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5 Plagues Infecting a Medical
School

A Case for Authentic Video
Games to Promote Motivation,
Engagement, and Acquisition

Barnabas J. Martin

Introduction
This chapter delves into the role of game-based learning (GBL) as a
potentially useful technological affordance in project-based language
learning (PBLL). In particular, it investigates whether a well-chosen game
motivates students to develop appropriate content and language. The
chapter begins by defining types of technological games and discussing
the consideration educators must give to selection. It then identifies and
describes the game used in the current study, the educational context
the game is presented in, the participants, the study procedure, research
questions, and the findings.

What’s in a Game?
Technological games can be classified into three main categories or gen-
res: educational, serious, and authentic. The definition of an educational
game has changed over the years, more so with the creation of the genre
“serious games.” In an era when video game consoles and personal com-
puters have become more commonplace in homes, Senge (1994) described
educational games as a means to practice real tasks virtually and develop
both problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. To this definition one
may add a key element that differentiates educational games from seri-
ous games: Educational games serve as a safe place of practice where
score, violence, and danger of failure do not factor into gameplay. Piano
simulation software qualifies as an example of an educational game. The
user may press the wrong key but will suffer no penalty for consequently
playing the wrong note. Seen through a modern lens, educational games
rarely advance beyond repetitive drill-like activities, struggle to advance
beyond lower-level forms of learning, and in general become boring over
time (Kirriemuir & McFarlane, 2003). Jenkins, Squire, and Tan (2004)
colorfully equate educational games as “a spinach sundae: the results are
not very good for you and not particularly tasty” (p. 244).

86  Barnabas J. Martin
Marsh (2011) distinguished serious games from educational games by

claiming that serious games are “digital games, simulations, virtual envi-
ronments and mixed reality/media that provide opportunities to engage
in activities through responsive narrative/story, gameplay or encounters
to inform, influence, for well-being, and/or experience to convey mean-
ing” (p. 63). From this definition we see the importance of a game that
is responsive and conveys an engaging narrative. Furthermore, to more
clearly distinguish serious games from educational games, we must
remember that serious games incorporate elements of risk, score, danger,
or violence. Additionally, serious games intend users to apply the knowl-
edge that they acquire in a real-life setting (Djaouti, Alvarez, Jessel, &
Rampnoux, 2011). For example, serious games with a medical narra-
tive may include instances of death or misdiagnosis of a patient directly
related to the performance of the user. Likewise, many serious games
score the performance of the user by means of feedback to help the user
learn through a cycle of testing, evaluating, and improving on hypoth-
eses (Malone, 1981). Prognosis: Your Diagnosis (by Medical Joyworks,
2018), for example, evaluates users’ performances with a rating system
of one, two, or three stars. This helps users internalize their current level
of understanding and knowledge, reflect on areas for improvement,
and further motivate them to surpass previous attempts at the scenario
(Malone, 1981).

The vast majority of video games on the market, including the one used
in this study, can be classified as authentic games. The label “authentic
game” indicates that developers do not intend these games to act as tools
for teaching or learning but as modes of entertainment targeted at users
of the same language and/or culture. But to refer to these games as “com-
mercial” overlooks games developed independently, distributed without
charge, and the plethora of free-to-download games that may include in-
game charges but remain playable even without spending money. Thus,
categorizing all games outside of the educational and serious genres pre-
viously described as authentic seems like a much more appropriate move.

In terms of educational merit, there are advantages and disadvantages
surrounding these three genres of video games. Educational games allow
users to interact with the game at their own pace but tend to lack many
qualities that promote enduring motivation and continued gameplay.
Serious games may aid in communicating real-life transferrable skills and
possess motivational factors such as challenge, feedback related to pro-
gress in the game, and fantasy, but they also tend to limit users’ control
over the narrative and gameplay. While not intentionally designed for
educational purposes, authentic games often engage users through free-
dom of choice, randomness, a sense of control, fantasy, and narrative,
and these features in addition to a sense of progress and success promote
repeated gameplay. Repeated gameplay translates into dedicated effort
and this can lead to learning (Gee, 2003a).

