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Telecollaboration in the secondary

language classroom: case study of
adolescent interaction and pedagogical
integration
a b
Paige Ware & Greg Kessler
a
Department of Teaching and Learning, Southern Methodist
University, Dallas, TX, USA
b
Department of Linguistics, Ohio University, Athens, GA, USA
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To cite this article: Paige Ware & Greg Kessler (2014): Telecollaboration in the secondary language
classroom: case study of adolescent interaction and pedagogical integration, Computer Assisted
Language Learning, DOI: 10.1080/09588221.2014.961481
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Computer Assisted Language Learning, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2014.961481
Telecollaboration in the secondary language classroom: case study of

adolescent interaction and pedagogical integration
Paige Warea* and Greg Kesslerb
a
Department of Teaching and Learning, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, USA;
b
Department of Linguistics, Ohio University, Athens, GA, USA
This study builds on research examining the in-school technology practices of

adolescent language learners by exploring the patterns of classroom literacy practices

that emerge when a telecollaborative project is introduced into a conventional
secondary language classroom. We draw on the conceptual frameworks and discourse
analytical tools developed by researchers of online communication practices at the
post-secondary level and turn this lens to examine how an international online
exchange project might contribute to the creation of an in-school learning
environment in which adolescents use technology to interact with distally located
peers through telecollaboration. The particular contribution of this study is twofold: to
offer insight into patterns that characterize the literacy practices that emerge through
the introduction of telecollaboration into the learning environment and to document
the types of pedagogical decision-making that such projects introduce into the
secondary context. Using a case-study design, we explored two central areas: (1)
What patterns of interaction emerge in the literacy practices of adolescent students as
they build relationships with their intercultural partners? (2) How do teachers address
the pedagogical issues that are foregrounded when introducing innovative literacy
practices such as telecollaboration into the secondary learning environment? Our
premise is that online exchanges might offer a different kind of learning experience
that provides opportunities for adolescents to engage with language in ways that do
not typically get enacted in conventional language classrooms. Our interest therefore
is grounded both in providing a rich, descriptive inventory of how adolescents engage
with telecollaboration in the classroom context, as well as in documenting the types of
pedagogical issues that are introduced. We offer a linguistically grounded portrait of
what constitutes the interactional patterns and pedagogical issues in a classroom
learning environment shaped by the introduction of an online intercultural project.
Using a case-study approach, therefore, we provide close documentation and analyses
of a 15-week, classroom-based telecollaboration project through student transcripts
and focal teacher interviews. We conclude with a discussion of the empirical and
pedagogical implications associated with integrating telecollaboration into secondary
language classroom contexts.
Keywords: telecollaboration; secondary education; adolescents; blogs; assessment;
intercultural communication
Introduction
In out-of-school settings, adolescents have been found to use technology to establish and
maintain social networks, to consume and share information, and, ultimately, to engage
in new forms of cognition and communication (Hull & Schultz, 2001). In research exam-
ining how adolescents leverage different technologies for their own purposes outside tra-
ditional learning environments, such depictions of competence with new technologies are
*Corresponding author. Email: pware@smu.edu
Ó 2014 Taylor & Francis

2 P. Ware and G. Kessler
common. According to this research base, many adolescents participate in online fanfic-
tion communities (Black, 2008), establish multilingual and transnational identities in
online communities (Lam, 2000, 2005; Skerrett, 2012), engage in sophisticated gaming
practices (Gee, 2007; Thorne, Black, & Sykes, 2009), and create, publish, and comment
on a range of multimedia texts (Leander & Boldt, 2013; Vasudevan, 2010).
Such positive depictions of adolescents’ non-institutional uses of technology are not
always reflected in classroom practices within educational settings (Alvermann, 2005).
Researchers exploring adolescents’ in-school uses of technology have documented differ-
ences among adolescents in their abilities to leverage technologies for complex cognitive
and project-based learning (Levy & Michael, 2011; Ware, 2008). Several studies have
demonstrated that differential access to technology in schools still characterizes usage
patterns across countries (Erumban & de Jong, 2006; van Dijk, 2005) and within coun-
tries, as based on income status, ethnicity, and home access (Attewell & Battle, 1999;
Kuhlemeier & Hemker, 2007; van Deursen & van Dijk, 2009; Warschauer & Ware,
2008). Although portraits of such differences will likely persist for some time, a number
of smaller initiatives at the secondary classroom level have begun to illustrate how educa-
tors can leverage technologies in classroom contexts to help their adolescent learners
engage with more complex language and literacy practices (Kiili, Laurinen, Marttunen,
& Leu, 2012; Moran, Ferdig, Pearson, Wardrop, & Blomeyer, 2008; Ware, 2008;
Warschauer & Ware, 2008).
This study builds on research examining the in-school technology practices of adoles-
cent language learners by exploring the patterns of classroom literacy practices that
emerge when a telecollaborative project is introduced into a conventional secondary lan-
guage arts and writing classroom in which adolescent students in a US middle school
interact with same-aged partners in Spain at a bilingual Spanish English middle school.
We draw on the conceptual frameworks and discourse analytical tools developed by
CALL researchers of online communication practices at the post-secondary level and
turn this lens to examine how an international online exchange project might contribute
to the creation of an in-school learning environment in which adolescents use technology
to interact with distally located peers through telecollaboration. Much of the CALL
research base draws on classrooms that explicitly target second or foreign language
instruction; the US classroom in this case study, however, is representative of many sec-
ondary language arts classrooms in urban public US schools, in which English language
learners are mainstreamed with native English-speaking students after only one to two
years of sheltered, or pull-out, English language instruction. The particular contribution
of this study is therefore twofold: to offer insight into patterns that characterize the liter-
acy practices that emerge through the introduction of telecollaboration into a learning
environment in which many English language learners learn alongside their native
English-speaking peers and to document the types of pedagogical decision-making that
such projects introduce into the secondary context.
Our premise is that online exchanges might offer a different kind of learning experi-
ence that provides opportunities for adolescents to engage with language in ways that do
not typically get enacted in conventional language classrooms. Our interest therefore is
grounded both in providing a rich, descriptive inventory of a how adolescents engage
with telecollaboration in the classroom context and in documenting the types of pedagog-
ical issues that are introduced. Using a case-study approach, we, therefore, provide close
documentation and analyses of a 15-week, classroom-based telecollaboration project as
we explore two central questions: (1) What patterns of interaction emerge in the literacy
practices of adolescent students as they build relationships with their intercultural
Computer Assisted Language Learning 3
partners? (2) How do teachers address the pedagogical issues that are foregrounded when
introducing innovative literacy practices such as telecollaboration into the secondary
learning environment?
We conclude with a discussion of the empirical and pedagogical implications associ-
ated with integrating telecollaboration into secondary language classroom contexts. The
extent to which such classroom opportunities might facilitate the actual development of
new types of online communication skills is an important long-term goal for language
researchers. However, given that the research within the secondary context is relatively
new, the specific usefulness of our study is not on tracking such development, but rather
on offering a linguistically grounded descriptive portrait of what constitutes the interac-
tional patterns and pedagogical issues in a particular classroom learning environment
shaped by the introduction of an online intercultural project. Such an exploratory exami-
nation can highlight areas in need of more immediate research and can contribute to dis-
cussions among educators and researchers about the many underexplored issues that
accompany the use of telecollaboration in secondary contexts.
Research on classroom-based online interaction projects

