MECANISMOS QUE DEBE TENER EN CUENTA LA FUNDACIÓN

The conferencing system, with its integrated user interface, proved easy to leam and usable. It suppwted the language learning tasks which teachers considered essential and the textual study activities which had been identified in classroom observation (Chapter Five, section 5.3.3). This gave confidence that it was a suitable system within which to test a shared workspace for language learning.

As a result of the research reported so fer:

1. It was established that a shared workspace tool could fimction as a replacement for most of the physical shared spaces used in a classroom. This made language tutwing at a distance feasible. 2. It was possible to make recommendations about the design features required in a shared workspace

for text-based teaching and learning (section 7.2.3). The needs of this work situation, in relation to space and navigation, objects and operatiœis, floor control and other controls, WYSIWIS, pointers, and activity feedback were clarified. A few tasks could not be supported with the shared workspace tools used in the field trials; the ability to hide objects fi-om one or all participants and a text restructuring capability would enable these. Text restructuring would also make some other tasks easier for the users. The activities seen in Trial 2 suggested that support for managing student use of the space would be helpful (dividing pages and creating tables when students work close together, making it easy to locate individuals and to re-unite after a period of working in different areas). 3. Another aspect of "hiding" seemed possibly to be important. It had been suggested in one class that

asides, private dialogues, as well as public activity, should be available. This was to enable the teacher to discuss homework assignments with individual students and to enable the teacher to support studmts who were having difficulties with the work during lessons. In the case of homework, one class requested part-shared work space in addition to the public shared workspace.

4. A picture was building up of how the shared workspace contributed to what teachers valued in language lessons. In fostering these attributes, the shared workspace tools had a significant impact on the teaching and learning. The contributions are summarised in Table 7.3. It is suggested that four attributes of the shared workspace tools gave rise to the benefits experienced: the sharing of data, the persistence of data, the accessibility of the space and the manipulation of objects.

These findings created a need to deepen understanding of how and why a shared workspace tool benefits text-based teaching and learning. Such an understanding should not only enable the benefits to be articulated to potential users but could also inform design decisions and enable designers to offer new solutions.

Both of the shared workspace tools imposed some user problems, reported by Watson (2001) and Hughes & Sasse (1997). Appendix 6 contains details of usability problems observed. However, the tools were stable and had sufficient functionality to support a range of teaching and learning activities. They also excited the users. Nte was developed in house, so it would be possible to influence its functionality for future trials. For these reasons, wb and nte were considered suitable tools to use in future studies.

The trials also showed the importance of evaluating the shared workspace over an extended period, since teachers took some time to gain confidence and, in the case of Trial 2, it was only after a tarn's working that the teacher began to take the lead in exploring possibilities.

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F ig u re 7.8: W in d o w o f n te, v e rsio n u sed in W r itte n R u ss ia n c o u rse

7.6 Findings - Co-iocated Lessons

This section presents the results o f Trial 3. It has a broadly similar structure to section 7.2, which presented the findings from Trials 1 and 2. It covers these questions:

• How well did the text editor support teaching and learning in this course? This includes support for key tasks; what the teacher and students did with the shared editor; student attitudes; performance in relation to the teacher's targets.

• How did this study contribute to understanding o f required design features?

• How did this study contribute to understanding o f the contribution a shared workspace tool can make to text-based teaching and learning?

Reference is made, throughout the section, to illustrative screen shots. Figure 7.8 and Figures 7.10 to 7.14, and also to Tables 7.5 and 7.6. Most o f these illustrations are sufficiently large to enable text to be read but those in Tables 7.5 and 7.6 are intentionally small, because they are illustrating a changing pattern o f use; the small size was intended to draw attention to colour, quantity and shape o f text, not its content. A reader who wishes to consider details o f language use might well find the screen shots in Appendix 7 more comfortable to read than those in the text o f the thesis.

7.6.1 Supporting the Written Russian course

7.6.1.1 What teacher and students did

In both years, each lesson consisted o f three to five different activities. Not all activities used the text editor. In Year 1, the teacher would usually begin by importing a text file, which would be used for the first part o f the lesson. In Year 2, it was more usual to begin with an empty canvas. The teacher saved the contents of the text editor after every session. She edited these files outside lesson time and distributed them to the students. These are referred to by teacher and students as "the handouts".

Top row: October 24 2000 . Second row: December 05

2000.

Table 7.5: Year 1 October 24 and December 05 2000 Teacher's text red. Teacher imported text from file at start o f lesson

Table 7.6: Year I March 13 2001

Teacher's text red. No imported file at start. Students do most o f the writing

A change was observed over time. Year 1 began with ambitious use o f the text editor, student problems with the keyboard (section 6.13.3) and the teacher's realisation that the editor did not support all the desired text construction activities (see section T.6.2.2). This was followed by teacher retrenchment - a period during which she did virtually all the typing and treated the editor as a classroom whiteboard (Table 7.5, October 24). During this phase, the teacher did ask students to use the pointer frequently. Some activities were carried out using paper. This phase was followed by increasing confidence and a period o f experimentation.

In the first term, students wrote mainly single words and phrases in response to teacher instructions (Table 7.5, October 24, December 05) and quite often wrote one at a time. In the second term, the students became increasingly autonomous until they were spending most o f the lesson writing and interacting with one another's writing (Table 7.6, March 13). Over this time, the quantity o f writing the students produced also increased as they moved from writing single words to longer pieces o f text. In Year 2, the teacher built more student writing into the lessons from the beginning. The saved text files show that more text was created in n te in the second year.

7.6.1.2 Observed activity types

As section 6.12 explained, written descriptions o f activity observed in the video recordings were analysed using a simple framework. It was found that there were only a small number o f variations. The activity

types that were observed in Year 1 also took place in Year 2. The difference between the years was in distribution o f the activities, not in activity type. The activity types have been named: No shared workspace activity, look and point, teacher scribe, writing workshop', student writers. They are explained next. Paper played a significant part in the teaching and learning activities.