro de las mismas estanterías; se podrían introducir DVD, CD y todo lo que alguien piense que merece la pena compartir con los otros.

After completing our portfolio, we felt happy and satisfied with our work and were ready to conclude the latest activities on the FutureLearn. For the seventh week, there were four more articles to read with a number of missing words which we had to add. It was a stimulating exercise that further strengthened our language skills. The topics of the articles were la batalla contra el CO2 , el tiempo libre de los españoles, el desayuno en España, el dilema de ser chino y nacer en España [the battle against CO2, the free time of the Spanish people, breakfast in Spain and the dilemma of being a Chinese born in Spain]. The eighth week included a goodbye and thank you message from the project team wishing us good luck with our studies and hoping that FutureLearn had increased and improved our language skills.

Conclusion [Translated from Spanish] The ILLSA project has been an extraordinary opportunity that has allowed me to achieve some of the most important goals of a foreign language student like myself. By completing this project, I feel able to use Spanish as a medium to conduct research and to communicate with others. I can demonstrate having advanced knowledge of the project topics in the language I have chosen. I have managed to learn to identify the key problems within a topic and to find possible solutions by collaborating with my colleagues within a multicultural environment, all by using Spanish as the language of communication and by continuing to practice and reinforcing our language skills. I have learned together with my colleague A. to apply research techniques for the development of a social awareness project. ILLSA is a project that teaches the true meaning of teamwork within a multicultural environment, promoting internationalization, the practice of the language, reinforcing confidence in it, promoting initiatives and raising the level of our personal skills. Alongside all of this, there has also been a deepening of our understanding of the topic of healthy cities and all the sub-themes that surround it. Each stage allowed us to gradually increase our own language and social awareness skills. The tasks on the digital platform FutureLearn were excellent training, because through the exploration of new topics, new words, sayings and technicalities could be learned. There is training in reading, writing, listening to audio-visual material and also to speech, thanks to the group work developed through the portfolio exercises. We have had the opportunity to exchange ideas, opinions, information about unknown cities and also about different cultures, examining a very important and current topic for everyone and all our communities, practicing and improving the foreign language we have chosen.

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The ILLSA project has been the meeting point of many young people, students and lovers of languages and cultures with a special desire to cooperate and learn about different situations in the world. We have all had the opportunity to be part of this wonderful team, representative of the innovation and cultivation of new and greater global interests. We are all witnesses to the advantages and enrichments that this project can offer, especially with regard to the evolution of our communicative skills. For this reason, I would like to thank my tutor, Professor María Joaquina Valero Gisbert, for the opportunity offered and for having supported me throughout the work. In addition, I would like to thank my whole family, for accompanying me and supporting me throughout my university stage, my boyfriend and my friends for always being present and supporting me at all times.

Reference Tam, L. (2009). Grande Dizionario Hoepli Spagnolo. Hoepli.

Conclusions

Looking back at more than three years of the ILLSA project, we see many milestones achieved, and some of them unprecedented in online telecollaboration. For the very first time in the history of online telecollaborative projects, one project design included four major European languages. For the very first time, the project was initiated in Asia keeping in focus learners of European languages in Asia. For the very first time, collaborative problem-solving among non-native speakers in foreign language education was the focus instead of tandem or tutored learning. Hierarchies of native speakers and language learners were done away with to make the ILLSA platform a more democratic space to discuss global issues rather than to navigate cultural rich points. For the first time, one project was able to bring together more than 300 learners of these languages in both continents irrespective of countries, cultures and ethnicities. Last but perhaps not the least, for the first time, ILLSA enabled us to look at telecollaborative language learning from a multidisciplinary point of view. On the one hand, ILLSA’s core was the enhancement of foreign language skills by applying those skills to negotiate meaning, voice out opinions and get involved in local, national and global communities, and on the other hand, it helped enhance digital skills and the development of global citizenship skills in keeping with the demands of twenty-first century education. But even as we celebrate these milestones of ILLSA, it is important to keep in mind that projects like ILLSA depend to a large extent on good will, the willingness to collaborate, a strong belief in global education and a high level of motivation of all stakeholders including the organizers, teachers and of course the learners. One of the central and recurring issues in projects such as ILLSA is finding the right partners. Smaller telecollaborations involving one language and two institutions are very frequently based on personal friendships and collegiality among peers where much is known about the collaborating partner and a relationship of mutual trust and knowledge of and respect for each other’s work is existing. ILLSA’s unprecedented scale involving over 20 institutions all over the world meant that many of these

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4

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institutions started working on this relationship through ILLSA. Trust had to be painstakingly built up, and in some cases, it simply did not work. Another important aspect of telecollaborative projects is the extra workload it inevitably leads to in mainstream educational working environments such as publicly funded universities, like those that ILLSA was a part of and worked with. With institutions increasingly competing for funds to keep on teaching sustainably and innovatively, the space to experiment and to fail has become exponentially narrow. This is leading to teachers increasingly keeping to their traditional courses with clearly defined outcomes and assessment methods, which are captured in Key Performance Indicators (KPI) based quality assurance reports. Reduced public funds for teaching mean also that many of these teachers are working for different institutions on a parttime salary especially in language education. So very frequently, project proposals such as ILLSA come as an add-on activity where teachers first ask what their roles, involvements and time commitments are going to be. The situation of the organizers (who are also the authors of this book) is not too different. Each of them leading their respective departments and or programmes, ILLSA was another responsibility over and above those of ‘normal’ teaching, research and administration. ILLSA was blessed with a generous public grant, and the organizers were able to finance a team of project assistants to take care of day-to-day business. The grant given to a consortium of leading universities who agreed to work together in order to get the grant was in itself another first in Hong Kong’s foreign language education set-up. ILLSA clearly benefited from a policy shift at the grant giver’s end, who decided that enhancing foreign language education would go a long way to fulfil Hong Kong’s aspirations of becoming an international education hub in East Asia. With a motivated team and generous financial support, ILLSA was able to not only push the boundaries of online telecollaborative language learning but was also able to open new avenues of research into telecollaboration. Research was initiated into the role of telecollaborative language learning projects in the enhancement of digital and twenty-first century skills, enhancement of language skills for and through collaborative problem-solving and perhaps more importantly the enhancement of social awareness in an intercultural language learning setting. Though the research was small scale, as the focus was on the hands-on working of the project and its pedagogy, its insights went a long way towards showing that online telecollaborative learning has a huge potential in training diverse competencies. Its task-oriented and portfolio-based pedagogy is a viable alternative to mainstream language classrooms and study abroad trips, which are equal if not more cost and time intensive and more often than not, do not achieve the desired outcomes of global citizenship with a holistic education, even though entire institutions and their machinery are involved in achieving exactly that. The COVID-19 pandemic has made us all rethink the manner in which teaching is delivered, and in some cases, online teaching has been proved to be effective. ILLSA has shown that it is possible to develop international collaborations online that benefit all members as long as they are motivated and engaged with the topic and the project. Continuing to provide opportunities such as ILLSA to our students is key to develop many skills necessary for the digital age. ILLSA was born and became successful before

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the pandemic. Its collaborating universities had in common that they were already developing online pedagogies and experimenting with innovative systems of delivery and assessments. Ultimately, these institutions were shown to be better prepared for the pandemic which reminds us that universities are the place to research, test and anticipate societal changes. The only sustainable way for projects like ILLSA to multiply and gain a foothold in mainstream language learning is for its pedagogy and design to be integrated into curricula and made part of regular course offerings in language centres and foreign language programmes in departments throughout the world. Language learning beyond the linguistic approach offers transdisciplinary perspectives to teachers and researchers as they open up to societies, communities, contexts and individuals. This was also the aim of writing this book, and we hope that we could inspire and support all those who are in a position to make these decisions to take that first step and experiment with innovative pedagogies and give students and teachers a hands-on experience of what twenty-first century learning can be. Looking Further In the three months after the last cycle of ILLSA was completed and we were writing this book, few initiatives have shown how ILLSA could be taken further and integrated in the curriculum. For the fifth cycle of ILLSA, the Spanish team had redeveloped the material for a MOOC-based edX course, making the exercises more interactive and varied. In addition, the cycle leader facilitated the work of the various groups. He set up the initial virtual meetings between European and Hong Kong students and monitored and evaluated their work. For the Hong Kong students, the project was integrated within the overall programme evaluation. These changes led to a completion rate much higher than that of the previous cycles. Students reported to have enjoyed the project and to have learnt, having had the chance to practice a number of new linguistic resources. Based on the positive comments from the students, the Spanish team is currently developing additional material in line with that used in the last module of ILLSA. Funding to further develop and implement these is currently being sought. It is expected that the modules will be integrated within two Spanish language proficiency courses at PolyU. The French team is continuing implementing an exchange with Universities in France in order to facilitate online collaborative work for students from The University of Hong Kong. More interactive synchronous sessions are planned for students to interact in French. German partners of ILLSA have already started the process of integrating the ILLSA model into their tandem or intercultural language offerings. These initiatives are encouraging. If this book and our experiences have been able to convince you enough to start an ILLSA initiative of your own, the resources of the ILLSA project from the five cycles, including those adapted to the pandemic, are available for free online at: https://illsahk.wixsite.com/illsaproject Navigation is simple. After you have chosen your desired language which are presently French, German, Italian and Spanish, you can first read all about the project and its aims. The tasks tab takes you to the tasks organized under the three phases.