Research on international online communication exchanges, often referred to as telecol-
laboration, has proliferated in the last decade, particularly at the post-secondary level.
This research base offers insights into many dimensions of such projects, including lin-
guistic gains, student dynamics, instructors’ roles, communication breakdown, and inter-
cultural competence (for thorough discussions, see recent edited volumes by Dooly &
O’Dowd, 2012, and Guth & Helm, 2010). While some of this work has examined the use
of online communication within the context of a single foreign language classroom to
explore the impact of local peer interaction on specific genres of writing (Vurdien, 2013)
or on language practice and idea sharing (Miceli, Visocnik-Murray, & Kennedy, 2010),
the majority of studies in this area have examined international telecollaborative discus-
sions that cross geographic, cultural, and linguistic lines. In order to explore the class-
room learning environment and the ways in which adolescents engage with such
telecollaborative projects, we draw on three sets of studies from this growing area of tele-
collaboration: research focused on types and sequencing of online tasks; studies examin-
ing relationship building among participants; and work examining the linguistic features
of intercultural discourse.
First, information about the types of tasks used in telecollaboration can be gleaned
from project descriptions, and a few studies have examined more specifically the impact
of particular tasks on designated outcomes and participant dynamics. From this body of
work, O’Dowd and Ware (2009) documented 12 different, frequently recurring tasks and
synthesized them into three types: information exchange, comparison and analysis, and
collaborative. Of these three types, the most common activity types stem from the first
two, and as Guth and Helm (2010) have pointed out, the infrequency of the third type of
tasks, collaborative, might stem from their complexity, as such collaboration requires
teamwork, reciprocity among learners, a balanced workload, and mutual respect of dead-
lines. In a study by Hauck and Youngs (2008) that examined such complex collaborative
tasks, US and French learners were linked for 10 weeks and used a wide array of multi-
modal technologies synchronous communication with audio-graphic options, asyn-
chronous media, and project blogs while engaging in three collaborative tasks. Hauck
and Youngs found that particular affordances of the technologies and tasks impacted
participants’ perceptions of being connected with one another.
Second, fostering relationship building connectivity and interactivity among learn-

ers has been the focus of a number of studies that use a combination of surveys, inter-
views, and content analyses of interactions to examine what makes certain partnerships
successful. This research has drawn primarily on qualitative analyses of students’ inter-
cultural communicative competence (Belz, 2005; Lee, 2009; Liaw, 2006; O’Dowd, 2003;
Ware, 2005). O’Dowd (2003), for example, took a holistic approach to all five dimensions
of intercultural competence and identified, through triangulation across online interac-
tions, interviews, and questionnaire responses, what constituted successful intercultural
competence in the context of a post-secondary telecollaboration between Spanish learners
in the US and English learners in Spain. In this particular context, O’Dowd found that the
most competent communicators were those who built personal relationships, responded
in greater depth, and remained sensitive to their partners’ understandings. In Lee’s (2009)
analysis of tertiary English and Spanish language learner interactions using blogs and
podcasts, she found that, although the project’s task-based approach created a “dynamic
climate for interactive collaboration” (p. 425), the key important factors were partic-
ipants’ personal commitment and their willingness to build relationships.
Finally, the language choices that participants make when communicating through a
variety of online media have been referred to as online communication skills. In second-
ary schools, the overarching frame for online communication skills is one of literacies.
For example, in the widely used multiliteracies framework (New London Group, 1996),
emphasis is placed on the intersection of multiple languages, dialects, modes, and com-
municative choices. Other views of digital competence carry particular foci: cyberliter-
acy, according to Gurak (2001), involves an understanding of how technology use affects
culture and human behavior, and new media literacies emphasize participatory learning
(Jenkins, 2006). For this study, we draw broadly on this notion of multiliteracies, but
anchor it more specifically in Warschauer’s (2003) framework that involves a four-part
view of digital competence, of which online communication skills form one pillar. These
skills, in particular, are comprised of demonstrating understanding of contextual appropri-
ateness, genre conventions, and management of distal communication.
To this multiliteracies framework, we also add an intercultural component, which is
common in studies of language learning at the tertiary level but often less explicitly artic-
ulated in research with secondary learners. To analyze this intercultural layer, we draw
on Michael Byram’s (1997) conceptual model for understanding the knowledge, attitudes,
and skills needed for intercultural communicative competence. The first two categories of
knowledge and attitudes in this model include a wide variety of personality characteris-
tics, attitudes, values, and general cultural and social awareness. The dimension of knowl-
edge, for example, includes having information about oneself and one’s interlocutor and
their cultural contexts; attitudes involve the ability to relativize oneself and value others.
The third component of skills, the specific focus in this study, highlights the language
choices of how one interprets and interacts with others across linguistic and cultural lines.
The research base for exploring such intercultural communication skills at the tertiary
level is rich and growing. Belz (2005), for example, explored one component of Byram’s
(1997) model of intercultural communicative competence the skills of discovery by
tracing the type, frequency, and content of participants’ questions in the online transcripts
of post-secondary students in Germany and the United States engaged in an English
German telecollaboration. The way students posed questions, she argued,
demonstrated a possible instantiation of “impression formation in intercultural personal
relationship building” (p. 5). Liaw and Bunn-LeMaster (2010) analyzed several classes of
social, affective, and cognitive process words and found that Taiwanese and US students
interacting in English used more positive emotion words, more social alignment terms,
and more mitigating statements with one another to continually reaffirm their interactivity
and interpersonal rapport. Finally, a recent study by Kitade (2012) of 14 groups of Japa-
nese learners drew on the discourse analytic tool of exchange structure analysis to docu-
ment group dynamics. Her analysis suggests that group norms vary, possibly in part
influenced by the frequency of contributions and by internal group norms; she concludes
that some of the groups developed a structure that “encouraged intercultural learning to
move from knowledge exchanges to perspective changes” (p. 65).
In sum, studies from each of these three domains of research task type, relationship
building, and linguistic features help provide a backdrop against which this project was
conceptualized and analyzed. First, we were attuned to previously documented strengths
and trade-offs when selecting among options for tasks and sequencing. Moreover, the pre-
mium placed on the importance of relationship building sharpened our attention to foster-
ing a climate of engagement and of frequent contributions. Finally, the conceptual

framework of online communication skills (Byram, 1997; Warschauer, 2003) forms the
backdrop against which we analyze how adolescent students engaged with their distally
located partners. The discourse analytic tools applied in previous studies at the tertiary
level assisted us in the development of a refined coding system to build upon these con-
structs from previous research.
Methods
Because intercultural projects are socially and culturally situated in unique learning envi-
ronments, we used a case-study approach (Yin, 2006), which allows for substantial explo-
ration of a new or emerging area using multiple forms of evidence from many
stakeholders’ perspectives. In most studies of telecollaboration, perspectives from both or
multiple sides of the exchange are explored, and such an examination of this particular
partnership is, in fact, explored elsewhere (Ware, 2013). However, because of the geo-
graphic proximity of the researcher on the US side and the unanticipated factors that
unfolded in the Spanish context, which are described fully below, the best case for pursu-
ing our particular research questions about adolescent interactional patterns and pedagog-
ical issues was the US side of the exchange. This exploratory case study is therefore
bounded by the experiences and interactions of the students and teachers on only the US
side of the telecollaborative exchange. By defining the case with this more narrowed lens,
we take a position advocated by Dyson and Genishi (2005), in which a particular class-
room serves as a “gloss” for a more complex context, in which the researcher “highlights
certain elements of classroom life and lets other elements become the backdrop” (p. 18).
While certainly not unimportant, the backdrop in this exploration is formed by the con-
versations taking place with partners in a Spanish bilingual school.
Research questions
(1) What interactional patterns emerge in the written correspondence of adolescent

students as they build relationships with their intercultural partners?
(2) What pedagogical issues are foregrounded by teachers who introduce telecollabo-
ration into the secondary classroom learning environment?
Site and participants

