Temporal sequencing in webcam-mediated language teaching.
Résumé
In this paper, we examine how the notions of ‘timescales,’ that provide a continuum for experientially and empirically engaging with time in multimodal designs (MODE, 2012), and ‘rhythm,’ that creates cohesion and structure in multimodal interactions, may help to better understand temporal sequencing in digital environments. We propose to study these two notions by examining interaction data from the ISMAEL (InteractionS and Multimodality in lAnguage LEarning) telecollaborative project that project brought together 12 trainee teachers of French as a foreign language and 18 undergraduate Business students studying at an Irish university via the webconferencing platform Visu (Bétrancourt et al. 2011).
‘Timescales’ takes into account that human activity is situated within and across time. Various timescales can be present in a given space, providing a cognitive structural framework and leading to variability in pacing and sequencing of social rhythms (Lemke, 2000). The interaction data from the ISAMEL project will allow us to examine, for three tutor-learner triads, ‘didactic time’ (Chopin 2010 in Alhadeff-Jones, 2017) and more specifically ‘time on task’ (Berliner, 1990) so as to better understand the temporal sequencing of different pedagogical activities within the project’s fourth videoconferencing lesson.
We will then turn to the notion of ‘rhythm’ that all time-based semiotic modes have in common (van Leeuwen, 2015) to examine how the tutors and learners achieved dissimilar rhythmic structures within their interactions by different integrations of time-based modes into a multimodal whole. We will endeavor to show that rhythm is a device that can make a pedagogically-focused interaction more fluid and, consequently, more engaging, allowing the interactions to participants attain “interactional bliss” (Cosnier, 2008).