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Cycle 5 is dedicated to the tasks with the theme of the pandemic and is conceived to be shorter in length in terms of time required to finish all tasks. And last but not the least, in the further reading sections, you will find more food for thought on the topics that ILLSA touches upon. Our only request is that readers and practitioners please acknowledge us if you decide to use any of the ideas on the platform. For more questions and or collaborations, please feel free to contact the authors. We will be happy to learn from you, give advice, support or join your innovative initiatives in the field of telecollaborative language education.

Appendix

A Student’s Account of Her ILLSA Experience (Original Document by Veronica Bordini)

Introduzione Nel presente elaborato si presenterà e si andrà ad analizzare ogni singola fase che compone il progetto ILLSA (Integrated Language Learning and Social Awareness), ideato e creato dalla partnership fra la Hong Kong Baptist University, la Hong Kong Polytechnic University e la University of Hong Kong. ‘Questo sodalizio accademico, unito alla collaborazione delle Università partner europee, ha reso possibile una rapida internazionalizzazione del progetto’.1 Gli obiettivi principali riguardano la pratica e il conseguente rafforzamento delle proprie competenze linguistiche nei confronti di una lingua straniera, l’approfondimento e la sensibilizzazione riguardo i temi legati al significato del termine ‘città salubri’ e l’incoraggiamento alla ricerca, comunicazione e scambio di idee tra i partecipanti attraverso le quattro lingue di progetto: spagnolo, tedesco, italiano e francese. Il risultato finale auspicato è la creazione di una Group Community in cui cresca la propria autonomia linguistica e il coinvolgimento rivolto al tema della sostenibilità. Le motivazioni che mi hanno spinto a partecipare a questo progetto hanno una duplice natura. In primo luogo, l’opportunità di poter praticare e migliorare le mie competenze linguistiche nella lingua selezionata, nel mio caso lo spagnolo; in secondo luogo il sempre maggiore interesse che ho maturato e che continuo a maturare tutt’oggi riguardo i temi di sostenibilità, salute fisica e mentale, diversità culturale e tutela dell’ambiente. La tesi è articolata in quattro capitoli: nel primo viene fornita un’introduzione sul progetto e una descrizione generale sulla sua struttura. Nel secondo si affronta più nel dettaglio la mia personale esperienza di lavoro: la prima parte del progetto,

1

“ILLSA project” [online], Department of Government and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, 15 Baptist University Road, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong S.A.R. Disponibile all’indirizzo: http://www.illsaproject.com/it-e-learning [Ultimo accesso: 3 Ottobre 2019]. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4

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denominata ‘prima fase’, le tematiche trattate, i lavori di gruppo e quelli individuali. Il terzo capitolo è incentrato sulla ‘seconda fase’, nella quale si descrive la scelta del tema specifico da affrontare per il lavoro di ricerca e lo svolgimento di quest’ultimo. Nel quarto capitolo l’analisi si concentra sulla parte più concreta del progetto, ossia il community project, la sua pianificazione, organizzazione e realizzazione all’interno del gruppo. Conseguentemente, si procede commentando i risultati finali del progetto, concentrandosi sugli elementi più rilevanti e di maggior interesse, che insieme alle riflessioni personali saranno articolati all’interno della sezione dell’elaborato dedicata alle conclusioni. Infine, viene aggiunta un’appendice contenente alcune immagini sugli strumenti di lavoro utilizzati: diapositive di portfolio e conversazioni WhatsApp.

Il Progetto ILLSA Nascita e Significato del Progetto ILLSA rappresenta un progetto telecollaborativo sull’apprendimento linguistico integrato e la consapevolezza sociale. È stato creato grazie alla collaborazione di tre università della città di Hong Kong: la Hong Kong Baptist University, la Hong Kong Polytechnic University e la University of Hong Kong. Come dichiarato dai coordinatori, ILLSA è un progetto UGC-FSTL, i finanziamenti infatti provengono dal Funding Scheme for Teaching and Learning (FSTL) del University Grants Committee di Hong Kong (UGC). L’obiettivo principale di questo progetto è caratterizzato dall’esplorazione e approfondimento sull’argomento delle ‘città sostenibili’ in una lingua straniera, aiutando gli studenti ad acquisire fiducia nell’uso della lingua per comunicare e ricercare all’interno di un ambiente multiculturale. Agli appassionati delle lingue e ai cultori della vita cittadina viene offerta la possibilità di sviluppare ulteriormente le proprie competenze linguistiche e di approfondire la loro conoscenza sul vero significato di ‘città salubri’. Gli attuali temi di sostenibilità, salute fisica e mentale, la diversità basata sulla cultura, sull’età, il genere e l’etnia e gli aspetti ambientali, sono tra le aree tematiche selezionate per svolgere questo percorso, rivolto a tutti gli studenti universitari che stanno apprendendo una lingua straniera a Hong Kong e in Europa fino al livello B2 del QCER, il Quadro comune di riferimento per la conoscenza delle lingue. Le lingue offerte dal progetto sono quattro: tedesco, francese, spagnolo e italiano e, ovviamente, la propria lingua nativa deve essere esclusa. Come dichiarato sul programma, il progetto ILLSA promuove l’uso del materiale di studio online e utilizza E-Learning in qualità di strumento destinato allo sviluppo della comunicazione, della ricerca e dello scambio di opinioni ed idee nelle quattro lingue selezionate. Il punto d’incontro è rappresentato dalla scelta di argomenti comuni con il fine di instaurare un dibattito fondato sul pensiero critico,

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obiettivo didattico richiesto dal LANQUA (Apprendimento Integrato di Contenuti e Lingue).2 Parallelamente, le tecnologie e il materiale online hanno lo scopo di offrire varie tipologie d’istruzione e collaborazione focalizzate non soltanto sulla lettura e la scrittura ma anche sulla pratica dell’oralità. Quest’ultima forma viene perfezionata durante la scelta degli argomenti, nella pianificazione di progetti e nella risoluzione delle problematiche riscontrate. Dopo aver condotto una propria ricerca personale sui temi de el transporte, la calidad de la vida, la salud y nutrición, la diversidad, accompagnata da esercitazioni linguistiche, i partecipanti sono tenuti ad organizzare in gruppo un community project con l’obiettivo di incrementare la sensibilizzazione sull’argomento trattato per poi trasmetterla e condividerla anche con la propria comunità.

La Struttura Del Progetto I coordinatori3 del progetto ILLSA si sono incaricati di suddividere tutti gli studenti partecipanti in vari gruppi differenti. Ogni gruppo è composto da quattro persone: due provenienti da università europee, che formano il ‘Team Europa’ e altre due provenienti dalle università di Hong Kong, formando il ‘Team Hong Kong’. Tutti gli studenti sono sollecitati a mantenersi in contatto con gli altri membri del gruppo il più frequentemente possibile, in modo da poter scambiare idee e opinioni e confrontare i risultati delle proprie ricerche basate sulle città in cui vivono. All’interno di ciascun gruppo, gli studenti devono lavorare insieme su attività di ricerca per arrivare poi a creare il loro progetto finale. Il lavoro individuale è richiesto solo quando si condividono opinioni personali, poiché il team del progetto ILLSA ritiene che il lavoro di squadra sia uno dei migliori strumenti di apprendimento. Questo progetto ha una durata di otto settimane; esse richiedono il conseguimento di attività da realizzare all’interno di un portfolio, condiviso su Google Drive da tutti i partecipanti, compresi i coordinatori, e il completamento di esercitazioni linguistiche da svolgere all’interno di una piattaforma chiamata ‘FutureLearn’.4 Ogni settimana gli studenti devono completare sia le attività di portfolio, sia le attività linguistiche proposte dalla piattaforma, le quali, rimarranno separate. Il portfolio deve essere aggiornato dai partecipanti entro la fine di ogni settimana di calendario, quindi ogni domenica e, prima di presentarlo, alla fine del progetto, entrambi i team devono verificare di aver completato e incluso tutte le loro attività.