On the US side of the exchange, a public middle school in a large urban district in the
southwest United States was chosen as the site for this project because the district had
made a concerted effort to secure state funding to provide technology tools and profes-
sional development in several district middle schools. Additionally, the research team
had conducted a series of projects across an eight-year period in this district and therefore
had developed a collaborative relationship with many stakeholders. District administra-
tors purposefully selected a middle school to participate in the project based on the crite-
ria that the demographic data were representative of the whole district. The two teachers
at the identified middle school who taught all sections of eighth grade (12 and 13 year
old) writing and language arts were invited to participate. Both teachers were female, and
each had at least three years of teaching experience as well as certification in secondary
language arts. One teacher was near the end of her coursework for a master’s degree in
education. Each teacher taught the same curriculum to students each day for five class
periods of 45-minutes each with an average of 24 students enrolled per class period.
Each of the two teachers chose which one of their five class periods would participate
in the online exchange project based on preferential criteria, including the timing of the
planning period, which occurred immediately after the period in which the project was
conducted and therefore allowed the teachers to discuss the project on a regular basis.
Consent forms were sent home in English and in Spanish to all students from these two
classes with one refusal, for a total of 38 participants (18 female and 20 male). The stu-
dent who did not return a consent form performed all tasks associated with the project,
with the exception that her teacher, rather than a peer in Spain, served as the partner. In
addition to tracking the students’ regular participation through weekly logs, the teachers
also gave students an end-of-semester open-ended intercultural discourse questionnaire
(IDQ). Each teacher also gave the IDQ to students in two of their other four classes
(total D 25 female, 32 male) because the teachers were interested in a formative assess-
ment of the extent to which the answers between students who had participated and those
who had not might reveal differences in how students responded.
On the Spanish side of the exchange, a private bilingual school (English and Spanish
instruction) was chosen for several reasons. First, the first author had lived for three years
in the city in which the school was located and had personal and professional relationships
with many of the students’ families. Second, the first author had established relationships
with researchers from universities in the area and was able to hire a local graduate student
in English Pedagogy to assist with the implementation and data collection at the site in
Spain. The administrative personnel at the Spanish school agreed to implement the project
under the condition that the telecollaboration be made available to all students at the eighth
grade level (n D 50). The English language arts teachers then preferred to house the project
in the technology class, rather than in their language arts instruction, so the graduate stu-
dent worked primarily with the technology instructor to ensure smooth implementation of
the assigned tasks. This cascading of decisions resulted in a shift in the graduate student’s
anticipated work. Instead of allocating time for collecting interview and observation data,
the student researcher served as the technology instructor’s assistant in helping ensure that
the logistics of implementing the project ran smoothly.
Infrastructure
The technology infrastructure in the focal US classroom consisted of a laptop cart, or a
trolley on wheels that shelved 30 laptop computers. The trolley served as a housing
and charging station, and each time it was checked back in, all laptops were to be dou-
ble-checked to ensure that they were recharging for the next class. All laptops were
smaller than standard PC laptops with undersized keyboards. Student projects were
housed on the local area network server of the school, rather than on the hard drive of
the laptops. Because the exchange took place in two different classes at two different
times of day, all students had access to their own computer for the 45-minute period in
which the exchange took place each week. If students had chosen to pair up to be part-
nered with peers in Spain (in a group of three or four students), they could choose
either to work collaboratively on one computer with their in-class partner or to work
side-by-side on two different computers. Technical support was provided to the entire
school by one technology integration specialist; in cases in which laptops needed ser-
vicing, the specialist would repair them for use the following week but was not on
hand in the classroom to service the computers immediately. There were two desktop
computers (one for all-class use and one each of the teachers’ computers) for students
to use when their laptops failed or had not been recharged from a previous class period.
In addition to the computers, students had access to handheld digital cameras that could
record both audio and video. There were 15 available cameras to be checked out with
the teacher on an as-requested basis, either to take home or to use in the school. Stu-
dents could not, however, check out the computers.
Procedures
Prior to the onset of the exchange, the graduate student researcher in Spain traveled to
the US to assist the research team (the primary researcher and two teachers) in the
development of the tasks and sequencing of activities. A password-protected Google
Blogger account was created, such that the research team had access to all blogs, but
the students could only access the blog to which they were assigned. Students on each
side of the exchange were invited to either partner up with a peer in their classroom to
be matched with two students from the other country, or to be alone in a one-on-one
partnership with a peer from the other country. A few matches were made between a
single partner in one country and a pair in another. Therefore, each of the private
groups was comprised of two, three, or four students, depending on whether students
wanted to be alone with a partner peer or in a pairing with a local friend and partner
peers. Each individual blog within the central account was assigned a name consisting
of two Spanish and American city names (see Figure 1 for an image of the dashboard).
Students logged into their unique blog and could only read and send messages from
that blog.
Participation was tracked weekly by the graduate research assistant who provided an
updated spreadsheet each week to the primary researcher and classroom teachers about
the number of responses and total number of words per response. The primary researcher
and classroom teacher monitored the quality and appropriateness of the messages on a
weekly basis. On the US side of the exchange, students were told that they would be
assessed based on participation as documented by this weekly tracking system. All mes-
sages were conducted in English, because the curriculum in the United States was in
English, and the students in Spain were enrolled in a bilingual English Spanish school
that viewed the project as an opportunity for their students to use English in authentic
interaction with native speakers. Students navigated their private blogs by using a menu
bar on the right-hand side of their blog (see Figure 2). Blog postings supported text-based
messages, hyperlinks, and embedded videos.
Figure 1. Example of project dashboard.
Five prompts were used, and approximately three weeks were allocated for each
prompt (see Table 1 for details about prompts). The common prompt activities were
designed to help students build on a shared knowledge base and to facilitate development
of their skills of interacting and relating with one another and with cultural artifacts.
Figure 2. Navigation within a group blog. Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks
of Google, Inc., used with permission.
Table 1. Prompts used during the exchange.
Prompts Descriptions
Prompt 1: Getting to know Write an introductory letter to your partner. Include links to
one another (weeks 1 3) websites and to the video that you created.
Prompt 2: Music swap Share three songs from YouTube with partner, and be sure to
(weeks 4 6) describe why you chose each of these songs:
(1) A song that you listen to when you are in a great mood
(2) A popular song that you do not personally like
(3) A song that you think fits a stereotype of Spain
Prompt 3: Noticing Create a short “survival guide” for your partner; if they came to your
language (weeks 7 9) school, what slang would they have to know to survive? Also
what cultural sayings can you teach them? Are there cultural
sayings that you think are “typical” for Americans?

