2014 Volume 12 Pages 148-166
The increased accessibility to new communication technologies enabled many language and cultural learning classrooms to incorporate “telecollaboration” (O’Dowd, 2011) in their curriculum, connecting students in different parts of the world via online tools. Many of those projects aim to provide “authentic” experiences for the learners and tend to place importance on being “connected.” However, just “being connected” does not necessarily mean having a “meaningful interaction” (Ware, 2005). Given such criticisms, in this study, we critically look at a telecollaborative discussion project implemented between two college classrooms in the US and Japan. To investigate the process and the outcome of the exchanges, we examined students’ writings on the discussion board, audio-recordings of classroom discussions, and students’ reflections on the project, drawing on the post-structuralist view of language and culture, and using the critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003) as an analytical tool. Our analysis suggests that “self-disclosure” and “self-investment” were the keys to facilitate co-construction of meanings which played a vital role in enriching their interactions.