2

Ibidem. Ivelina Ivanova, Assistente Senior al Progetto responsabile per la lingua tedesca; Ludovic Kei, Assistente al Progetto responsabile per la lingua francese; Ludovica Ricci, Assistente al Progetto responsabile per la lingua italiana; Billy TP Chan, Assistente al Progetto responsabile per la lingua spagnola. 4 “FutureLearn” [online]. Disponibile all’indirizzo: www.futurelearn.com/ [Ultimo accesso: 30 Ottobre 2019]. 3

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La Suddivisione in Fasi Il progetto ILLSA è suddiviso in tre fasi; la prima fase è denominata ‘Introduzione’ ed è relativa alle prime due settimane di lavoro. Durante questo periodo gli studenti cominciano ad entrare in contatto con gli altri componenti del gruppo e affrontano in modo più approfondito la tematica principale riguardante le ‘città salubri’. Il ‘team Europa’ e il ‘team Hong Kong’ possono interagire virtualmente attraverso piattaforme digitali come WhatsApp, Skype, via mail, o qualsiasi altro mezzo, utilizzando solo la lingua di progetto selezionata. Durante la prima settimana si svolgono i compiti seguendo le linee guida presentate nel portfolio e si effettua la registrazione alla piattaforma ‘FutureLearn’, completando le attività assegnate per la prima settimana. Nel corso della seconda settimana sono previste due principali attività sul portfolio: la prima è di gruppo, la seconda è individuale; su ‘FutureLearn’ vanno eseguiti gli esercizi relativi al tema delle ‘città sostenibili’. La seconda fase comprende le due settimane seguenti ed è denominata ‘Ricerca’, poiché è prevista la scelta di uno specifico ambito di ricerca. Per un totale di quattro temi, ognuno di essi si compone di quattro diverse attività d’indagine; ogni gruppo deve scegliere solamente due temi sui quattro proposti, uno per ogni team. Questi, una volta decisi, non potranno più essere cambiati perché saranno gli stessi riguardanti il progetto di gruppo da realizzare durante la terza ed ultima fase. Per effettuare la scelta è fortemente consigliata la discussione di gruppo, che aiuterà a scegliere con maggior cura. Alla fine della ricerca, entro il termine della quarta settimana, si confrontano i risultati ottenuti da entrambi i team e si completano le attività su ‘FutureLearn’ relative alle settimane tre e quattro. La terza ed ultima fase è denominata ‘Community project’. Essa rappresenta la parte più innovativa e concreta del progetto, per questo è necessario un lasso di tempo maggiore per svolgerla: le successive quattro settimane. Il community project va pianificato, organizzato e realizzato insieme al gruppo e riguarda lo stesso tema di ricerca sviluppato nel corso della fase precedente. Questo progetto finale vuole rappresentare un evento, una campagna, un’iniziativa che promuove una serie di azioni o attività a beneficio di una particolare comunità. Per questo motivo è necessario ideare un’attività che aumenti la consapevolezza riguardo i problemi attuali della comunità stessa. È incoraggiante discutere delle proprie idee di progetto con i propri compagni di gruppo, creando un clima che sia sempre più basato sul lavoro di squadra. Il progetto si conclude alla fine dell’ottava settimana, insieme al completamento delle ultime esercitazioni sulla piattaforma ‘FutureLearn’.

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Introduzione alla mia Esperienza L’assegnazione al Gruppo 6 e la Prima Settimana di Lavoro Dopo aver effettuato l’iscrizione ufficiale al progetto, dichiarando di voler lavorare in lingua spagnola, sono stata contattata tramite mail dai coordinatori del team ILLSA, i quali mi hanno introdotta all’interno del gruppo numero sei. El Equipo Hong Kong è stato composto da tre studentesse provenienti dalla Hong Kong Baptist University: Ip Pik Yu (Daisy), Leung Chi Ting (Rachel) e Chang Wing Sum (Naomi). El equipo Europa invece, è stato formato da due studentesse olandesi, provenienti dalla città di L’Aia, frequentanti The Hague University of Applied Sciences: Nina Harting e Roan Rigter e da me, studentessa del corso ‘Civiltà e Lingue Straniere Moderne’ dell’Università degli Studi di Parma. La prima persona con cui sono entrata in contatto è Roan, la quale mi ha inviato una mail chiedendomi il numero di cellulare per poter creare un gruppo WhatsApp insieme alle altre compagne. Nel giro di poche ore siamo tutte entrate in contatto fra di noi e ci siamo scambiate le prime idee riguardo il progetto; eravamo molto entusiaste di cominciare insieme questo percorso. La prima cosa da fare è stata completare l’iscrizione a ‘FutureLearn’, a seguito della quale, avremmo potuto cominciare le attività della prima settimana. Abbiamo ricevuto una mail dal team ILLSA nella quale si specificava il nome del corso a cui avremmo dovuto iscriverci: ‘Healthy Cities: Spring 2019’, anch’esso della durata di otto settimane. L’accesso è stato molto semplice per tutte, non abbiamo riscontrato problemi; dopo aver selezionato il corso in lingua spagnola, eravamo pronte ad iniziare. La prima sezione della piattaforma rappresenta una panoramica del corso intrapreso e gli obiettivi principali da perseguire: le attività di ‘FutureLearn’ ci avrebbero aiutato a migliorare il nostro vocabolario e a far crescere la consapevolezza riguardo le ‘città salubri’, nonché la nostra fiducia nell’uso della lingua straniera per comunicare sull’argomento. Per aiutarci in questo percorso sarebbero stati inclusi esercizi sull’uso di vocaboli, testi e video riguardo i seguenti argomenti: trasporti, qualità della vita, alimentazione, attività fisica e diversità nelle città salubri. Durante questo corso, non solo avremmo aumentato le nostre conoscenze linguistiche esistenti, ma avremmo anche avuto la possibilità di scambiare i nostri punti di vista con gli altri studenti universitari di Hong Kong ed europei, ampliando così la nostra prospettiva come parte dell’obiettivo di sensibilizzazione globale. A completamento delle attività della prima settimana viene presentata la sezione ‘Meet & greet!’ in lingua inglese, la scelta della quale è dovuta alla volontà del sito di far comprendere al totale numero di utenti l’obiettivo dell’esercizio introduttivo. Il compito consiste nel creare un commento nella propria lingua di progetto, reso in seguito pubblico a tutti i partecipanti del corso, in cui condividere una serie di informazioni generali su noi stessi. Le domande di riferimento sono le seguenti: ‘Who are you and where on the globe can we find you right now? What is your native

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language and which other ones do you speak? What are your hobbies and interests? What is your absolute favorite thing about the city you live in?’.5 La cosa più bella e stimolante è stata leggere centinaia di commenti tutti scritti in lingue diverse, da tantissimi studenti di origine differente. Tutti abbiamo condiviso una piccola parte di noi, presentandoci ed esprimendo quali fossero le nostre più grandi passioni. Riporto direttamente quattro esempi, uno per ogni lingua, lasciando posto alla mia personale presentazione all’interno del paragrafo in cui descrivo la prima attività di portfolio: Hallo, zusammen! Ich heiße Yi-Han. Ich bin 22 Jahre alt. Ich komme aus Taiwan und wohne in Taipeh. Meine Muttersprache ist Mandarine. Ich spreche auch Englisch, Polnisch und natürlich Deutsch. Ich höre Musik gern. Meine Lieblingssache in Taipeh ist das praktische Verkehrsmittelsystem. Ciao a tutti! Mi chiamo Vanina Adeline Samitiana, ma tutti mi chiamano Vanina. Vengo dal Madagascar, un’isola dell’oceano Indiano. La mia lingua madre è il malgascio, la nostra lingua ufficiale è il francese e ora per studiare mi servo della lingua italiana. Parlo un po’ anche l’inglese. Sono arrivata in Italia 7 mesi fa per studiare scienze politiche. Sono al primo anno nell’università di Sophia che si trova in una città chiamata “Loppiano”. La cosa che mi piace di più di questa città in cui vivo è la tranquillità e l’ambiente. Vivo in un luogo dove l’aria è fresca. Non c’è ancora inquinamento. Mi piace viaggiare, cucinare e ascoltare la musica. Salut! Je m’apelle Anne-Sophie, j’ai 28 ans. J’habite à Lunebourg, une petite ville près de Hambourg, dans le nord d’Allemagne. À Lunebourg, j’aime la belle vieille ville historique, les nombreux petits cafés accueillants et la quantité d’espaces verts. À l’université de Lunebourg, j’étudie les sciences de la durabilité, les sciences de l’espace et la philosophie. J’aime beaucoup apprendre des nouvelles langues. En plus de l’anglais, je parle un peu chinois, russe et français. Dans mon temps libre, j’aime faire du jogging ou de la natation et chanter dans une chorale. Hola! Me llamo Jasmijn, tengo 19 años (20 en dos semanas!) y vivo en La Haya. Estudio “European Studies” en La Universidad en La Haya y tengo clases de Español. Hablo Holandés, Inglés, Español y un poco de Francés. Viví en Valencia durante 4 meses para aprender Español porque no era posible en mi escuela secundaria. Mis aficiones son salir con amigos, viajar y ver series. Me gusta conocer a nueva gente de culturas diferentes y entonces este proyecto me gusta mucho!.6

Quest’attività ci ha dato l’idea di come questo progetto fosse realmente proiettato all’internazionalizzazione, alla condivisione di pensieri ed idee, allo sviluppo e alla sensibilizzazione del significato di senso di comunità. Il nostro diretto coordinatore ed assistente ILLSA, il professore Billy TP Chan, ha risposto a tutti gli studenti che hanno commentato in lingua spagnola, dandoci il benvenuto a questo progetto e mostrandoci il suo particolare interesse a voler interagire con noi il più possibile. Ci ha chiesto qualche informazione in più riguardo la nostra città e di approfondire gli aspetti secondo noi più rilevanti ed interessanti, sia all’interno della piattaforma, sia durante la creazione del portfolio. La prima attività di quest’ultimo, infatti, è molto simile a quella di ‘FutureLearn’, poiché anch’essa vuole rappresentare una possibilità per i membri del gruppo di 5

“Healthy Cities: Spring 2019” [online], Hong Kong Baptist University. Disponibile all’indirizzo: http://www.futurelearn.com/courses/illsa/3/steps/477354 [Ultimo accesso: 3 Ottobre 2019]. 6 Ibidem.