Prompt 4: Symbols of Choose FOUR images using Google Image search, and be sure to
ourselves and our describe why you chose each image:
cultures (weeks 10 12) (1) An image that represents something about YOU
(2) An image that represents something about US American culture
(3) An image that represents something about Spanish culture
(4) An image that represents something about “global culture”
Prompt 5: Diversity in your Every country is made up of many different types of individuals,
country (weeks 13 15) families, communities, geographic locations, ethnicities,
languages, ages, interest groups, and careers and so many more
ways that we are different within our country’s borders. Your
activity is to help your partner understand the diversity within
your country:
(1) Choose ONE way of categorizing the diversity in your country (
e.g., ethnic diversity, geographic diversity, or language diversity)
(2) Describe the different groups. Be sure to give examples. Some
examples will probably be stereotypes, and some will be counter-
examples to the stereotypes. Give as much information as you
can in the time you have.
These prompts reflected the school’s curricular focus on deepening student understanding
and use of language forms and functions across different genres. In the context of online
communication, these skills were based on Byram’s (1997) model and demonstrated
awareness of and ability to use language flexibly: to signal openness to others through
language choices, to use language variably for different communicative situations, and to
demonstrate understanding of discursive choice as shaping contexts and speaker positions
(Belz, 2003; Ware, 2005, 2013).
Data collection and analysis

Data sources included an archive of all online interactions, interviews with both partici-
pating teachers, and student written responses on the IDQ. All coding was conducted
using the qualitative analysis software NVivo (QSR International, 2014) and was focused
for this case study only on the writing of students on the US side of the exchange. The
basic unit of analysis in this coding process was defined as an utterance that adhered to
Table 2. Codes and examples of students’ online discursive choices.
Codes Examples from transcripts
Personal forms of address Dara, to your question you/your

Boulomaic modality i would love to meet you :)
I hope you like it.
Emotive lexical choices Awsome, your so lucky you can do that.
that’s so amazing!
Yes/no-questions do yall have boyfriends?
do you have bells at school?
Opinion questions What do you think?
What/how questions What language do you think in?
How did the Spanish flu broke out, because the flu killed more than
20 million people?
sentence boundaries as punctuated by the students. By keeping the unit of analysis consis-
tent, we were able to leverage the data analysis to offer descriptive statistics about the
overall patterns that emerged in the interactions and to better situate the illustrative exam-
ples used for interpreting these patterns as we held the analysis up against the triangulat-
ing information of the IDQ.
In addressing the first research question that examined the interactional patterns that
emerged in the online interactions, we conducted a discourse analysis that was grounded
in the linguistic anthropologist Hanks’s (1996) conception of the roles of speaker and
addressee in conversation, in which, through their turn-taking sequences, individuals
“take up the roles, discharge and vacate them, and provide openings for others to assume
them or closures to prevent them from doing so” (p. 208). To operationalize this view,
we focused on the form and function of students’ questions and responses in turn taking.
A similar coding scheme has been used in prior research on intercultural communication
in telecollaboration (Belz, 2003; Ware, 2013) that views question-and-response sequen-
ces as demonstrations of how individuals position one another as information-givers and
information-seekers through several types of questions: yes/no questions, what/how
questions, and opinion questions (Schiffrin, 1994). As part of this analysis, we also
coded for students’ interactional stances that could be tagged as demonstrations of emo-
tive attitudes or points of view (Besnier, 1990; Biber & Finnegan, 1989) through forms
of boulomaic modality that key emotion or involvement (would like, hope to, would
enjoy) and through emotive lexical choices (awesome, wow, love). Examples from this
coding can be found in Table 2. In analyzing the transcripts, therefore, we totaled the
utterances written by the US students and calculated the proportions of those utterances
that were questions and responses and those that were emotionally tagged. We also cal-
culated the percentages of second person personal pronoun use across the total words
written in these groups.
This analysis allowed us to discover commonalities among the adolescent partic-
ipants’ interactional patterns in this particular context, as well as to note any cases that
varied substantially from the typical patterns. In doing so, we were able to cross check
the data for disconfirming evidence of any trends we found. Results from this discourse
analysis are presented in two ways in the findings section. First, descriptive statistics of
the overall patterns of questions, responses, emotionally tagged utterances, and personal
pronoun usage are provided in order to provide information about the typicality and pro-
portionality of the various types of interactional moves students made. Second, illustra-
tive examples from this analysis are used to interpret these moves within the conceptual
framework outlined earlier.
The second research question focused on the pedagogical issues that the participating
teachers perceived as important considerations in this secondary context. Both teachers
were interviewed formally at the beginning and end of the project, and we had three
informal, unrecorded lunches with the teachers during the project. Analytic memos were
written immediately following these informal debriefing sessions. Interviews followed a
semi-structured protocol that began with a grand tour question (Brenner, 2006), in which
teachers were asked, in the first interview, to describe their overall expectations of the
telecollaboration and, at the end of the exchange, to describe the perceived successful
and less successful aspects of the project. Follow-up questions focused on various peda-
gogical aspects of the project, including student motivation, curricular integration, stu-
dent skill development, logistical barriers and facilitators, and assessment. All
interviews were transcribed and imported into the NVivo software for coding. The inter-
view at the beginning of the exchange revealed a strong concern for issues of
assessment.
Because of the teachers’ interest in assessment, as an added formative assessment tool
we co-developed with the teachers the IDQ. This tool allowed them to respond to institu-
tional pressures that required a form of assessment for curricular innovations. The IDQ
targeted the specific interactional skills laid out in Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural
competence and consisted of five open-ended response items in which students were
posed the scenario that they had a partner in Australia and were to respond to a series of
scenarios pertaining to writing to their imagined partner. The first two questions focused
on how the students interacted by posing and answering questions about themselves and
their partners; the last three questions examined how students interpreted visual, verbal,
and stereotypical messages for their partners. Table 3 provides an abbreviated version of
all five questions on the IDQ and illustrates the upper and lower range of the students’
responses to the five questions.
At the end of the online exchange project, the teachers administered the IDQ in a
group setting for 45 minutes as a pencil-and-paper, in-class activity to all participants
(n D 38) and to students in sections of their other classes that did not participate in the
exchange (n D 57). Identifying information was removed, and a research assistant typed
all responses into an Excel file and randomly sorted the responses for scoring. A scoring
rubric (see Table 4) was created by a research team familiar with Byram’s (1997) model
to operationalize these specific skills of interacting and interpreting.
We tested the reliability of the rubric by having two raters score each item indepen-
dently of all other responses, with the inter-rater reliability of this scoring method calcu-
lated at 0.95 using a paired samples t-test. Two additional raters, also blind to condition,
then used the rubric to assign a holistic score to each individual student after reading
across all five responses. The inter-rater reliability of the holistic evaluation was deter-
mined to be 0.98 using a paired samples t-test. All discrepancies in ratings were resolved
through discussion until agreement on a final, non-averaged score was reached. Our aim
in the analysis of the IDQ was not for statistical inferential purposes, but rather for provid-
ing the teachers with a descriptive inventory tool to allow them to use as triangulating evi-
dence in their reflections about how such an international collaboration project might
inform their instruction.
Table 3. IDQ questions and sample scored high and low responses.
Question High example Low example
(1) Your partner sent you “What do these images mean to you? Is “You should tell me why
two images that represent there something about it you feel that you choose this
Australia, but your represents Australia to the fullest; what pictures. Whats with
partner did not write is that something?” the giant house and
anything about why they kangaroo crossings?”
chose these images. How
would you respond?
(2) Write 2 “good” “In my country where I’m from, (Pakistan) “Is there alot of
questions you would like we have a lot of different fun functions, kangaroos? Are you
to ask your partner. what kind of fun functions do you have? scared of kangaroos?”
What kind of body language do you
guys use? We have peace [with your
fingers], smile.”
(3) Imagine that your “Not all the Texans are cowboys in Texas. “ I’m not a cowboy, I
partner asks you about That is just a stereotype, which means haven’t seen any
some of the stereotypes that something isn’t true, or isn’t either.”
of the United States. She necessarily true. They show these
or he wants to know if it stereotypes because some people are
is true, for example, that cowboys and the theme is common.”
all Texans are cowboys,
like they have seen in the
movies. What would you
write?
(4) Your partner in “Well to me this Picture Represents “This is Barack Obama,
Australia found this Change. It says we are so diverse in he is the president of
image of President America to be able to have different the U.S.”
Obama on the Internet color Presidents. But as to all of
and has asked your America It might be different to the
opinion about what this liberals and the conservatives.”
image means to you and
to people in the United
States. What would you
write?
(5) Your partners are very “My favorite t.v show is teen mom or “My favorite show at the
interested in American sixteen and pregnant. I like those shows moment IDK.”
TV shows. They ask you cause it shows the. . .process of being
what your favorite show pregnant and having children and the
is, why you like it, and trouble you have to do to take care of
why other people do or the child and stuff. People like it cause
do not like it. fur the same reasons I do. Some people
don’t like it cause they think it makes
people thinks its OK to get pregnant at
16.”
Findings
Patterns of interaction within adolescent partnerships
In presenting the findings, we organize the presentation by linking the discourse analysis
to the IDQ. We focus on patterns of interaction that emerged between two types of partic-
ipating students: those who were in the upper quartile (n D 10) and those in the lower
quartile (n D 10) of the IDQ scores. Of the 10 students in the upper quartile of scores, 4
Table 4. Scoring rubric for an interactional discourse questionnaire.
Skills of interacting and interpreting
Rating Descriptors
1 Poses questions that are narrowly construed