Plagues Infecting a Medical School 87
Although the learning acquired though all authentic games may have
little applicability in real life, their authentic nature may make them
well-suited for language learning. Intended for L1 users, authentic games
expose users to authentic written and/or aural language. Furthermore,
the number and variety of authentic games in addition to their popularity
creates avenues for users and video game fans to connect with each other
outside of gameplay (Annetta, 2008; Steinkuehler, 2007).

Technology-Based Games and Motivation
In 1948 Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr., and Estle Ray Mann submitted a pat-
ent for the first interactive electronic game, which they named a “cathode-
ray tube amusement device” (Goldsmith, Jr. & Mann, 1948). Later in the
1970s, scholars started researching the use of computer games to assist in
learning content (e.g., Burton & Brown, 1979; Carr & Goldstein, 1977).
But it was not until 1980 that scholars began looking into the motivation
behind why we play computer or video games (Malone, 1980).

The games Malone utilized to determine motivation and video games
scarcely resemble the video games we presently see on TV or on our
mobile devices, but his analysis uncovered key factors that remain rel-
evant today. Malone and Lepper (1987) determined that cooperation,
competition, or the ability for the user to connect with the game can
positively impact interpersonal motivation. Addressing individual moti-
vation, they revealed that video games with a sense of challenge, fan-
tasy, control, and curiosity most effectively motivate users. Gee (2003b)
as well stressed the importance of a personal connection with a video
game when he wrote, “the real importance of good computer and video
games is that they allow people to re-create themselves in new world and
achieve recreation and deep learning at one and the same time” (p. 3).
Unsurprisingly, many authors, looking into the appeal of computer and
video games, have cited that one of the most captivating features of such
games is the sense of control it bestows on the user (de Zamaróczy, 2017;
Gee, 2003a; Malone & Lepper, 1987; Salter, 2011; Voorhees, 2009).

The ability for video games to engage a user’s sense of fantasy is an
important factor in motivation. Malone and Lepper (1987) defined fan-
tasy as an environment that allows the user to “evoke mental images of
physical or social situations not actually present” (p. 240). Narrative
remains especially important as it establishes the setting for the story
within the game and helps users understand the importance and signifi-
cance the game holds. Authenticity directly relates to the users’ socio-
cultural contexts, and without this authenticity the feeling of intrinsic
motivation will decline (de Freitas et al., 2012). This is especially true
in language learning contexts as students come from various cultures
and must be able to connect with the video games cross-culturally
(Kern, 2006).

88  Barnabas J. Martin
Although research related to gameplay and learning has not yet shown

a constant significant correlation, especially between serious games and
learning (Girard, Ecalle, & Magnan, 2012), the social aspect of gaming
often translates into learning. Girard et al. (2012) mentioned that games
played in a group setting consistently demonstrate higher rates of learn-
ing than games played individually, and numerous studies have pointed
to the positive impact massively multiplayer online role-playing games
(MMORPGs) have on the exposure to and the development of literacy
(e.g., Gee, 2003a; Steinkuehler, 2007). Leander and Lovvorn (2006), for
instance, detailed one teenage gamer’s determination to teach himself
Finnish so he could better interact with the Finnish friends he made while
playing an MMORPG. Suh, Kim, and Kim (2010) reported on their use
of a serious MMORPG with a group of fifth- and sixth-grade elemen-
tary students learning English. Their data show that the majority of stu-
dents’ learning and progress came through group activities and chatting
together to solve the problems posed in the game.

