Foundationally, my teaching philosophy stems from a sociocultural perspective, where learning is a socially situated activity and what learners at first accomplish only in a social setting, they will eventually be able to – independently (Lantolf, 2005). Furthermore, I believe that individuals learn not as isolated beings, but as active members of a community/society – what they learn and how they make sense of knowledge depends on what social context they are learning (Yang & Wilson, 2006).

In recent months, when we navigated an emergency remote teaching (or fully online instruction) and blended learning environments, I have been forced to critically reflect on my teaching philosophy and the impact the new norm has on it.

You see, I have always believed that my teaching philosophy stems from a socio-constructivist perspective. So, naturally, as a language tutor and education researcher I turn to talk as my main pedagogic tool. Talk here refers to all forms of communication – be it verbal or non-verbal. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a physical classroom without talk. But what about online platforms? Should there be so much more of it or should I be expecting much less of it? With the loss of physical presence in online platforms, will talk be without any recognisable and meaningful non-verbal ways of communication? Is there an expectation for more or less of it?

As a medium for teaching and learning, talk also plays the role of a ‘mediator’ between instructor’s adoption and translation of syllabus into lessons, implementation of instructor-designed tasks and assessments, and evaluation of learning outcomes. Yet, as I guide my students and scaffold their learning online, I am cognizant of balancing the control of dialogue with my students. In fact, it is found that instructors rather than students control what is said – who says it and to whom. In addition, often, one kind of talk predominates: the so-called ‘recitation script’ of closed questions, brief recall answers and minimal feedback which requires students to report someone else’s thinking rather than to think for themselves. This is otherwise known as ‘monologic’ talk – one that I absolutely strive to avoid in my classrooms and particularly in my online classes.

A problem I first noticed when we had fully online classes was that it took a lot more effort and deliberate, strategic instructional approaches to ensure students were interacting (enough). Colleagues thought that it was an impossible task as they feltlike students did not want to interact – they don’t speak up, they don’t even switch on their cameras, they don’t respond to questions, they don’t pose questions, they would rather close down a conversation swiftly than put in any effort to extend it beyond a micro-second of an awkward silence between turns.

So, the question I pose myself was: How do I facilitate interaction in my online classes?

With a socio-constructivist view of teaching, I have always considered my classes of students as my own little community of participants in learning. Scholars refer “community” to the  cognitive or emotional connections established between physically separated learners (e.g. Fiock, 2020). In fact, McMillan and Chavis (1986) define community as “a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’  needs  will  be  met  through  their  commitment  to  be  together”  (p. 9). That’s when I started to pay attention to the Social Presence of my online teaching and learning environments.

• Provide opportunities for initial introductions and ongoing social interaction (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison, 2013)

I focused on the well-being of my students and their level of comfort when encouraging them to interact in online classes. I always have ice breakers which I call check-in activities to allow everyone a turn to offer a 20-sec respond to a prompt I give. I also paid attention to small, casual talk outside of the lesson proper.

• Discuss the unique nature of each learning mode and the blending of such (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison, 2013)

I ensured that there would always be time and space for them to talk about materials that are not directly related to the lesson/lecture for the day. I aimed to see the lesson and the interactions during (after) the lesson from the students’ perspective. I reflected on the quality of the interactions from their frame of reference. So, I ensured that they can continue to interact among themselves without having me “visit” their virtual rooms or join their discussions. That’s the respect and trust that I give my students, which in turn, allowed me to gain the same respect and trust for myself.

As for the activities and discussions (synchronous and asynchronous) relating to lesson materials, I ensured that clear instructions and expectations (these will be reviewed, and their participation will be assessed) are provided. Students are also welcomed to clarify any of them.

• Provide explicit directions for all course activities; outline and discuss course content, skill and activity goals, and expectations. (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes & Garrison, 2013)

As my course emphasizes on critical thinking, I am very clear of the critical thinking framework that I apply in all aspects of my lessons. Using a framework, I model how I can apply it in my posing of critical questions during whole class discussions, in my responses to students’ posts in online forums and in my feedback to my students’ work. With a clear model of how I apply the framework in my instruction, interaction and engagement with students, they were able to do the same when they were engaged in my materials and activities, and when they were interacting with me and/or their peers (whether synchronously or asynchronously). This means that interactions are stimulated meaningfully in my lessons such that discussions/conversations are not prematurely closed down and that there will always be extended talk that enhances deeper understanding and promotes higher order thinking skills.

There are increasing focuses on how the quality of talk influences learning and the development of thinking across disciplines. There are also increasing focuses on the advantages of teaching students to take part in dialogues and exploratory talk, even with discipline-specific empirical investigations, to support cognitive and intellectual skills. Despite this, there is still an under-representation of such ‘dialogic’ practice in teaching, in which students contribute to the progression of their understanding by being given a chance to refine and work on their own ideas (Alexander, 2004). I subscribe to such a dialogic pedagogy – an approach where my students and I critically interrogate the topic of study, express and listen to multiple voices and points of view and create respectful and equitable classroom relations. Besides, there are also increasing focuses on the advantages of teaching students to take part in dialogues, exploratory talk, and extended talk, to support higher cognitive and intellectual skills (Mercer, Dawes, Wegerif, & Sams, 2004). Thus, I believe that with talk, in an effective and sustained way, I will be able to engage students cognitively and scaffold their understanding – no matter if it’s in a physical or an online environment.

Furthermore, meaning-making or pedagogic semiosis in the physical classroom AND online environments is also a result of the interplay of a repertoire of semiotic resources, not just language alone, expressed through a range of modalities. Thus, I believe that the orchestration of multimodal resources (like prosodic features of my speech, other non-verbals like gestures, expressions, body language, and other visual aids used in my instruction) can be described as an instantiation of my pedagogical strategy. Particularly, in language and communication skills instruction, where such orchestration of multisemiotic teaching and learning experiences would contribute significantly to my utilisation of scaffolding strategies to enhance students’ ability to make meaning and gain deep understanding from their social construction of online communicative acts and interaction with multimodal texts.

References

Alexander, R. (2004). Towards dialogic teaching: rethinking classroom talk (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Dialogos.

Fiock, H. (2020). Designing a Community of Inquiry in Online Courses. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(1), 135-153.

Lantolf, J. P. (2005). Sociocultural theory and L2 learning: An exegesis. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Handbook of second language research, (pp. 335-354). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Mercer, N., & Dawes, L. (2008). The value of exploratory talk. In Mercer, N., & Hodgkinson, S. (Eds.) Exploring Talk in School. London: SAGE. pp. 55-71.

McMillan, D.W., & Chavis, D.M. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14(1), 6-23.

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Athabasca, AB: Athabasca University Press.

Yang, L., & Wilson, K. (2006). Second language classroom reading: A social constructivist approach. The Reading Matrix, 6(3), 364-372.