Poses offensive questions that draw on extreme stereotyping
Provides no response to questions
Makes an inappropriate reply
2 Poses decontextualized yes/no questions
Poses non-offensive yet ambiguous questions
Explains only one aspect without an attempt to provide additional information for partners
to interpret or relate the information
3 Poses information-seeking questions about generic topics (food, holidays, school,
activities, etc.)
Poses “yes/no” questions in hypothetical or highly contextualized scenarios
Explains more than one aspect but tries to interpret or relate the comment in some way by
providing additional context
4 Poses interpretation questions
Poses open-ended questions with comments that qualify the question and provide context
Explains several aspects with attempt to interpret or relate by providing additional context
or by acknowledging the partners’ interpretive context
Acknowledges personal interpretation as distinct from other possible opinions
5 Poses questions that demonstrate interest in discovering more historical, cultural, or
geographical information beyond personal experience
Explains personal interpretations as distinct from other possible opinions and provides
possible examples of other potential interpretations
students were first-generation immigrants who spoke an additional language at home, and
of the 10 students in the lower quartile of scores, 3 students fell in that category. By focus-
ing our presentation of the data on these two clusters of 20 total students around the top
and bottom quartiles, we can better examine whether the patterns of interaction unfolded
in similar or in contrasting ways in these groups. The patterns we traced are aggregated
across the semester to describe what took place in this context. Because the project was
exploratory and relatively brief across only 15 weeks, the interactions are not conceptual-
ized along a developmental continuum for this analysis.
Descriptive statistical analyses of the online interactions (see Table 5) indicate that
group averages of students who scored in the upper and lower quartiles of scorers on the
IDQ were similar in three ways: total words, total utterances, and proportions of questions
posed. Where differences did emerge, however, were in the percentage of the utterances
that were responses to their partners’ questions and those that used emotionally tagged
language. Differences also emerged in the use of second person pronouns.
This numerical overview would indicate that adolescent students who later scored
well on a tool intended to capture interactional discourse skills differed in their transcript
interactions from those who did not score as highly in three ways: by responding directly
to their partners, by connecting with them through direct personal pronouns, and by key-
ing their messages more strongly with interest and emotion.
In addition to this numerical overview, we examined the transcripts in closer detail by
analyzing the forms and functions of questions and responses. The majority of initial
questions were information-seeking questions that followed the wh-question word form,
Table 5. Descriptive inventory of transcript interactions.
Averages within lowest quartile Averages within highest quartile

of IDQ (n D 10) of IDQ (n D 10)
Total utterances 93 utterances 99 utterances
% Questions 8.7% 9.6%

% Responses 5.9% 9.2%
% Emotionally tagged 13.5% 25.3%
Total words 1120 words 1216 words
% Personal pronouns 2.1% 3.1%
with the function tied to general inquiry about stereotypical cultural information and per-
sonal background information:
What do you do in your spare time? Melinda, Week 1

What things do you like to do for fun? Kelly, Week 1
What kind of music do you like? What kind of music do you have in Spain? Noah, Week 1
Such questions were the dominant type occurring in the first few weeks of the online
exchange in both groups, a period in which students were introducing more general topics
as they got to know their partners. In the groups that later generated lengthier and more
personal messages across the exchange, however, these general inquiry questions shifted
in subsequent weeks to the more personal, contextualized inquiries that reflected students’
attentiveness to topics that their partners had introduced:
What part of California are you going to? Barbara, Week 8

Are those all of your friends? Can you tell me about your friends? Valerie, Week 4
You know when you put your favorite song video on your blog, HOW DID YALL DO
THAT? Susana, Week 8
These examples of the contextualized inquiry questions were more typical in groups
who later scored higher on the IDQ. At times, they probed special interest areas, and at
other times they demonstrated interest in particular comments their partners had made
about travel, friends, family, or pets. Occasionally, they commented on one another’s
technological skills and requested advice on how to accomplish technology tasks
(How did yall do that?). Their information-seeking questions functioned in ways that
positioned their partners as suited to provide unique sources of information, but also as
indicators that they themselves were attending to the details of the messages sent to them.
Such contextualized questions were more frequently formed, grammatically, by open-
ended structures, but they were also at time formed by yes/no questions, particularly
when a topic was introduced in detail by the student: “Do you have any special things
you do for certain ages?” (Kelly, Week 6). In this case, for example, the student had pro-
vided a great deal of information about the quincea~nera party for 15-year-olds in the
United States and was indicating with her question an invitation for her partner to elabo-
rate on such special occasions in her experience. However, in general, the questions that
emerged in the analysis of the more sustained partnerships tended to make the early shift
from the more general, open-ended questions about culture and hobbies into more specific
questions that acknowledged and built upon comments their partners had made.
Finally, in only a few instances did students pose interpretation questions:
I didn’t understand most of [the words] but I love the music. Could you tell me what the man
is trying to say in his song? Julian, Week 3
How did the Spanish flu broke out, because the flu killed more than 20 million people?
Alex, Week 13
The lack of frequency and lack of uptake of these interpretive types of questions indi-
cate that, for the most part, students in this particular exchange relied primarily on their
own experiences as a frame of reference, and within that frame, they were consistently
interested in positioning their partners as information-providers with information-seeking
questions.
In searching for disconfirming evidence that did not conform to these larger patterns,
we found that within some groups, questions tended not to work explicitly toward build-
ing a joint context. Rather, the questions at times unfolded as a rapid-fire list of seemingly
unconnected questions:
is school boring over there? do yall have boyfriends? do you have bells at school? Maria,
Week 3
In this example, the questions seemed to serve to inquire about general information,
but the inquiries were much less open-ended and keyed the students’ own personal opin-
ions. For the most part, these questions were posed with little context and at times with
little attention to language form:
DO LIKE SPORTS. Carl, Week 4