The nature of authentic games that feature freedom of choice and
engaging narratives to potentially motivate and engender learning sup-
ported the decision to integrate GBL into the PBLL unit in this study. As
students need to acquire language skills and content, an authentic game
that native speakers play provided a good choice. Krashen (1981) and
Swain (1985) have stressed the importance of encountering the target
language in a context that provides native linguistic and cultural input,
and the use of authentic games seems to provide such an environment.
The game Plague Inc. (by Ndemic Creations, 2012) was selected as it fits
the criteria of an authentic game and requires the students to understand
specific content in order to think critically about epidemiology and par-
ticular medical symptoms. The study presented here explored student
and instructor perceptions of content and language learning through the
use of this authentic game in a project-based educational context.

Background to the Study
After an almost 40-year ban on the establishment of new medical schools,
the Japanese government permitted the creation of the International
University of Health and Welfare School of Medicine (IUHW) (Akatsu,
2017). The chairman’s vision included requiring English as the medium
of instruction for all required courses and for the majority of elective
courses during the first two years of the students’ six years of schooling.
Furthermore, the university mandated that all faculty must engage stu-
dents in content through active and group learning (International Univer-
sity of Health and Welfare, 2018a).

In addition to applying group and active learning to each course and
teaching every required course in English during the first two years,
the university offers and requires substantially more hours of English

Plagues Infecting a Medical School 89
education than all other Japanese medical schools. A  typical medical
school in Japan requires its students to complete just under 23 hours of
English study related to medicine (i.e., fifteen 90-minute lessons) each
year for three years (Chiba University School of Medicine, 2018a, 2018b,
2018c). Comparatively, Japanese first-year students at IUHW must com-
plete 240  hours of English and have the option to acquire up to 180
additional hours of English study through English Communication, an
elective course (all lessons are 60-minutes in length) (International Uni-
versity of Health and Welfare, 2018b).

As the students receive content instruction in English, it seemed appro-
priate to utilize an instructional method that combines content and lan-
guage acquisition. Thus, a number of factors influenced the decision to
conduct a project-based language learning unit. The primary inspiration
came from the desire to help students become more comfortable working
in teams and see the importance of taking responsibility for their own
learning. The decision to combine PBLL with GBL came from the preva-
lence of gaming in Japan (“Famitsu Whitepaper on Video Games 2018”)
and at the university, as students there have reported that they actively
play video games, especially on their smartphones.

The Project and Its Video Game
Plague Inc. is an authentic video game that requires the user to select
a starting country in which a clandestine corporation infects a single
patient with its engineered disease. The corporation’s goal is to kill the
entire human race with a disease that it continually modifies by add-
ing symptoms, means of transmission, and defensive capabilities such
as drug resistance. The developer, James Vaughn, claims that the game’s
“epidemic model” is based on extensive research and algorithms (Khan,
2013). Therefore, the use of Plague Inc. in class served as an excel-
lent medium through which to learn about epidemiology, including its
socioeconomic and environmental aspects, and the medical symptoms
featured in the game, especially considering that the game engine uses
realistic and detailed variables to simulate the spread of disease in the real
world (Mitchell & Hamilton, 2017).

The general aims of the Plague Inc. unit included (1) learning and
internalizing vocabulary related to epidemiology and basic medicine, (2)
developing critical thinking skills, (3) working collaboratively within a
team, (4) obtaining a general understanding of specific medical symp-
toms, and (5) exploring the field of epidemiology. A few outside factors
influenced the overall design of the Plague Inc. unit. The elective class
was one hour long amidst the six hours of lectures on medical subjects
that the students needed to take, so the unit could not be too demand-
ing. The course met daily but was taught by a different teacher each
day; therefore, the students received in-class interaction with the Plague

90  Barnabas J. Martin
Inc. unit only once a week. Considering the students’ workload in their
required courses and sparse instruction through Plague Inc., the unit
consisted of three in-class project-oriented lessons, three weeks of group
preparation for a class presentation, and a final lesson during which the
groups gave their presentations. The students’ progress was measured
using a rubric and a unit-end survey, both developed by the author, and
through a survey implemented by the university, which the students com-
pleted after each class. Finally, progress related to basic medicine and
epidemiology was assessed by a university teacher with a medical degree.
Table 5.1 outlines the flow of the Plague Inc. unit over its seven weeks.