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potersi conoscere meglio, applicando le proprie conoscenze linguistiche nella realizzazione di un’iniziale e personale presentazione. Nella sezione relativa all’Equipo Europa ho creato la mia descrizione: Hola, me llamo Veronica y tengo 23 años. Soy de Italia y hablo italiano, inglés, español y alemán. Vivo en Carpi, que es una pequeña ciudad en la región de ‘Emilia-Romagna’, en el norte del país. Estudio ‘Lenguas Extranjeras’ en la Universidad de Parma, otra ciudad de la misma región. Mi pasión más grande es viajar. El español es mi idioma favorito, me encanta el sonido, cómo habla la gente, y también el país. De hecho, decidí estudiar en España durante seis meses a través del proyecto Erasmus, y me enamoré totalmente.7

Anche le mie compagne Roan e Nina hanno realizzato la loro presentazione, affiancandola alla mia: Hola, soy Roan y tengo 22 años. Soy de Holanda y hablo holandés, inglés, español y un poco de italiano. Me encanta viajar. Vivo cerca de la ciudad de Utrecht. Estudio español porque hay tantos hermosos países de habla española y personas que me gustaría conocer a través de este idioma. Mi ciudad favorita es por supuesto La Habana. La ciudad tiene un ambiente alegre y caribeño. Hola, me llamo Nina. Tengo 20 años y soy holandesa. Hablo holandés, inglés y español. Vivo en Leiden que está situado cerca de La Haya. Voy al gimnasio 6 veces por semana y me encanta viajar también. Estudio español porque viví en España durante siete meses y me enamoré de la lengua.8

All’interno della sezione relativa all’Equipo Hong Kong anche Daisy e Rachel hanno creato la loro presentazione: Hola, me llamo Daisy y tengo 21 años. Soy de Hong Kong. Hablo cantonés, mandarín, inglés y un poco de español. Estoy estudiando traducción en la Universidad Baptist porque me encanta aprender idiomas. Mi actividad favorita es viajar. Espero conocer la cultura de otros países. También espero que a todos les pueda gustar la cultura de Hong Kong. Es una ciudad con mucha diversión. Hola, me llamo Rachel y tengo 21 años. Soy de Hong Kong. Hablo cantonés, mandarín, inglés y un poco de español. Lo mismo como Daisy, estudio traducción en la Universidad Baptist. Espero aprender más sobre idiomas y comunicación. Me encanta viajar y ver películas. Porque puedo aprender más sobre los otros países y sus normas. Por supuesto, espero quedarme en los lugares que me gustan también. Me encanta el United Kindom y voy a pasar mi verano allí.9 Ho avuto l’opportunità di conoscere meglio le mie compagne e, dopo questo primo approccio, l’attività seguente consisteva nel collocare sul disegno di una mappa la posizione della nostra città. È veramente incoraggiante poter evidenziare quanto sia enorme la nostra distanza fisica, ma quanto in realtà essa sia irrilevante, poiché abbiamo comunque la possibilità di lavorare insieme e di conoscere punti di vista e culture così diverse tra di loro, sfruttando le nostre conoscenze e competenze linguistiche. Lo spagnolo rappresenta in questo caso il nostro collante culturale.

L’ultima attività relativa alla prima settimana si articola nella presentazione della città in cui viviamo, anche attraverso un’infografica. Roan e Nina hanno presentato insieme la loro città, La Haya: 7

Rappresentazione in Appendice, prima immagine, p.38. Ibidem. 9 Rappresentazione in Appendice, seconda immagine, p.38. 8

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Nella stessa sezione del portfolio, anche io ho aggiunto la mia presentazione riguardo la città di Parma, selezionata per il progetto poiché mia città universitaria: Parma es la ciudad donde se encuentra mi universidad y será también la de este proyecto. Es la segunda ciudad más grande de mi región, sede de la Autoridad Europea de Seguridad Alimentaria y de la Autoridad de la cuenca de distrito del río Po. Es sede también de un departamento de investigaciones científicas. En 2015 recibió el reconocimiento de ‘Ciudad creativa UNESCO para la gastronomía’, conocida en todo el mundo por sus productos como el ‘Parmigiano-Reggiano’ y el ‘Prosciutto di Parma’. El arte y la música también son valores importantes que caracterizan a esta ciudad: cada año en el mes de octubre se celebra el ‘Festival Verdi’ y en el 16 de febrero de 2018 Parma fue nombrada capital italiana de la cultura para el año 2020.11

All’interno della diapositiva seguente, riservata all’Equipo Hong Kong, Daisy e Rachel hanno creato insieme la loro descrizione della città: Hong Kong se encuentra en el sureste de China. Es uno de los lugares más ricos y más desarrollados de China e incluso del mundo. Hay mucha gente en Hong Kong. La población de Hong Kong alcanzó los 7 millones en 2009. La gente de Hong Kong habla principalmente cantonés. Algunos también hablan inglés y mandarin. A muchos turistas les encanta visitar a Hong Kong. Se caracteriza por ser un híbrido de Oriente y Occidente. Especialmente, Hong Kong es conocido como ‘el paraíso de la comida’ donde puedes disfrutar de diferentes cocinas. Además, hay una red de transporte altamente sofisticada. Es conveniente para visitar los paisajes hermosos en Hong Kong.12

Quest’attività per me ha rappresentato una piccola introduzione virtuale all’interno di queste città nuove, che non conosco e che mi piacerebbe molto visitare. La curiosità ci cresceva sempre di più, compresa la nostra voglia di cooperare ed interagire.

La Seconda Settimana e il Cambio al Gruppo 3 Le attività della piattaforma ‘FutureLearn’, per la seconda settimana, ti permettono di ampliare molto la conoscenza del vocabolario, nel mio caso di quello spagnolo, affiancandolo ai temi principali del progetto riguardanti la sostenibilità. Inizialmente viene offerta una definizione generale di ciudad saludable: 10

Rappresentazione in Appendice, terza immagine, p.38. Ibidem. 12 Rappresentazione in Appendice, prima immagine, p.39. 11

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Una ciudad saludable es aquella que se compromete a ofrecer como prioridad un entorno saludable y un proceso continuo de desarrollo para conseguir y mantener la salud. Según el Preámbulo de la Constitución de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS), “la salud es un estado de completo bienestar físico, mental y social, y no solamente la ausencia de afecciones o enfermedades”. Bajo esta definición, el concepto de salud no solo toma en cuenta los factores genéticos y curativos sino también los aspectos socio-económicos y ambientales.13

Inoltre, vengono elencati gli obiettivi principali de la Red Europea de Ciudades Saludables: la equidad, la promoción de la salud, la participación comunitaria, la colaboración intersectorial, la atención primaria, la cooperación internaconal, secondo la citazione di due fonti principali che sono la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) e Ciudades Saludables: 25 años en Red. Dopo questa presentazione scritta vi è un quiz per verificare la comprensione di quanto appreso in precedenza, immediatamente seguito da una prova di vocabolario, composta da sei domande riguardo il significato di alcuni termini ed accezioni. Sono tutte attività molto utili sia per rafforzare le proprie competenze linguistiche, sia per ampliare la nostra conoscenza sui vocaboli, oltre che ovviamente approfondire le tematiche trattate. Passando alle attività di portfolio, ci viene richiesto di esprimere un’opinione riguardo la nostra città: viviamo in una ciudad saludable, oppure no? In seguito, si deve lavorare in gruppo per creare una mappa mentale14 sul concetto generale di ciudades saludables. Attraverso il programma suggerito dal portfolio chiamato iMindMap, si riesce a creare virtualmente questa mappa ed esso ci permette poi di allegarla alla diapositiva. Nella sezione del portfolio dedicata all’Equipo Europa ho espresso la mia opinione riguardo la città di Parma: Pienso que Parma no es una ciudad totalmente saludable. En 2018 se ha analizado que la contaminación del aire en la región de Parma, Emilia-Romagna, ha alcanzado niveles muy peligrosos, y las ciudades más grandes son las que tienen los peores resultados. Los transportes urbanos en la ciudad son muchos, pero ninguno es ecológico, así que todavía sube la contaminación. Los alimentos son buenos, pero en Italia también existen las ganaderías intensivas, así que no siempre sabemos por cierto lo que vamos a comer, si los productos tienen alta calidad o no. Por el otro lado, afortunadamente en Parma hay muchos parques y muchas zonas verdes, hay muchos productos de alta calidad (sabiendo elegirlos), la ciudad es sede de la Autoridad Europea de Seguridad Alimentaria y la calidad de la vida es alta, porque Parma se encuentra en la sexta posición de la graduatoria italiana.15