Is it FUN do you party! I love to go places do you like going places? Stella, Week 1
Because not all students spoke English as their first language at home, the issue of
whether such limited attention to grammatical form might index second language learner
status would be of concern; however, no discernible pattern in this analysis could be
linked to language status. In fact, of the 10 students scoring in the top quartile of the IDQ,
4 were first-generation immigrants, and of those in the lowest quartile, 3 were first-gener-
ation immigrants.
In analyzing the responses to questions, we found that students who scored higher on
the IDQ also tended to make a greater effort to provide depth and context to their
responses and to make personal connections with their partners. They keyed such willing-
ness most often through the use of boulomaic modality, or markers of emotional or
involvement that can be signaled through modal verbs (would like, would love) or
through lexical choices of emotionally tagged words (awesome, great, lucky, wow) and
through adjectives and emphasis adverbs. In the examples below, the responses convey
an attempt to tune in to their partners (italics added for illustration):
I like the fact you have very interesting ideas. James, Week 15
You have good taste on music I like those songs too, especially How to Save a Life. The Fray
is an awesome band. I also like rock is not my favorite type of music but it is still pretty
good. Manuel, Week 4
hey this isn’t a very good picture but is the only one i have.. i hope you like it . . .. how about
ya’ll send us some pictures of too.. i would love to meet you :) Manuel, Week 12
Hey Ali and Monche we love theme parks too. We have a lot here but I am only familiar with
Six Flags and Hurricane Harbor. I love going to six flags because there are many rides and
water rides. There are things to eat and a space to hang around. Melinda, Week 12
In each of the above examples, the responses index interest in the partner and an
attempt to align one’s interests to that of their partners by indicating how their activities
overlap, where similarities lie, and how they resonate with the information provided. In
contrast, the responses that displayed a less open or less involved stance were marked by
brief one-line sentences or by half-sentences that neither furthered the topic nor invited
the partner to reciprocate information or to elaborate:
I like guns and roses too. . . Kendra, Week 6

a band i like is green day and i dont really listen to rock so yea. Maria, Week 3
To summarize the findings from the discourse analysis, we found that students who, at
the end of the semester, scored higher on the IDQ, tended to pose information-seeking
questions during the exchange that served to introduce conversational topics that later
were followed through with shifts to more contextualized topics elaborated upon by both
partners. In contrast, students who later scored lower on the IDQ tended to write questions
that occurred out of context. Such questions, in the course of the project, rarely led to sus-
tained conversational turns beyond the first initiation. We also found that students sig-
naled openness in their stances toward the online communication through the tools of
modality, lexical choices, and alignment markers. The less successful online conversa-
tions tended to have fewer such markers of openness toward building a personal relation-
ship and less attention paid to providing greater depth to the responses.
Pedagogical issues around telecollaboration in secondary contexts

Teacher interviews revealed the following themes about their perceptions of issues that
accompany the integration of telecollaboration into their classrooms: reflections on stu-
dent learning and participation; challenges of time and technology; and issues of curricu-
lar assessment and integration.
Reflections on student learning and participation. Both teachers agreed that the mid-
dle-school language arts curriculum could benefit from the integration of an international
online communication project, as they saw its flexibility in matching a number of goals.
First, they noticed that their students were developing a “new way to write”:
And I think that one of the things that they’ve learned through this project is that blogging is
kind of like writing a friendly letter, except they have to come up with their own questions.
And I think in that aspect, they learned how to be more social in writing, to gain more infor-
mation through their writing, then what they are normally used to with text. . . they would
have to ask questions and then wait. So, it would be a series of questions they asked and then
had to wait for the response, not just the feeding back off one another. . . that aspect of it
taught them. . . a new way to write.
Both teachers also focused on the ease of “tailoring” such projects to different curricu-
lar goals beyond writing:
Well, I think that the way that this project is set up, you could actually tailor it to fit almost
any curriculum. Because you do have the writing aspect, which is wonderful for English.
You have the technology aspect, of course, which would fit in great with the technology
class, especially since [the telecollaboration] is kind of cutting edge as far as blogging with
the videos and all that. That’s not something that’s taught in schools so much. And we could
tie it with other things—you know, tie it into history, tie it into technology—you can even tie
it talking in mathematical kind of things, or scienc-y kind of things, just depending on what
activity you have.
This view centers on the beneficial use of the technology as almost an end-goal in itself,
but both teachers were equally emphatic that the cross-cultural aspects would allow them
to develop greater global background knowledge for understanding the general curriculum:
So, I think that that allows for just global learning in itself, that there is something beyond
things in middle school; there is something beyond what they know. Most of our Hispanic
kids are coming from Mexico or Guatemala, or El Salvador, or Argentina. They are not com-
ing from across the world, and they know North America and Central America, but even
going through world cultures of sixth graders where they are going to go through every conti-
nent, I don’t think that they really learn geography until freshman year [in high school], and I
don’t think that they understand any of that until world history—tenth grade here. So, I think
that the struggle, which also comes with teaching World War II and Holocaust in 8th grade
because they’ve never had it before, you have to build so much background knowledge for
them.
In addition to seeing opportunities for curricular tie-ins, the both teachers emphasized
affective aspects of their students’ learning, such as effort, motivation, and self-
confidence:
I think that they gained self-confidence—completely 100% that they were able to be them-
selves. Because it was, like while I was grading for writing, I was grading more on efforts
and for—were you being real? And I think my kids were real across-the-board. And their
excitement level that you [the researcher] didn’t always get to see was, “Miss!”, they would
fight over cameras to go and take pictures because they would tell their friends, “Hey I get to
do this really cool project and I’m talking with kids in Spain!
The student autonomy that such project-based learning requires, however, also intro-
duced some pedagogical challenges that both teachers suggested reviewing and revising
before launching another project. For example, students differed widely in their ability to
stay focused on the tasks when working in pairs: “I think a big part of my kids cause
my kids are definitely social was working in partners I think distracted them in that
respect.” An additional challenge was the problems that developed when some of the cor-
responding partners in Spain failed to write regularly: “My students would ask, ‘I keep
doing what I am supposed to do, but why aren’t they responding?’ And you just got to
it’s hard for middle school kids to understand that sometimes life happens and gets in the
way.” Yet even in these cases, the teachers framed such thorny scenarios as a lesson in
real life:
In life this is how sometimes it’s going to happen. You’re going to have a boss that’s not
going to talk to you; you’re going to have co-workers that aren’t going to do their job. How
do we handle that? And I think that if we’re trying to teach cultural expectations, then we’re
trying to teach these students how to live in the real world. I think there is a cultural expecta-
tion of work ethic learned here.
For the groups that did seem to function seamlessly with steady interaction among
partners across all weeks of the semester, the teachers saw specific benefits in their
writing:
Well, I know those that continuously got responses, their posting was better, their work habits
were better, and they, I think, overall, enjoyed the project more. So, even if they weren’t the
greatest writer, their experience with it did make them increase their writing skills, as far as
at least maybe not what they were writing, but the fact that they were actually putting some-
thing down.
Challenges of time and technology. Several technological challenges were presented