Participants
The study involved 28 first-year medical students, divided into two
groups by convenience sampling (Dörnyei, 2007). Group 1 consisted of
eight males and six females whose average age was 24.8 years old. Their
TOEFL-ITP scores ranged from 477 to 540 with the average score being
518. There was more of a male-female imbalance in Group 2 with 11
males and only 3 females, and the average age was younger, at 20.9 years.
The range of TOEFL-ITP scores in Group 2 was between 487 and 540
and the group average was 512. Although the two groups involved in the
project represented different ability levels in the English Communication
framework, the students’ average total TOEFL-ITP scores were relatively
similar. The average scores placed both groups at the CEFR rank of B1.
In both groups, 14 students attended each lesson in addition to partici-
pating in the project.

The instructor was the 38-year-old author of this study, a native
speaker of English who has a master’s degree in Teaching English as a
Second or Other Language from a U.S. institution. He had been teaching
in this institute from the opening of the medical school in April, 2017.
Because the instructor was not trained in medicine, he invited a faculty
member specializing in ear, nose, and throat (ENT) surgery with addi-
tional research and teaching experience in medical zoology, pharmacol-
ogy and internal medicine, to assist with the medical terminology and
explanations that informed the students’ presentations. Although this
ENT surgeon was from Bangladesh and his advanced medical training,
teaching and research took place in Japan, his medium of instruction and
interaction was always in English. His medical background and English
ability made him a good candidate to assist in the lessons as need arose.

Procedure
The Plague Inc. unit ran for a total of seven weeks and consisted of three
initial weeks of project-orientated study, a three-week period of work
outside of the classroom and in-class presentations during the final week

Table 5.1  Seven-week unit plan for Plague Inc.

Student tasks Specific linguistic skills Interdisciplinary
activities & competences

Week 1: Overview and interaction with Plague Inc.

• Team selection • Casual conversation, • Interpersonal:
• Discuss, debate, promoting oneself teamwork

conjecture as a team • Proposing opinions, • Epidemiology:
• Listen to & evaluate ideas, hypotheses understanding how
diseases spread with
other team’s • Coming to a relation to climate,
hypotheses on Plague consensus environment,
Inc. gameplay geography,
• Proposing population,
counterarguments socioeconomics

• Political geography:
searching &
identifying countries
on a world map

Week 2: Building knowledge of system-specific symptoms

• Learn about system- • Reading • Interpersonal:
specific symptoms comprehension, reporting
tJraapnasnlaestieo←→n English
• Classify & prioritize • General medicine:
information about • Presenting understanding specific
system-specific information to a symptoms related to
symptoms small group a bodily system in
terms of severity &
• Write a summary • Determining & communicability
about system-specific classifying important
symptoms information

• Structuring, written
communication

Week 3: Presenting and listening to system-specific symptom presentations

• Teach information as • Verbal • Interpersonal: teaching
a team about system- communication in • General medicine:
specific symptoms to appropriate register
peers explaining &
• Listening understanding specific
• Listen to & comprehension symptoms related to
comprehend a bodily system in
information about • Notetaking terms of severity &
system-specific communicability
symptoms

Weeks 4–6: Dedicated interaction with Plague Inc. and presentation preparation
(outside of class)

• Independent work • Visual arts:
• Group work presentation design
• Play Plague Inc.
• Create presentations • ICT: digital game play,
taking screenshots,
presentation creation

(Continued)

92  Barnabas J. Martin
Table 5.1 (Continued)

Student tasks Specific linguistic skills Interdisciplinary
activities & competences

Week 7: Presenting and listening to Plague Inc. presentations

• Summarize & • Extemporaneous • Interpersonal: public
report on team- speaking speaking, teamwork
developed simulated
disease creation, • Verbal • Political geography:
development, communication in identifying countries
execution & results appropriate register on a world map,