Per quanto riguarda el Equipo Hong Kong, anche Daisy e Rachel hanno espresso una loro opinione, la prima dichiarando: Pienso que Hong Kong no es una ciudad saludable porque hay demasiados edificios altos (especialmente los comerciales y residenciales) pero muy pocas tierras verdes. Además, la red de transporte sofisticada empeora la calidad del aire. Apenas podemos respirar aire fresco. También es uno de los factores que empeoran el calentamiento global. Hong Kong será mejor con más árboles plantados.16 13

“Healthy Cities: Spring 2019” [online], Hong Kong Baptist University. Disponibile all’indirizzo: https://www.futurelearn.com//courses/illsa/3/steps/477365 [Ultimo accesso: 3 Ottobre 2019]. 14 Rappresentazione in Appendice, terza immagine, p.40. 15 Rappresentazione in Appendice, seconda immagine, p.39. 16 Rappresentazione in Appendice, terza immagine, p.39.

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Mentre la seconda: Es malo que Hong Kong no sea realmente una ciudad saludable. La gente en Hong Kong trabaja largas horas y con frecuencia tiene una gran carga de trabajo. Tienen poco tiempo para una buena comida y ejercicio. Además, la calidad del aire es mala en Hong Kong porque el transporte está ocupado todo el tiempo. Tampoco hay suficientes medidas gubernamentales para proteger el medio ambiente.17

A seguito di questo primo scambio di opinioni e prima di poter procedere con il lavoro seguente, sono stata contattata via mail dal nostro coordinatore, Billy, il quale mi ha chiesto se fossi interessata a cambiare gruppo. All’interno di quello attuale, eravamo sei membri: tre per l’Equipo Europa ed altri tre per l’Equipo Hong Kong. Il gruppo numero tre, quello in cui mi sarei dovuta trasferire, era composto solo da una studentessa per l’Equipo Europa e da altri due membri di Hong Kong; per questo motivo, ho accettato. Tutti i testi che avevo già scritto ed aggiunto al portfolio precedente mi sono stati trasferiti in quello del nuovo gruppo. Il professor Billy mi ha anche aggiunto ad un nuovo gruppo WhatsApp e, così facendo, ho avuto modo di conoscere la mia nuova compagna di lavoro: Audrey. Conseguentemente, ho letto la sua presentazione sul nuovo portfolio: Hola, soy Audrey West y tengo diecinueve años. Soy de California en los Estados Unidos pero vivo en Texas. Hablo inglés y un poco de español. Me gusta probar nuevas cosas. Para este semestre, vivo en Sevilla, España, para estudiar. Estudio español porque me gusta el idioma y muchas personas hablan este idioma en los Estados Unidos. Mi ciudad favorita es Sevilla porque la ciudad es muy interesante y bonita.18

A quel punto, iniziamo a scriverci dei messaggi e ci troviamo subito in sintonia, entrambe con tanta voglia di lavorare insieme. Ci siamo aiutate molto per la realizzazione dell’infografica19 sulle nostre città, Parma e Siviglia, nonostante fosse un compito individuale e le abbiamo create attraverso il sito web: https://www.canva. com/it_it/creare/infografiche/; ci siamo scambiate molti messaggi e abbiamo condiviso le nostre idee, per poi passare alla costruzione della mappa mentale.20 Abbiamo ritenuto opportuno utilizzare le risorse e le informazioni ricavate dalla piattaforma ‘FutureLearn’ inerenti alla prima settimana per creare l’immagine della mappa, poi l’abbiamo allegata ad una diapositiva. Per concludere le attività della seconda settimana, ho avuto modo di leggere il commento di Audrey riguardo la città di Siviglia e devo dire che mi ha molto incuriosita, poiché ha espresso un’opinione molto più positiva rispetto alla mia, ma anche rispetto a tutti gli altri commenti che avevo già riscontrato legati a quest’argomento: Creo que Sevilla es una ciudad saludable porque mucha gente utiliza el transporte público, va montado en bicicleta, y camina. No hay mucho smog en el aire. Todas las mañanas, los trabajadores de las tiendas limpian el suelo por la basura. Hay papeleras de reciclaje en la mayoría de los lugares. También hay una gran cantidad de productos frescos para elegir.21 17

Ibidem. Rappresentazione in Appendice, prima immagine, p.40. 19 Rappresentazione in Appendice, seconda immagine, p.40. 20 Rappresentazione in Appendice, terza immagine, p.40. 21 Rappresentazione in Appendice, prima immagine, p.41. 18

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La Nostra Ricerca Su la Calidad de la Vida La Terza Settimana e la Scelta del Tema de Investigación Con l’inizio della terza settimana comincia anche la seconda fase del progetto. Audrey ed io siamo molto entusiaste, piene di idee ed iniziativa. Si comincia dalle attività della piattaforma ‘FutureLearn’ nella quale, per questa settimana, sono previsti esercizi di pratica di vocabolario. Vengono proposti tre articoli da leggere, al termine dei quali un quiz determinerà il nostro grado di comprensione del testo attraverso la risposta a qualche domanda. Il primo articolo parla di una aplicación que promueve la movilidad sostenible, ossia la creazione di un’applicazione per telefoni cellulari chiamata ‘Ciclogreen’, la quale trasforma i kilometri che la gente percorre in forma sostenibile (a piedi, in bici o attraverso trasporto pubblico) in punti per poter ottenere articoli gratuiti o in percentuali sconto per alcuni prodotti e servizi. Secondo quanto dichiarato dalla fonte, il sito web del giornale El País, è già stato raggiunto il numero di 15.000 utenti. Il secondo articolo è intitolato ‘Cuatro kilos más por ir a trabajar en coche en lugar de en bici’ ed è stato ricavato dalla medesima fonte. Esso dichiara che in uno studio effettuato da sette capitali europee si è analizzato il livello di salute e le abitudini relative ai mezzi di trasporto prevalentemente usati dai cittadini; i risultati mostrano come le persone che abitualmente si muovono in macchina pesino in media quattro kili in più rispetto a coloro che si muovono in bicicletta, mettendoci in guardia sul fatto che una vita sedentaria uccide circa cinque milioni di persone all’anno e aumenta il rischio di malattie croniche come il cancro, infarti ed ictus. Il terzo ed ultimo articolo, ancora una volta ricavato dal giornale El País, parla de el drama de los ancianos abandonados por sus familias en un hospital, cioè di come un alto numero di persone anziane rappresenti un disturbo ed un peso per i propri familiari, al punto di volerli lasciare completamente soli all’interno di un ospedale, senza nessuno per accudirli ad eccezione dei medici ed infermieri. A conclusione delle attività della terza settimana, viene richiesto di scrivere una parola nuova che è stata appresa per ognuno degli articoli letti. Io ho trascritto per il primo articolo la parola ‘reto’, che ha significato di ‘sfida’22 ; per il secondo articolo il verbo ‘concienciar’, che significa ‘sensibilizzare, prendere coscienza’23 e per il terzo ‘dar de alta’, che vuol dire ‘dimettere qualcuno’.24 Audrey, invece, per il primo articolo ha trascritto il verbo ‘engañar’, col significato di ‘ingannare’25 ; per il secondo articolo il sostantivo ‘desplazamiento’, che significa ‘spostamento’26 ; per l’ultimo articolo l’aggettivo ‘sangrante’, ‘sanguinante’.27

