Research

The research activities of UNIcollaboration consist of organizing and promoting events and activities dedicated to:

  • sharing research-related information and expertise
  • strengthening research into online intercultural exchange
  • supporting researchers entering the field

Above all the programme will be determined by UNIcollaboration members, whose input and feedback will enable us to evaluate activities we have organized and plan for the future.  Your views and suggestions are always welcome.

More info: research@unicollaboration.org

UNICollaboration Research Seminar on Virtual Exchange 2023

Virtual Event, 5th June 2023

Full Program:

2:30-2:45 PM CET:Welcome and Introduction of UNICollaboration and Graduate Students SIG
2:45-3:45 PM CET: Keynote and Q&A

Keynote:

Title: Researching and teaching-learning within higher education. On the need for creative and curious mobile gazing in contemporary times

Speaker: Professor Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta, Jönköping University

Professor Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta
Professor in Education with a multidisciplinary background
CCD research environment (www.ju.se/ccd)
School of Education and Communication
Jönköping University, Sweden
sangeeta.bagga-gupta@ju.se
Orcid.org/0000-0002-1846-858X

Keynote abstract:

This keynote will draw attention to the contemporary enterprise of re-searching and teaching-learning in higher education. In particular, it upfronts the role of creativity and curiosity for transcending reductionist binaries that have and that continue to frame how theories and methods are dealt with in the craft of the social scientist.

By engaging analytically with the interface of analogue and digital technologies, I will discuss continuing epistemological and methodological lacunas, including researchers’ and teachers’ taken-for-granted assumptions when researching and teaching in contemporary times.

Calling for multi-scalar, multimodal, and significantly – mobile gazing, I will illustrate new theorizing that embraces scholarly accounts as being nomadic and emergent, rather than given and static. Such a stance challenges conceptualizations of what, where, why and when data in Virtual Exchange gets located, how teaching-learning gets conceptualized in Virtual Exchange, and what is deemed as human-nonhuman and situated-distributed practices in contemporary human existence.

Arguing from an undisciplinary, trans-method’s sociomaterial stance, I will push for non-programmatic episto-methodologies that highlight the researchers’ mobile gaze on the researched (i.e., humans, objects, research foci) and problematizes teachers and learners gaze on the what, where, why and who of collaboration.

Drawing on a Second Wave of Southern Perspectives (SWaSP) framing, this keynote will illustrate how conceptualizations of communication, culture and diversity are entangled with a scholar’s learning to notice in the re-searching endeavour. My overarching argument aligns with an emergent call within research and higher education for going beyond its universalizing monolithic ethos.

Short bio:

Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta’s (Orcid.org/0000-0002-1846-858X) research is highly multidisciplinary and deals broadly with issues pertaining to communication, identity, culture and learning from ethnographically framed, multi-scalar, sociocultural and decolonial framings across digital-analogue settings. She has been Professor-chair in Education at Örebro and Jönköping University in Sweden since 2007 and has been visiting professor at universities in Europe and Asia.

She has been the scientific head of the research group Communication, Culture and Diversity since the late 1990s, and has led large-scale externally funded research schools and projects. She initiated in 2016, together with the Cultural sector, the Think-Tank DoIT. She is multilingual in spoken, signed and written languages


3:45- 4:00 PM CET: Short Break
4:00-5:15 PM CET: Presentations

Presentation Summaries

    • Influence of personality traits on language proficiency development in virtual exchange
      Junyao Zhang, University of GroningenFor this presentation, I will start with introducing intercultural competence and the model, personality traits and the model, and their relationship. Later I will present the task design of the study, as well as the measurements and analysis methods used in the study. If possible, I will present some of the data.
    • A qualitative literature review of consecutive stimulated recall for researching oral telecollaboration and intercomprehension strategies
      Francesca Prisco, University of SalentoThe presentation is a qualitative literature review of 10 studies on Consecutive Stimulated Recall. Study selection is based on types of journals (peer-reviewed), research fields (linguistic and educational) and research aims (investigating comprehension strategies). The review aims to define the theoretical framework for researching incomprehension strategies in oral virtual exchange.
    • Emotional engagement in a university telecollaboration: positive and negative emotions and their role in online foreign language interactions and language learning online foreign language interactions and language learning
      Lada Achilova, Université Grenoble AlpesThe primary focus of this research rests upon students’ emotional engagement in the context of university telecollaboration. The research analyses its occurrences, factors influencing its establishment as well as its effects on students’ perception of language learning. The data we analyse was collected during 3 telecollaborations between different universities.
    • Assessing the benefits of virtual exchange programs on language learning motivation: What do we know so far?
      Emanuela Paone, University of Salento [Lecce]The presentation will first provide a brief description of the theoretical framework underpinning the concept of motivation in language learning research; second, it will offer an overview of the research methods and the outcomes reported in the studies that have investigated this dynamic factor in Virtual Exchange contexts. Theoretical and methodological issues will be discussed.

5:15-5:30 PM CET: Group Discussion and Wrap up.

Registration

Registration is free for this event. To register please complete the registration form here [Zoom registration, York University].

Support UNICollaboration

logoUNICollaboration would not be able to organise this event without the support of its members.
Support us to promote the development and integration of research and practice in virtual exchange, by joining UNICollaboration as a member.

Join us now!

2018 EVENT:

UNICollaboration Research Methods Workshop in Aix en Provence (France): October 4-5th, 2018

The second Unicollaboration Research Seminar was held in Aix en Provence (France) the 4th and 5th October, in association with SFERE, university Aix-Marseille. This year, the three main research methods that were addressed were:

  • conversation analysis (Anthony Liddicoat, University of Warwick),
  • design-based research (Gilles Aldon, ENS Lyon) and
  • multimodal studies (Jeff Bezemer, University College London).

In addition, participants were also offered an introduction to two freely available annotation tools: SPPAS (http://www.sppas.org/) and ELAN (https://tla.mpi.nl/tools/tla-tools/elan/).

The programme of the seminar can be dowloaded HERE.

2017 EVENT:

UNICollaboration Research Methods Workshop in Valencia (Spain): October 6-7th, 2017

This workshop was intended for telecollaboration practitioners who plan to investigate the online exchanges they have organized and for postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers seeking to enter the field.

It took place at Universitat de València & Universitat Politècnica de València – Spain.

More details  can be found in the flyer below or on the workshop webpage by the University of Valencia.