• Listen to & analyze • Listening • Epidemiology:
other team-developed comprehension explaining how
simulated diseases diseases spread with
• Notetaking relation to climate,
• Develop & propose • Proposing opinions, environment,
effective treatments geography,
for other team- ideas, hypotheses population,
developed simulated • Coming to a socioeconomics
diseases
consensus • Microbiology:
predicting how
to prevent the
propagation and/or
spread of bacteria

• General medicine:
determining how to
prevent or treat certain
symptoms

of the unit. In line with Heitmann’s (1996) description of various types
of project-based learning, the first three weeks aimed to prepare the stu-
dents for the final project in the unit through a series of project-oriented
lessons, which combined smaller related projects with teacher-directed
learning.

At the end of the lesson prior to the beginning of the Plague Inc. unit,
the students learned about the premise of Plague Inc. and its merit as
a simulation of not only how disease spreads but also how different
symptoms affect the human body. The concept of project-based learn-
ing and the expectations of the Plague Inc. unit were also presented and
students had the chance to ask questions. Finally, the students were given
the opportunity to express their opinions about Plague Inc. and its use
in the classroom. Every student agreed to participate in the unit and
this research and to use Plague Inc. in the classroom. Students’ journals
expressed the potential for completing this unit; one student wrote, “I am
ok with this game. Playing this game can help us cure diseases too.” Five
other students expressed the notion that playing a game aimed at spread-
ing disease could help them learn how to stop and cure the disease as well.

Plagues Infecting a Medical School 93
The first lesson of the Plague Inc. unit focused on an explanation of the
game and allowed the students to create teams of three or four to play
the game. The students used what knowledge they had about epidemi-
ology and basic medicine to develop a strategy, and each of the team’s
representatives explained their strategy to the class. Finally, the teams
had time to debate and discuss the merits of any strategy before voting
on which should be implemented. This introduction to the game allowed
the students to think critically and analytically about which country they
would initially situate their disease in and why. It also gave the students
the chance to consider their knowledge about epidemiology, which mode
of transmission would be most effective in the initial population, and
why. This day also allowed the teacher and ENT surgeon, by listening in
on team discussions, to assess the students’ levels of knowledge related to
the medical symptoms featured in the game.
The second lesson focused on helping the students gain a deeper
understanding of the symptoms in Plague Inc. During these lessons
the teams received a series of symptoms related to a specific system
in the body to study and teach to their classmates. The teams explained
the names of the symptoms in Japanese, whether or not each symptom
could reasonably promote disease transmission, the severity of each
symptom on a patient’s health, and if each symptom should be consid-
ered minor or serious. To give the teams a model of the type of informa-
tion to present, the ENT surgeon and the teacher taught information
related to the gastrointestinal system, which they had previously pre-
pared. This was the best system to model for the students as they already
had exposure to some of the symptoms through their medical courses.
Working in teams, the students spent the remainder of the second les-
son learning about their bodily system, its symptoms, and the roles they
may play in Plague Inc. The ENT surgeon consulted with the teams as
they studied their symptoms, elaborating and helping when needed. This
work continued into the third lesson.
In the third lesson, students from each team spoke in front of the
class and used whiteboards to teach their classmates about the medical
symptoms within the bodily system they were focusing on. The students
understood the importance of taking notes on the information taught by
the other teams as they would use it when they played Plague Inc. out-
side of class, and it gave them a background for when they learned the
same material in their medical courses. The ENT surgeon evaluated the
information each team presented, and his affirmation of the accuracy of
their contents confirmed the students’ learning of material to which they
primarily had no prior exposure.
At the conclusion of the third lesson, the teacher reviewed the ele-
ments of the final portion of the Plague Inc. unit, a five-minute presenta-
tion about an in-game disease each team would create. To help ensure
that each student achieved the learning goals of the Plague Inc. unit,

94  Barnabas J. Martin
each team received a rubric to guide their gameplay and the creation of
their presentation. According to the rubric, the presentations needed to
introduce each group’s disease and the reasoning behind which country
the students chose as the starting country, and outline the symptomatic
makeup of the disease and its means of transmission. Additionally, to
measure how well the students understood the symptoms in the game
and its elements of epidemiology, the teams also needed to determine
how to treat the symptoms and prevent the spread of other teams’ dis-
eases. Although the presentations did not require extensive preparation
or gameplay, to accommodate the students’ busy academic schedule, the
teams had three full weeks to create them. The teacher checked with each
team separately on their progress at the end of each of the three interven-
ing weeks.