22

L. Tam, Grande Dizionario Hoepli Spagnolo, Hoepli, Milano, 2009. Ibidem. 24 Ibidem. 25 Ibidem. 26 Ibidem. 27 Ibidem. 23

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Passando al lavoro sul portfolio, io ed Audrey dobbiamo iniziare la nostra fase di ricerca. Ci sono proposti quattro temi diversi, ma noi dobbiamo scegliere di impostare il nostro lavoro solo su uno. I quattro temas de investigación sono: el transporte, la calidad de la vida, la salud y nutrición, la diversidad. Io e la mia compagna iniziamo ad interagire personalmente su WhatsApp,28 lei dicendomi che sarebbe molto interessata sia al tema sulla qualità della vita, sia a quello sulla diversità, io invece molto indecisa perché avrei voluto approfondirli meglio tutti. Alla fine decidiamo, di comune accordo, che quello ad ispirarci maggiormente è il secondo: la calidad de la vida. Questo, inoltre, avrebbe poi costituito la base per il progetto sociale caratteristico della terza fase del progetto. Dopo aver preso la nostra decisione, affrontiamo le attività di lettura assegnate per quel tema, composte da due articoli. Il primo in allegato è stato ricavato direttamente dalla piattaforma ‘FutureLearn’, ‘Cuatro kilos más por ir a trabajar en coche en lugar de en bici’, quindi l’avevamo già letto e analizzato. Il secondo è un articolo intitolato ‘¿A qué dedican los españoles su tiempo libre?’,29 il quale mostra i risultati di un’inchiesta creata dal Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS) riguardo le attività più gettonate dai cittadini spagnoli nel loro tempo libero. Durante le giornate di riposo, per il 56.7% è più importante dedicare il tempo alla propria famiglia e per il 55% la priorità è riposarsi; a seguire, si ritiene importante anche vedere i propri amici e divertirsi. Quando invece ci si riferisce al tempo libero in generale, fare una passeggiata e guardare la televisione raggiungono i maggiori risultati, rispettivamente con un 71.8% ed un 68.9%; al terzo e quarto posto ascoltare la musica e leggere un libro, subito seguiti dal navigare su internet e l’uso dei social network. Per quanto riguarda le abitudini di viaggio, gli spagnoli preferiscono cambiare destinazione (77.9%) e compiere lunghi viaggi dai 5 ai 14 giorni (30%) o di 3 o 4 giorni (27.6%). Inoltre, un 12.7% non può viaggiare per motivi di salute, economici o familiari. Per concludere, vengono esaminate le sensazioni degli spagnoli al termine del loro periodo di vacanza, durante la fase di rientro alla vita normale. La maggioranza non prova nessuna sensazione (37.5%), un 32.1% prova soddisfazione nell’intraprendere di nuovo la propria routine, il 21.7% prova timore nel dover riaffacciarsi alla realtà e solo un 2,3% prova indolenza, disagio o rassegnazione. Affrontata quest’attività di lettura, il nostro lavoro di ricerca è improntato sull’analisi dell’opinione della gente che vive nella nostra città. Il compito è rappresentato dalla creazione di un questionario30 avente una lista di dieci aspetti ritenuti da noi importanti per poter condurre una buona qualità della vita nella nostra città. A seguito della creazione del questionario, il passo seguente è chiedere l’opinione a circa 15/20 amici e/o familiari per poi classificare ogni aspetto in una scala da 1 a 10,

28

Rappresentazione in Appendice, seconda e terza immagine, p.41; prima e seconda immagine, p.42. 29 “¿A qué dedican los españoles su tiempo libre?” [online], Madrid. Disponibile all’indirizzo: https://cadenaser.com/ser/2017/07/05/sociedad/1499252745_630554.html [Ultimo accesso: 31 Ottobre 2019]. 30 Rappresentazione in Appendice, terza immagine, p.42.

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a seconda dell’importanza. Per finire, si devono confrontare i tre aspetti più salienti e si deve redigere una conclusione da apportare alla diapositiva del portfolio.

La Quarta Settimana e i Risultati del Questionario di Ricerca Le attività della quarta settimana su ‘FutureLearn’ sono caratterizzate da altri quattro articoli da leggere, ognuno dei quali accompagnati da una decina di domande a risposta multipla per verificare la comprensione del testo. Il primo l’abbiamo già menzionato in precedenza, dal titolo: ‘¿A qué dedican los españoles su tiempo libre?’; il secondo articolo, ricavato dal sito web del periodico El País, s’intitola ‘Las ciudades, cada vez más cerca’ e tratta di quanto sia diventato più veloce ed economico il meccanismo di raggiungimento delle varie città spagnole grazie ai nuovi mezzi di trasporto come i treni ad alta velocità. Il terzo articolo parla del problema dell’obesità infantile, dichiarando l’incoraggiamento alla creazione di ciudades saludables para combatir la obesidad infantil.31 Una dieta come quella odierna, ricca di calorie, nella quale si è ridotto drasticamente il tempo per l’esercizio fisico, accompagnato dalla carenza di spazi all’aria aperta in cui praticarlo, sono tra le maggiori cause che sottostanno a questo problema di obesità. L’ultimo articolo ha invece un carattere più legato alla diversità di genere; è stato ricavato ancora una volta dal sito web del giornale El País e s’intitola: ‘Machismo a la vuelta de cada esquina’. Il tema principale è la paura sofferta dalle donne poiché ripetutamente vittime di molestie ed aggressioni; abbassarsi la gonna per coprirsi le gambe, andare in giro in gruppo o fingere di essere al telefono quando si incontrano persone ‘strane’ per strada sono atteggiamenti ormai diventati quotidiani per moltissime donne. Si evidenzia il timore di poter diventare oggetto di violenza, sia di privacy che fisica, e purtroppo tutto ciò influisce soprattutto sulle ragazze di giovane età, compresa tra gli 11 e i 17 anni, quindi ancora in fase di adolescenza. Tutte queste violenze, come dichiarato nell’articolo dalla direttrice generale di Prevención y Atención a la Violencia de Género dell’amministrazione comunale di Madrid, María Naredo, inseriscono le donne in una posizione di minor libertà e per questo motivo le istituzioni pubbliche dovrebbero intervenire. La società non deve rimanere in silenzio, al contrario, deve reagire, perché certi diritti vanno tutelati con tutte le forze. Al termine di quest’attività di lettura, ‘FutureLearn’ aggiunge un’ultima esercitazione di vocabolario avente la stessa natura di quella della settimana precedente: trascrivere una parola nuova, per ogni articolo, appresa durante la settimana. Per quanto riguarda la prima lettura, io ho trascritto il verbo ‘encoger’, che significa ‘restringere’32 ; per il secondo articolo ho aggiunto il verbo ‘encabezar’, che vuol

31

“Ciudades saludables para combatir la obesidad infantil” [online], Madrid. Disponibile all’indirizzo: https://as.com/deporteyvida/2017/04/30/portada/1493548881_285839.html [Ultimo accesso: 30 Ottobre 2019]. 32 L. Tam, Grande Dizionario Hoepli Spagnolo, Hoepli, Milano, 2009.

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dire ‘dirigere o condurre’33 ; per il terzo, l’aggettivo ‘obesogénico’, il quale indica ‘un insieme di fattori esterni che ci circondano e che possono portarci ad una condizione di sovrappeso o obesità’34 ; e infine, per l’ultimo articolo, il sintagma ‘echar piropos’, che ha il significato di ‘fare i complimenti’.35 Audrey, invece, per il primo articolo ha trascritto il verbo ‘dinamizar’, che vuol dire ‘motivare’36 ; per il secondo ha aggiunto la parola ‘desgana’, quindi ‘malavoglia’37 ; per la terza lettura il vocabolo ‘pautas’, col significato di ‘regole’38 ; e infine, per l’ultimo articolo, la parola ‘acoso’, che significa ‘molestia’.39 Ritornando al lavoro del portfolio, Audrey ed io dobbiamo cominciare la creazione del nostro questionario. Grazie a WhatsApp,40 siamo riuscite quasi sempre a rimanere in contatto e a scambiarci idee sugli aspetti più interessanti da introdurre. I primi che mi sono venuti in mente per mantenere una buona qualità della vita e che ho subito condiviso con la mia compagna, chiedendole una sua opinione a riguardo, sono stati: hacer deporte y movimiento, seguir una dieta de alimentación sana, hacer reciclaje. Ad Audrey è piaciuta subito la mia idea iniziale e, collaborando, ha aggiunto altri tre aspetti secondo lei molto importanti: el acceso a la educación, buena comunicación, equilibrio saludable entre trabajo y vida. Le ho subito risposto dicendole che condividevo il suo pensiero e insieme abbiamo poi aggiunto i principi restanti che avrebbero fatto parte del nostro questionario: el respeto por el ambiente, el compromiso cívico, construir relaciones y tener seguridad y refugio. A questo punto, avendo tutti gli elementi necessari, decidiamo di iniziare la creazione del questionario su Google e ci scambiamo i nostri indirizzi di posta elettronica in modo da poterlo entrambe condividere e modificare. Il titolo conferito ovviamente è ‘La Calidad de la Vida’; ad ogni aspetto che abbiamo ritenuto importante introdurre, è stata associata una scala da 1 a 10, in modo tale che ogni persona potesse qualificare ogni elemento in base all’importanza conferita, il tutto relazionato all’ottenimento di una buona qualità della vita. Una volta terminato, copiamo il link del questionario, lo inviamo ad una decina di amici e familiari ciascuna e attendiamo i risultati. Dopo un paio di giorni, avendo già ottenuto risposta da circa una ventina di persone, riusciamo ad allegare l’immagine dei risultati ad una diapositiva del portfolio41 e, dopo averli esaminati, scriviamo insieme la nostra conclusione: 33

Ibidem. “Ambiente obesogénico, qué es y cómo controlarlo para comer más sano” [online]. Disponibile all’indirizzo: https://www.directoalpaladar.com/salud/ambiente-obesogenico-que-es-y-comocontrolarlo-para-comer-mas-sano [Ultimo accesso: 1 Novembre 2019]. 35 L. Tam, Grande Dizionario Hoepli Spagnolo, Hoepli, Milano, 2009. 36 Ibidem. 37 Ibidem. 38 Ibidem. 39 Ibidem. 40 Rappresentazione in Appendice, seconda e terza immagine, p.41; prima e seconda immagine, p.42. 41 Rappresentazione in Appendice, terza immagine, p.42. 34

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Según los resultados de nuestro cuestionario, las dos cualidades más importantes para una buena calidad de vida son: acceso a la educación y un equilibrio saludable entre el trabajo y la vida. El tercero más importante es un vínculo entre tener seguridad y refugio, respeto por el medio ambiente, buena comunicación y acceso para encontrar información. Estos aspectos le permitirán vivir una vida educada, saludable y segura. Estamos de acuerdo con los resultados y creemos que estos pueden llevar a trabajar sobre los otros aspectos que hemos enumerado. Sin embargo, pensamos que todos los aspectos que surgieron son importantes para una vida ideal.