through the course of the semester, including low batteries, slow Internet connections,
school firewalls, and limited storage space for multimedia materials. While some of the
issues, once they initially arose such as firewall issues, could be quickly resolved, others
were less predictable. For example, low batteries were a frequent problem, as the entire
school shared access to a computer cart, which at times meant that the cart would arrive
without some of students from the previous class having remembered to plug in the com-
puters to charge. These types of technical issues had an impact on the implementation:
Thumbs down would definitely be more of a technology aspect. We had so many problems
with the computers, so many problems with the internet, so many problems with this, then
that, that a lot of the students didn’t get their blogs finished in the prescribed amount of time.
So, maybe we need to take into consideration some of those issues and give longer, or more
time for some of the blogs.
The tension around the amount of time was certainly exacerbated by the technical dif-
ficulties, but the teachers perceived that the students felt constrained by the short, 45-min-
ute period in which the project took place each week:
And I think it’s, I get the technology curve a little bit more, but. .. just writing, and research-
ing, and blogging, and finding out that there is a huge lining curve with it! I think that while
they know how to use the technology, I think it’s using it in a time compressed—that’s what
they’re not used to, “cause they’re the generation of, ‘I could spend three hours on
Myspace.’”
The amount of time that could be squeezed out of the regular curricular requirements
in order to integrate telecollaboration posed no easy resolution. In order for students to
engage thoughtfully with the assignments, respond to their partners, and develop the tech-
nology skills necessary for even basic navigation of the blogging functions, they needed,
according to their teachers, more time, particularly as they moved into the multimedia
production phase of the project:
I think the assignments were good. I think that the assignments were needed in order to get
the end result because they needed that experience. They need to know what it is like to actu-
ally communicate with somebody from another country, so they needed to get that feed-
back but I think if more time was given to the movie part, we would have really seen some,
you know, wonderful things, especially with the non-English-[dominant] speakers.
Issues of curricular assessment and integration. Although both teachers valued the
opportunity to have their students participate in the telecollaborative project, they were
careful to contextualize the experience as unique within the typical practices at their
school. In public schools, project-based learning requires evidence for how it meets state
curricular standards. One of the teachers expressed frustration that such innovative proj-
ects, while perceived as enriching, are nonetheless difficult to prioritize in practice:
I think that that’s one thing where I’m jaded in the education field. .. because I feel like writing
is expected to cover so much in the 8th grade world. We have to help everyone prep for every-
one else’s [state] tests. . . And it jades me to the fact that when I have something that’s really
cool, it’s not as supported as I would like it to be because that’s not the priority or focus.
Both teachers recognized the need to make a persuasive case for how the project
would fit their learning goals, and their school leadership was particularly supportive of
giving them the authority to do so, in part because of their reputation as strong teachers:
And a lot of that comes from what you are produced in the past and I produced well enough
in the past that I get a little leeway.. .. Knowing what we want to do out of it, I can incorpo-
rate that into the writing assignments they have to do. . . Teach to the student, however it fits
them. They like being on computers. They like typing. And I think that no matter what, I’m
good at getting things into my curriculum that I want to do and I like this project, because I
saw my kids come out of their shell but also be challenged. .. And that was exciting for me
because you don’t see that a lot in a typical English classroom where you are in a paper most
of the time. And most of them won’t see it in high school.
In addition to their personal beliefs that telecollaboration could be an enriching expe-

rience that complemented the regular curriculum for their students, the teachers suggested
that formative assessment measures could help build a case for a more prioritized place in
the curriculum. To that end, analysis of the IDQ offered a descriptive piece of triangulat-
ing evidence for their personal observations of the positive impact of the project. We con-
ducted an exploratory, one-way ANOVA and found a statistically significant difference
between the two groups [F (1, 93) D 45.99, p < .001, effect size 0.97] in their responses
(see Table 6).
Such an analysis is limited to providing descriptive information, rather than offering
grounds for inferential interpretation, given the lack of random assignment and the need
for a pre-test to determine if there were pre-existing differences between the two groups.
However, in the context of the exploratory case study offered here and in the eyes of
the teachers to use as additional formative assessment information these descriptive
results of differences between the two groups indicate that this area of skill development
might be worth exploring in a later experimental design. For the current study, however,
we limit our discussion that follows to the exploratory insight that such a multi-layered
analysis can offer this relatively new area of learning in the secondary context.
Discussion
The shifts within the secondary school curriculum toward integration of new communica-
tion technologies, coupled with documented discrepancies in how adolescents use
Table 6. Interactional discourse questionnaire scores.
N Mean SD F-value p-value Effect
IDQ T 38 T 3.50 0.65 (1, 93) D 45.99 .000 0.97 (large)