Three weeks later, the teams gave their presentations, which were simi-
lar in format. The students stood at the front of the class and spoke using
slides that they had prepared. These included details such as the name of
the disease, the starting country, the methods of transmission, symptoms
selected, and the number of infected people. At the conclusion of the
presentations, the teams came up with plans to halt or cure the diseases
created by the other teams. The ENT surgeon who attended these lessons
confirmed the viability of each team’s reasoning.

After each lesson, the students filled out an anonymous online survey
written in Japanese and English. The survey, developed by the university,
was not specific to this class, but certain questions were relevant to the
project-based learning unit, such as the following:

SQ2:  “Has the teacher enhanced your learning through the lecture or its
process?

SQ3:  “Has the class increased your motivation?
SQ4:  “Has the class made you think that learning is fun?”

The six-point response selection was: “I think so very much”; “I think
so”; “I think so a little”; “I do not think so very much”; “I do not think
so”; “I do not think so at all.” The university’s policy stated that each
student should fill out the survey during the last few minutes of class,
but no mechanism existed to ensure that every student completed and
submitted the survey. This, combined with fluctuations in attendance,
resulted in a variable return rate.

Finally, in order to gain a clearer picture of the success of the game
unit, the researcher prepared an anonymous survey in Japanese and Eng-
lish to gauge whether or not students thought playing the game during
the project helped them achieve the stated unit objectives. The students
reflected on three questions and had the chance to leave comments at
the end.

Plagues Infecting a Medical School 95
Q1:  Did playing Plague Inc. help you learn new English vocabulary?
Q2: Did playing Plague Inc. help you learn more about the spread of

disease?
Q3:  Did playing Plague Inc. help you learn more about certain medical

conditions?
In addition to in-class assessment of the teams’ presentations, the stu-
dents’ responses to these questions aided in garnering a clearer under-
standing of the effectiveness of the unit in terms of achieving its goals of
promoting vocabulary acquisition, a deeper understanding of the medical
symptoms in Plague Inc., and of epidemiology in general.

Results
The questions in the university-wide survey aimed to create a picture of
how students responded to lessons, how the lessons enhanced their learn-
ing, and what impact (if any) the lessons had on the students’ motiva-
tion. The results of the first four lessons of the Plague Inc. unit appeared
to indicate that this group of students found project-based learning and
GBL effective and motivating (see Tables  5.2 to 5.5). From the first to
the fourth lesson in the Plague Inc. unit, student responses of the most
positive response, “I  think so very much,” increased 10.1  percent for
SQ2, 20.4 percent for SQ3, and 9.9 percent for SQ4. The data suggested
that the students felt increasingly that the Plague Inc. unit increased their

Table 5.2  Lesson 01 survey results

I think so very I think so I think so a Total
much little 29 (99.8%)
2 (6.8%) 29 (99.9%)
SQ2 24 (82.7%) 3 (10.3%) 3 (10.3%) 29 (99.8%)
SQ3 21 (72.4%) 5 (17.2%) 3 (10.3%)
SQ4 22 (75.8%) 4 (13.7%)
(Percentages are not rounded)

Table 5.3  Lesson 02 survey results

I think so very much I think so I think so a little Total
0 (0%) 33 (99.9%)
SQ2 28 (84.8%) 5 (15.1%) 0 (0%) 33 (99.9%)
SQ3 27 (81.8%) 6 (18.1%) 0 (0%) 33 (99.9%)
SQ4 28 (84.8%) 5 (15.1%)
(Percentages are not rounded)