Team Project La Quinta e Sesta Settimana: L’idea per il Proyecto Social Ha inizio la quinta settimana e contemporaneamente anche la terza fase del progetto. Sulla piattaforma ‘FutureLearn’ cambia la tipologia di attività; vengono presentati quattro video differenti, al termine dei quali si articola un test composto da alcune domande per la verifica della comprensione audiovisiva. Il primo video parla de el tiempo libre, il secondo s’intitola ‘Antes y ahora’ e tratta del cambiamento industriale e tecnologico avvenuto nelle città; il terzo, ‘Las ciudades más baratas de España’, ritrae un’analisi delle città aventi il costo della vita più basso all’interno del paese e l’ultimo video, invece, parla di diversidad cultural.42 Al contrario, le attività relative alla sesta settimana sono impostate sulla pratica della scrittura. Il primo esercizio chiede di riassumere in un numero compreso fra le 80 e le 100 parole quale tipologia di trasporti ci sono nella propria città, cosa piace e cosa no riguardo ai trasporti pubblici e cinque aspetti che riguardano il futuro dei trasporti. Audrey ha realizzato il suo testo scrivendo: En mi ciudad, el transporte público es caracterizado por tranvías, el metro, autobuses, coches, y bicicletas. El gran sistema de transporte público hace que sea más fácil moverse por la ciudad. Tienen pases que usted puede comprar que le permiten acceder a un precio más barato. Para mi universidad, el uso de una bicicleta es más fácil para el transporte, sin embargo, sin el pase es muy caro. En el futuro, creo que mi ciudad tendrá una estación de metro más extensa. Nos daría más acceso a otras partes de la ciudad. Los precios se volverán más baratos y los tiempos de viaje se volverán más rápidos. Además, los buses se volverán más rápidos y serán un medio de transporte preferido.

Io, invece, ho scritto: En Parma los transportes principales son los trenes, los autobúses y los trolebúses. Yo viajo mucho por tren y también me gusta porque me relaja, me encanta ver los paisajes escuchando buena música mientras estoy viajando. La única pena de los trenes es que muy a menudo están de retraso. Los autobúses y trolebúses me gustan poco, porque siempre están llenos de gente y a menudo hay malos olores. En el futuro creo y espero que estarán transportes más ecológicos, que serán más rápidos y también más puntuales. 42

“Healthy Cities: Spring 2019” [online], Hong Kong Baptist University. Disponibile all’indirizzo: www.futurelearn.com/courses/illsa/3/todo/44901 [Ultimo accesso: 3 Ottobre 2019].

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Il secondo esercizio dichiara: “El gobierno piensa invertir e500 millones para mejorar tu ciudad. Debes escribir una carta para explicar cómo usar este dinero para mejorar las condiciones de vida en tu ciudad”.43 Io ho creato la mia lettera scrivendo: Estimados ciudadanos, finalmente nuestro gobierno quiere ayudarnos a mejorar las condiciones de vida de nuestra ciudad, por esto yo querría expresaros las ideas centrales que tengo para nuestra comunidad. Primero, agrandaría y aumentaría las zonas verdes en la ciudad, para mejorar el impacto ambiental y para ofrecer la posibilidad a las personas de hacer más deporte y un lugar de relajación. Segundo, organizaría jornadas dedicadas al trabajo voluntario, para que las personas se unan y trabajen juntas conociendo qué ventajas preciosas puede ofrecer el trabajo en grupo y ayudar a los otros, ofreciendo un buen ejemplo para toda la población. Tercero, programaría eventos culturales por cada fin de semana, de cualquier tipología, para promover la cultura y la curiosidad. Cuarto, un día por semana no haría circular los coches por el centro, solamente podrían circular transportes ecológicos, para salvaguardar el ambiente y la salud. Quinto, construiría bares, discotecas y otros edificios donde para entrar es obligatorio dejar el móvil afuera, para que se aprenda de verdad qué bueno es relacionarse con los otros entreteniendo una buena conversación. Un saludo cordial, Veronica.

Il terzo esercizio propone: “Participas en una campaña para promover la dieta sana en tu ciudad. Una persona con problemas de obesidad te ha escrito para pedirte consejos. Escribe un correo electrónico a esta persona”44 ; Audrey commenta in questo modo: Hola, recibí su mensaje sobre la necesidad de consejo y estoy contenta de que usted está pidiendo. Necesitas comenzar una rutina de ejercicios. No tiene que ser muy intensa al principio, pero, ir a caminar alrededor de su ciudad, pasear a su perro al parque, y más. Comience pequeño y luego trabaje su camino paso a paso. Es importante comer bien y mantenerse alejado de demasiados dulces. Céntrese en comer grasas saludables como el aceite de oliva y los aguacates en lugar de la mantequilla y la manteca. Además, observe el tamaño de su porción. Espero que este consejo te ayude y te deseo lo mejor. Sinceramente, Audrey.

Il mio commento, invece, è: Buenos días señor, he leído su correo y me alegrará mucho ayudarle para su dieta. Primera cosa: elimine la mayoría de los azúcares, porque molestan al intestino. La dieta tiene que ser equilibrada y muy variada, por eso no coma una comida particular muchas veces durante la semana. Varie siempre. Abunde de fruta y verduras, que contienen fibras y beba mucha agua durante todo el día. No vaya a cenar al restaurante más de una vez por semana, y aquella también recuérdese de no exagerar. El deporte es fundamental para una dieta regular. Haga ejercicios en el gimnasio, a lo mejor con un entrenador personal. Haga ejercicios en el parque también, camine mucho, si vive en un piso alto no tome el ascensor, haga siempre las escaleras. Si le gusta, utilize mucho la bicicleta. Nadar y correr también son actividades muy aconsejadas, sobretodo por el corazón, por lo que una persona con problemas de obesidad tiene que preocuparse. Por problemas adicionales, consulte al médico. Un saludo cordial, Veronica. 43

“Healthy Cities: Spring 2019” [online], Hong Kong Baptist University. Disponibile all’indirizzo: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/illsa/3/steps/477426 [Ultimo accesso: 3 Ottobre 2019]. 44 “Healthy Cities: Spring 2019” [online] Hong Kong Baptist University. Disponibile all’indirizzo: http://www.futurelearn.com/courses/illsa/3/steps/477427 [Ultimo accesso: 3 Ottobre 2019].

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Avendo terminato le attività di piattaforma riguardo le settimane menzionate anteriormente, io ed Audrey ricominciamo ad interagire tramite WhatsApp per maturare una buona idea sulla realizzazione del nostro proyecto social. Audrey mi propone di scegliere un aspetto rilevante riguardo il tema che abbiamo scelto, la calidad de la vida, per utilizzarlo come base da cui poter sviluppare un’idea di progetto. Io mi trovo d’accordo, quindi proviamo a riesaminare il nostro questionario; ci rendiamo conto che el acceso a la educación rappresenta il tema che ha ottenuto la maggioranza dei voti come l’elemento più importante e a questo punto ci viene un’idea: perché non realizzare delle piccole librerie pubbliche? Dei piccoli scaffali in mezzo alla città, attraverso i quali le persone possano donare e scambiare libri, articoli e riviste. All’interno si potrebbero introdurre anche articoli scientifici riguardo l’emergenza del cambiamento climatico, come condurre una dieta sana, pubblicità di eventi o di attività di volontariato. L’idea ci affascina, ci appassiona e Audrey mi racconta che in America esistono già, in alcune zone, scaffali pubblici di questo tipo, mostrandomi alcune foto in chat; crediamo di aver intrapreso la strada giusta.