C 57 C 2.53 0.62
technologies in classroom environments, together provide the impetus for a case study
that helps language researchers and educators better understand the potential of telecolla-
boration in a secondary classroom context. To that end, this study posed two framing
questions: (1) What interactional patterns emerge in the written correspondence of adoles-
cent students as they build relationships with their intercultural partners? (2) What peda-
gogical issues are foregrounded by teachers who introduce telecollaboration into the
secondary classroom learning environment?
In answering the first question, we found that the adolescent students on the whole
tended to pose a large number of information-seeking questions, rather than interpretation
questions, but that differences emerged both in the type of questions they posed and in the
degree to which they followed up on their partners’ questions. The more successful of the
groups those with uninterrupted contact tended to signal their engagement with their
partners through the tools of modality, lexical choices, and alignment markers. The less
successful online conversations tended to have fewer such markers of openness toward
building a personal relationship and less attention paid to providing greater depth to the
responses. In turning to the second question, we found several pedagogical issues fore-
grounded, including teacher optimism about what adolescent students can learn through
such a telecollaborative projects, as well as hesitance about the challenges posed by the
technical difficulties and by the constraints of the school-based calendar. Teachers also
pointed to the need, not only for assessing their students’ learning and participation for
formative classroom purposes, but also to help build a more persuasive case for how such
global communication projects might become more mainstream in the curriculum.
The outcomes of this case study, while promising, are far from conclusive. Rather,
they serve instead as just an initial step in investigating how technology might be used to
support adolescent language use in classroom-based online communication projects.
Methodologically, this study contributes a case-study analysis that provides a triangulated
picture of what adolescent language patterns emerge on a turn-by-turn basis, but also what
some of the pedagogical considerations are for teachers. Previous research in this area has
tended to focus on post-secondary contexts primarily as qualitative case studies (Belz,
2005; Liaw, 2006; O’Dowd, 2003; Ware, 2005; Ware & Kramsch, 2005). By shifting this
qualitative work into the secondary context, we have demonstrated how such intercultural
skills can be enacted in this particular context. By layering in the IDQ and teacher inter-
view data to triangulate with this analysis, we offer multiple descriptive data sources to
demonstrate that online communication skills, if made conceptually explicit and contex-
tually sensitive, can be recognized and described as they unfold in particular contexts.
An emphasis on the contextual and cultural situated ness of online communication
skills is paramount, and we urge a focus on students’ potential display of these practices
in particular situations, rather than on students’ possession, or even the development, of
these practices in the classroom. For online communication skills to be relevant to the
educators and students involved in particular projects, the focus might best be on building
students’ awareness of the range of communicative choices open to them and on how
such choices are connected to personal conversational style, cultural responsiveness, con-
textual appropriateness, and interactional purpose. The skills that were linked, in this sin-
gle case study, to more successful partnerships and to higher IDQ scores, tended to
cluster around displays of openness as keyed through question types, emotive markers,
attention to detail, informality, and affirmations. This particular inventory of discursive
choices should not, however, be seen as prescriptive to be imported or imposed onto
other contexts; rather, they can serve as starting points for others embarking on projects
that link adolescents with distally located partners.
The pedagogical implications of this research are multiple. First, given that teachers
frequently use rubrics with subjectively laden descriptors such as culturally appropriate
or greater depth (Guth & Helm, 2010; O’Dowd, 2010), research that helps illustrate the
spectrum of linguistic choices that can be used to enact these descriptors can offer educa-
tors ways to further develop pedagogical tools such as rubrics, prompts, and discussion
topics that can be made more accessible to a wider range of educators when illustrated
through authentic examples.
Second, this study also reiterates a recurrent theme in research on online communica-
tion projects namely, that the role of the teacher increases rather than diminishes when
communication technologies are integrated into the classroom (Belz & Mueller-Hartmann,
2003; O’Dowd, 2010; Ware, 2005). Teachers in this study collaborated in developing
prompts, creating safe online spaces, monitoring correspondence, guiding discussions, and
communicating with the partnering classes. In taking these steps, they were adding consid-
erable volunteer time to their normal teaching load, as the project was an addition to the
curriculum, rather than an integrated component. Until such global communication projects
become more mainstream and accessible, as a growth in websites that facilitate matching
would indicate that they are (see, for example, www.epals.com; http://www.cisi.unito.it/
tandem/etandem; and http://sol;uni-collaboration.eu), teachers interested in such opportuni-
ties will likely be required to continue to balance these additional demands on their time.
One possible pathway for moving global communication projects such as telecollabo-
ration into mainstream secondary education contexts might be through strengthening the
documentation of how such projects further established curricular goals and how they
also anticipate new learning goals associated with increasing demands for global commu-
nication. Such documentation could come in the form of formative assessments, such
as the IDQ. Such tools are not unproblematic, however, as assessing intercultural commu-
nication skills requires context-sensitivity and high construct and ecological validity
(Sinicrope, Norris, & Watanabe, 2007). Such assessment is further complicated by the
lack of consensus on either the definition of culture, which has been defined in over 300
distinct ways across the social sciences disciplines (Baldwin, 2006), or on the content and
pedagogy of cultural learning (Schulz, 2007; Ware & Kramsch, 2005). Furthermore, the
terms used to describe “intercultural” learning span a range of examples, as documented
by Fantini (2006) who catalogued at least 18 terms from intercultural sensitivity and
cross-cultural communication, to pluralingualism and global competence.
With these challenges in mind, researchers measuring intercultural competence would
be well advised to combine both qualitative and quantitative approaches, each with differ-
ent tradeoffs and strengths. Indirect assessment tools such as surveys and self-report
mechanisms could be used as relatively cost effective and easy to administer. Direct
assessment tools, although more costly and time-intensive, put participants into authentic
or simulated scenarios using methods such as role-play and simulation and have the
advantages of allowing for culturally and situationally specific nuances that rely less on
self-report data from indirect measures (O’Dowd, 2010).
In closing, the ability to define and describe online communication skills is of particu-
lar importance for secondary language educators who work in contexts that increasingly
tie curricular choices to measureable outcomes. In such contexts, rarely will a curricular
initiative take hold beyond a pilot or peripheral project if it cannot be readily assessed.
Since offering students opportunities to engage in international online communication in
the context of school-based learning is one way of shaping students’ use of and interac-
tion with new technologies (New London Group, 1996; O’Dowd, 2010), studies such as
this one that offer a rich case-study description of innovative initiatives can provide a
pivot point in the argument for turning classrooms towards twenty-first century skills
(Warschauer, 2003).
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the generous funding and mentoring support of the National Acad-
emy of Education/Spencer Post-Doctoral Grant and the many adolescents, teachers, and graduate
students who embarked on this project with us. We are also grateful to the thoughtful feedback of
anonymous reviews on this manuscript.
Notes on contributors
Paige Ware is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern
Methodist University. Her research focuses on adolescent language learners and their literacy devel-
opment and on telecollaboration for promoting intercultural awareness.
Greg Kessler is an associate professor in the Department of Linguistics at Ohio University and
director of the Language Resource Center. His research addresses the convergence of language,
digital environments, language learning, and associated human behavior.
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Telecollaboration in the secondary language classroom: case study of

This study builds on research examining the in-school technology practices of

adolescent language learners by exploring the patterns of classroom literacy practices

*Corresponding author. Email: pware@smu.edu

Ó 2014 Taylor & Francis

Research on classroom-based online interaction projects

Second, fostering relationship building connectivity and interactivity among learn-

ing a climate of engagement and of frequent contributions. Finally, the conceptual

(1) What interactional patterns emerge in the written correspondence of adolescent

Site and participants

Figure 1. Example of project dashboard.

Table 1. Prompts used during the exchange.

sayings that you think are “typical” for Americans?

Data collection and analysis

Table 2. Codes and examples of students’ online discursive choices.

Codes Examples from transcripts

Personal forms of address Dara, to your question you/your

Question High example Low example

Table 4. Scoring rubric for an interactional discourse questionnaire.

Skills of interacting and interpreting

1 Poses questions that are narrowly construed

Table 5. Descriptive inventory of transcript interactions.

Averages within lowest quartile Averages within highest quartile

Total utterances 93 utterances 99 utterances

% Questions 8.7% 9.6%

What do you do in your spare time? Melinda, Week 1

What part of California are you going to? Barbara, Week 8

DO LIKE SPORTS. Carl, Week 4

I like guns and roses too. . . Kendra, Week 6

Pedagogical issues around telecollaboration in secondary contexts

Challenges of time and technology. Several technological challenges were presented

In addition to their personal beliefs that telecollaboration could be an enriching expe-

Table 6. Interactional discourse questionnaire scores.

N Mean SD F-value p-value Effect

IDQ T 38 T 3.50 0.65 (1, 93) D 45.99 .000 0.97 (large)

opment and on telecollaboration for promoting intercultural awareness.

ity. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 25(1), 65 86. doi:10.1080/09588221.2011.584512

Skerrett, A. (2012). Languages and literacies in translocation: Experiences and perspectives of a

can telecollaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 9(2), 64 89.

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