How do non-native speakers discuss, engage and learn in MOOC forums: a corpus linguistic approach
(2021) ICODOC 2021 — Location: ENS de Lyon, Lyon, France (6.October.2021)
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Poster ICODOC 2021: How do non-native speakers discuss, engage and learn in MOOC forums: a corpus linguistic
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- The "MOOCresearch2.0: A mixed-method and multidisciplinary approach to socio-cognitive conflicts in online educational platforms" Collective Research Initiative project is a large interdisciplinary project that brings together expertise from psychology and educational studies, economics and management sciences, communication studies, and linguistics to gain insight in how students engage and discuss within MOOC forums and how cognition can be improved through discussion and conflict. The project builds upon the 20 MOOCs of LouvainX available through the edX platform, specifically looking into the communication among students within the forums and the discussion and conflict that may arise. These MOOC forums constitute a growing corpus of 50 million words. Theoretically, our research is embedded within the educational principles that socio-cognitive conflict leads to better comprehension of the material taught, and that debate and other conflicts give rise to consideration of other viewpoints and deeper understanding (Limón 2001, Mugny and Doise 1978). Within this framework, my PhD project addresses one specific challenge of online education today, i.e. the fact that it is mainly offered in English. Research in bilingual education and content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has shown that new disciplinary concepts are not acquired as well in the foreign language as in the first language. This is especially true for concepts that cannot be directly observed or related to what learners already know, and which comprehension largely relies on linguistic mediation (e.g. Babault & Markey, 2001), as well as for students with lower foreign language proficiency who find it almost impossible to describe disciplinary concepts in English (e.g. Airey, 2009). If we transpose these findings to online education, and MOOCs more particularly (as they aim to increase access to education), it seems particularly important to investigate whether non-native speakers are able to find a place in discussion forums to check comprehension, ask for clarification, and discuss concepts in social interactions. Given the current state of the art, my PhD project aims to fill a research gap by answering the following set of research questions: 1. To what extent are non-native speakers present on forum discussions? What role do they take? How does this compare with native speakers’ presence and assumed roles? 2. To what extent do non-native speakers negotiate meaning with a view to resolve a misunderstanding due to language problems vs. content-related and cognitive problems? 3. To what extent do non-native speakers take part in the richer content-based interactions that can potentially give rise to socio-cognitive conflicts and learning? 4. To what extent does language proficiency impact non-native speakers’ online presence, the range of roles they assume, the type of discussions they are involved in, and the types of posts they write? Throughout these research questions, aspects of cultural differences, L1 influence and course content will further inform the research process as part of the the MOOC context (Schneider and von der Emde 2006). To answer these research questions, I will rely on the discussion forums of the 8 English-taught MOOCs of LouvainX, combined with data from questionnaires to identify native and non-native speakers, as well as the student's native language and their self-reported English proficiency. With ongoing availability of self-paced MOOCs and the continued teaching of instructor-led MOOCs, forum discussions as well as survey participation will continue to increase. In pursuing answers to my research questions, I will use methods from corpus linguistics as well as NLP to identify forum posts from native and non-native speakers (Jarvis and Paquot 2015) and grade proficiency (Lu 2012, Kyle and Crossley 2015) for those students who do not participate in the surveys or who participated in discussions predating it. Using both quantitative and qualitative linguistic methods, I set out to gain insight in the activity, roles, degree of cognition and the nature of conflict within the MOOC forums (Chiu and Hew 2018). While quantitative methods will make it possible to structure the vast amount of data available and gain general insight, deep qualitative analysis will elaborate on individual instances of socio-cognitive conflict and may further inform and extend prior quantitative results. In my presentation, I will provide a detailed overview of my research project (started in October 2020) and report on preliminary results, with a special focus on RQ1 (presence and roles of non-native speakers as compared to native speakers). Bibliography of 5 core references: Limón, M. (2001). On the cognitive conflict as an instructional strategy for conceptual change: A critical appraisal. Learning and Instruction, 11(4), 357-380. doi:10.1016/S0959-4752(00)00037-2 Mugny, G., & Doise, W. (1978). Socio‐cognitive conflict and structure of individual and collective performances. European Journal of Social Psychology, 8(2), 181-192. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420080204 Bozkurt, A., Keskin, N. O., & de Waard, I. (2016). Research trends in massive open online course (MOOC) theses and dissertations: Surfing the tsunami wave. Open Praxis, 8(3), 203-221. doi:10.5944/openpraxis.8.3.287 Chiu, T. K. F., & Hew, T. K. F. (2018). Factors influencing peer learning and performance in MOOC asynchronous online discussion forum. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 34(4) doi:10.14742/ajet.3240 Schneider, J., & von der Emde, S. (2006). Dialogue, conflict, and intercultural learning in online collaborations between language learners and native speakers. Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education, 178-206.
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Citations
Van de Poel, B., & Paquot, M. (2021). How do non-native speakers discuss, engage and learn in MOOC forums: a corpus linguistic approach. ICODOC 2021, ENS de Lyon, Lyon, France. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/224268