96  Barnabas J. Martin
Table 5.4  Lesson 03 survey results

I think so very much I think so I think so a little Total
0 (0%) 28 (99.9%)
SQ2 22 (78.5%) 6 (21.4%) 0 (0%) 28 (99.9%)
SQ3 25 (89.2%) 3 (10.7%) 0 (0%) 28 (99.9%)
SQ4 24 (85.7%) 4 (14.2%)
(Percentages are not rounded)

Table 5.5  Project presentations lesson survey results

I think so very much I think so I think so a little Total
28 (99.9%)
SQ2 26 (92.8%) 2 (7.1%) 0 (0%) 28 (99.9%)
SQ3 26 (92.8%) 2 (7.1%) 0 (0%) 28 (99.9%)
SQ4 24 (85.7%) 4 (14.2%) 0 (0%)
(Percentages are not rounded)

motivation (SQ3) and made them think that learning was fun (SQ4).
From the second to third lesson, however, students who felt strongest
that the makeup of the lesson enhanced their learning (SQ2) decreased
by 6.3 percent. This drop may have resulted from the third lesson being
less active than the previous two. Likewise, the students may have pre-
ferred learning about the symptoms from an authority, the ENT sur-
geon, instead of each other. The fourth lesson also included the teams
speaking in front of the class as they gave their presentations; however, it
included many additional elements such as visual cues during presenta-
tions, the chance to connect their personal experiences with Plague Inc.
with those of their classmates, the challenge of curing and preventing
other teams’ diseases, and the affirmation of their learning achievements
from their teacher and the ENT surgeon. Most likely, these additional
elements accounted for the 14.3 percent increase in SQ2 from the third
lesson to the fourth lesson in the Plague Inc. unit. In addition to positive
feedback through the survey, the number of respondents after each class
in this unit (an average of 29.5 respondents) also suggested a connection
between the unit and motivation. Response rates in the other English
Communication classes from the same groups of students averaged 7.59
respondents per class.

Overall, although these data may suggest a correlation between the use
of Plague Inc. and an increase in motivation, motivation itself remains
a multifaceted construct (Malone, 1981), and thus further experimental
work would be needed to reveal significant connections.

With regards to learning in the areas of epidemiology and general
medicine, the teams’ presentations demonstrated well the newly learned

Plagues Infecting a Medical School 97
unit-based content. Each team showed understanding of the environ-
mental and socioeconomic aspects of epidemiology as each disease
began in an underdeveloped country that bordered other counties, had
a large population, and had both a seaport and airport. Further, teams
that started their epidemic in tropical climates tended to use insects as a
means of transmission, and all teams learned that transmission through
blood and needles was effective in underdeveloped regions.

The teams also demonstrated an understanding of the symptoms from
the game. Each team reported that they used coughing and sneezing to
increase the spread of their disease. No team included any dermatologi-
cal symptoms, and when asked why, the members explained that those
conditions would alarm infected people and make them more likely to
go to a doctor, thus alerting the medical community to the existence of a
new disease. One team in Group 2 integrated the information they had
learned from their clinical history course and modeled an exam between
a doctor and patient suffering with the team’s disease. In this “role play,”
during the review of symptoms, when the “doctor” asked the “patient”
about other areas of the body not directly related to the chief complaint,
the doctor demonstrated understanding by asking about associated symp-
toms a patient with their disease would likely experience. Furthermore,
in addressing one team’s water-borne disease, students recommended
boiling the water before drinking it, a treatment confirmed by the assist-
ing ENT surgeon. With a disease that was spread by coughing and sneez-
ing, students proposed distributing masks, but the surgeon explained that
the masks which most people in Japan use lose effectiveness after a few
hours, a fact that surprised the students as many people there wear masks
when they are sick or to avoid getting sick (Rodriguez, 2018).

