Online Teaching and Learning: When Technology meets Language and Culture

Year 2014, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 4 - 25, 12.07.2014

Zhichang Xu

Abstract

 

Technology and high accessibility to networking media in both private and professional contexts have made online teaching and learning a norm and reality for tertiary education across the world. Online teaching and learning do not only apply to distance education and Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs), but they also apply effectively to on-campus education as an integral component of blended teaching and learning. Current instructors and students communicate in a wide range of “contact” situations from face-to-face classroom interaction, seminar or tutorial activities, individual or group consultations, to various forms of online communication. In this paper, I shall focus on online teaching and learning of language and culture courses using commonly adopted management systems, e.g., Blackboard and Moodle in two educational contexts including Hong Kong and Melbourne. Research questions include 1) what do instructors and students actually do in online synchronous discussion forums? 2) what language and cultural issues are involved in the discussion forums? and 3) what are the pedagogical implications of using technology for teaching and learning language and culture? Empirical online discussion forums data from four courses are collected and analyzed. Research findings show that both explicit learning and implicit learning take place actively in the online discussion forums; and that various language and culture issues emerge and are competently dealt with in online learning environment. Towards the end of the paper, I shall also explore the pedagogical implications of using technology for teaching language and culture courses in the online learning forum (OLF) environment.

Keywords

online teaching and learning, educational technology, language and culture, pedagogical implications

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