Le Ultime due Settimane: Il Nostro Progetto Sociale in Azione Vogliamo portare avanti quest’idea e insieme componiamo un testo in cui spieghiamo la motivazione della nostra scelta: Como los resultados de nuestro cuestionario subrayan que el acceso a la educación es la cualidad más importante para una buena calidad de la vida, hemos decidido realizar nuestro proyecto social relacionándolo con ese objetivo: aumentar el nivel de acceso a la educación entre toda nuestra población. Nuestro proyecto social desarrolla la idea de poner estanterías en lugares públicos de nuestras ciudades, en las que la gente podría donar y cambiar libros, revistas, papeles informativos sobre la emergencia climática que estamos viviendo, sobre el respeto por el ambiente y muchos otros temas, para que cualquier persona tenga la posibilidad de aumentar y profundizar su propia cultura, su propia conciencia y compartirla con su propia comunidad.

Successivamente, realizziamo la descrizione da allegare all’ultima diapositiva del nostro portfolio, in cui spieghiamo in cosa realmente consiste il nostro proyecto social: Nuestra idea es poner estas estanterías en los lugares más comunes, públicos, donde la gente puede encontrarlas fácilmente, y donde cualquier persona puede alcanzarlas sin ningún problema. Creemos que puede ser también una buena opción para relacionarse con los otros y compartir ideas, a lo mejor escribiendo dentro de los libros algunas notas importantes según nuestra opinión, o subrayando algunas frases, temas y palabras. El objetivo central, sin embargo, es de promover un alto nivel de educación alcanzable para todos. Además, si alguien prefiere ver una película en vez de leer un libro, podría buscar algunos materiales multimediales dentro de las mismas estanterías; se podrían introducir DVD, CD y todo lo que alguien piense que merece la pena compartir con los otros.45

Dopo aver completato il nostro portfolio, ci sentiamo felici e soddisfatte del nostro lavoro, pronte per concludere anche le ultime attività sulla piattaforma ‘FutureLearn’. Per quanto riguarda la settima settimana, ci sono quattro nuovi articoli da leggere, ma all’interno delle frasi mancano delle parole: siamo noi a dover completare tutti i 45

Rappresentazione in Appendice, quarta immagine, p.42.

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sintagmi con i vocaboli che mancano. È un esercizio molto stimolante e che rafforza ulteriormente le proprie competenze linguistiche. I temi che riguardano gli articoli sono la batalla contra el CO2, el tiempo libre de los españoles, el desayuno en España, el dilema de ser chino y nacer en España. L’ottava settimana, invece, rappresenta solo un ultimo saluto da parte del team del progetto di piattaforma ringraziandoci per la partecipazione ed augurandoci un buon proseguimento, con la speranza che ‘FutureLearn’ ci abbia aiutato ad aumentare e migliorare le nostre conoscenze linguistiche.

Conclusioni El proyecto ILLSA ha sido una oportunidad extraordinaria, que me ha permitido alcanzar algunos de los objetivos más importantes para una estudiante de lenguas extranjeras como soy yo. Al completar este proyecto, me siento capaz de usar el español como medio para realizar una investigación y para comunicar con los demás. Puedo demostrar tener un conocimiento avanzado de los temas del proyecto en el idioma que he elegido, he logrado aprender a identificar los problemas clave dentro de un tema y encontrar las posibles soluciones colaborando con mis compañeros dentro de un ámbito multicultural, todos utilizando el español como medio de comunicación, siguiendo practicando y reforzando nuestras competencias lingüísticas. He aprendido junto a mi compañera Audrey a aplicar técnicas de investigación para el desarrollo de un proyecto de sensibilización social. ILLSA es un proyecto que enseña el verdadero significado de trabajar en equipo dentro de un entorno multicultural, promoviendo la internacionalización, la práctica de la lengua, el refuerzo de la confianza en la misma, impulsando iniciativas y subiendo el nivel de nuestras competencias personales. Junto con todo eso, se realiza también una profundización sobre el tema de las ciudades saludables y de todos los subtemas que le rodean. Cada etapa permite aumentar gradualmente nuestras propias competencias lingüísticas y de sensibilización social. Los trabajos en la plataforma digital ‘FutureLearn’ representan un excelente entrenamiento, porque por medio de la exploración de temas nuevos, al mismo tiempo se pueden aprender palabras nuevas, dichos y tecnicismos. Hay entrenamiento en la lectura, en la escritura, en el escucho de material audiovisual y también en el habla, gracias a los trabajos de grupo desarrollados en el guía de los ejercicios del portafolio. Hemos tenido la posibilidad de intercambiarnos ideas, opiniones, informaciones sobre ciudades desconocidas y además culturas diferentes, examinando un tema muy importante y actual para todo el mundo y todas nuestras comunidades, practicando y mejorando durante todo el tiempo el idioma extranjero que hemos elegido. El proyecto ILLSA representa el punto de unión de muchísimos jóvenes, estudiantes y amantes de las lenguas y de las culturas con un deseo especial de cooperar y conocer situaciones diferentes del mundo. Todos hemos tendido la oportunidad de pertenecer a este maravilloso equipo, representante de la innovación y cultivo de

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nuevos y mayores intereses globales. Todos somos testigos de las ventajas y enriquecimientos que este proyecto puede ofrecer, sobre todo por lo que atañe a la evolución de nuestras competencias comunicativas. Por este motivo, querría agradecer a mi tutora, la profesora María Joaquina Valero Gisbert, por la oportunidad ofrecida y por haberme seguido durante todo el trabajo. Además, querría agradecer a toda mi familia, por acompañarme y apoyarme a lo largo de mi etapa universitaria, a mi novio y a mis amigos por estar siempre presentes apoyándome en todo momento.

Bibliografia “Ambiente obesogénico, qué es y cómo controlarlo para comer más sano” [online]. Disponibile all’indirizzo: https://www.directoalpaladar.com/salud/ambiente-obe sogenico-que-es-y-como-controlarlo-para-comer-mas-sano [Ultimo accesso: 1 Novembre 2019]. “¿A qué dedican los españoles su tiempo libre?” [online], Madrid. Disponibile all’indirizzo: https://cadenaser.com/ser/2017/07/05/sociedad/1499252745_630554. html [Ultimo accesso: 31 Ottobre 2019]. “Ciudades saludables para combatir la obesidad infantil” [online], Madrid. Disponibileall’indirizzo: https://as.com/deporteyvida/2017/04/30/portada/149354 8881_285839.html [Ultimo accesso: 30 Ottobre 2019]. “El País, El Periódico Global” [online]. Disponibile all’indirizzo: https://elpais. com [Ultimo accesso: 1 Novembre 2019]. “FutureLearn” [online]. Disponibile all’indirizzo: www.futurelearn.com/ [Ultimo accesso: 30 Ottobre 2019]. “Healthy Cities: Spring 2019” [online], Hong Kong Baptist University. Disponibile all’indirizzo: http://www.futurelearn.com/courses/illsa/3/steps/477354 [Ultimo accesso: 3 Ottobre 2019]. “ILLSA project” [online], Department of Government and International Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, 15 Baptist University Road, Kowloon Tong, Kowloon, Hong Kong S.A.R. Disponibileall’indirizzo: http://www.illsaproject.com/it-e-lea rning [Ultimo accesso: 3 Ottobre 2019].

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I parte del progetto/I gruppo: presentazione personale Equipo Europa.

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I parte del progetto/I gruppo: presentazione della città Equipo Hong Kong.

I parte del progetto/I gruppo: la mia opinione sulla città di Parma come ciudad saludable.

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Appendice

I parte del progetto/I gruppo: l’opinione di Daisy e Rachel sulla città di Hong Kong come ciudad saludable.

I parte del progetto/II gruppo: presentazione personale Equipo Europa.

Appendice

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I parte del progetto/II gruppo: infografica sulle città di Parma e Siviglia.

I parte del progetto/II gruppo: mappa mentale sul significato di ciudad saludable.

I parte del progetto/II gruppo: l’opinione di Audrey su Siviglia come ciudad saludable.

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Appendice

II parte del progetto/II gruppo: conversazioni WhatsApp fra Audrey e me sulla scelta del tema de investigación.

Appendice

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II parte del progetto/II gruppo: conversazioni WhatsApp fra Audrey e me sulla creazione del questionario.

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II parte del progetto/II gruppo: il questionario.

III parte del progetto/II gruppo: il nostro proyecto social.

Appendice

Uncited References

Brown, H., Bradford, A. (2017). EMI, CLIL, & CBI: differing approaches and goals. In P. Clements, A. Krause, & H. Brown (Eds.), Transformation in language education. JALT. Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Multilingual Matters. Chaudhuri, T. (2011). Designing Web 2.0-telecollaborations for university students. The eExchange Giessen-Hong Kong. German as a Foreign Language, 2, 126–141. http://www.gfljournal.de/ind ex.php Kramsch, C. (1995). The cultural component of language teaching. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 8(2), 83–92. Storch, N., & Aldosari, A. (2013). Pairing learners in pair work activity. Language Teaching Research, 17(1), 31–48.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 T. Chaudhuri et al., Integrated Language Learning & Social Awareness: Research and Practice, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-8098-4

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