The results of the post-unit survey further supported the teacher’s
and the ENT surgeon’s observations of the presentations and the learn-
ing potential of the game. When asked “Did playing Plague Inc. help
you learn more about the spread of disease? (Epidemiology),” 26 stu-
dents (92.8%) answered “I think so very much” and 2 (7.1%) answered
“I think so a little.” When asked “Did playing Plague Inc. help you learn
more about certain medical conditions?” 20 (71.4%) students answered,
“I  think so very much,” and 8 (28.5%) responded with “I  think so.”
Moreover, students wrote comments about content learning, such as
“I could learn about medical things, so it was good for me.”

Although the lessons within the Plague Inc. unit appeared to help the
students build a foundation for epidemiology and the symptoms featured
in Plague Inc., a foundation they can apply to their studies and future
work as doctors, it remained difficult to assess their development of lan-
guage, at least as it concerned a focus on form (grammar). During the
presentations, for example, some students continued to forget determin-
ers and made mistakes with subject-verb agreement. Yet, when students
were asked whether playing Plague Inc. helped them learn new English

98  Barnabas J. Martin
vocabulary, 22 (78.5%) students selected “I think so very much,” and
6 (21.4%) chose “I think so.” Moreover, students seemed to appreciate
the opportunity to function authentically in English through the unit.
For example, one student wrote, “This class gave us many chance to use
English such as discussion time and presentation. This kind of things
made me realize that I do not have to hesitate using English and made me
interest of using English.” Another student felt that working in groups
reduced his anxiety about speaking English: “I could practice speaking
every class, and it works I think. I feel shy less when I speaking English.”
Writing specifically about Plague Inc. one student wrote, “It is really
good idea for English learner like me. I used to watch cartoons in Eng-
lish when I was just a beginner learner and found it good. Now I’m just
started learning medicine recently that is why this Plague Inc. is really
helpful.” Finally, another student addressed all aspects of the Plague Inc.
unit: “Games like Plaque (sic) are good tools to learn not only for English
but for other regions [of our education], because everyone could be eas-
ily to join and spontaneously learn. Also I like them in the point that all
the members in the group can get together during doing the games.” The
students occasionally left comments within the university-developed sur-
vey as well. Although the amount of comments averaged more than for
other classes within the elective course, they did not amount to enough
to accurately forecast the general feeling of every student in the Plague
Inc. unit. One comment, however, drew attention to one of the potential
difficulties of using PBLL at the university level: “Preparation of the pres-
entation took much time and it was fun but a little burden for me before
coming the final exam of chemistry.” In this instance, the students needed
to study for an upcoming test, which understandably took priority over
preparation for an elective course, and such a situation in addition to
the time students needed to commit to the workload of other courses
illustrated another potential issue of using PBLL, and particularly GBL,
in busy university programs.

Discussion and Conclusion
This study has suggested that authentic games, with their range of nar-
rative, engaging gameplay, and wide player base, open up great poten-
tial for use in PBLL. The increase in the number of students who felt
strongly that the combination of GBL and PBLL within the Plague Inc.
unit, in addition to the comments from the teacher-created post-unit sur-
vey, seemed to suggest that the majority of the students believed that this
game-based unit increased their motivation and investment in the learn-
ing process in addition to aiding both their content and language learn-
ing. Observations by the instructor and the ENT specialist confirmed that
the students were engaged with the content, learning about epidemiol-
ogy, and doing this in English.

Plagues Infecting a Medical School 99
Why might Plague Inc. have worked so well with the students, specifi-
cally as it connected to content? Although students had just begun their
first year of medical school and some were still under 20 years old, it is
possible that Plague Inc. connected with their views of themselves as doc-
tors. The game allowed the students to create a virtual disease with medi-
cal symptoms and gave them a visual representation of how their disease
spread from an outbreak, to an epidemic, to a pandemic. In place of
studying cases from history or speculating about the future, Plague Inc.
gave the students interactive exposure to basic medicine and epidemiol-
ogy. While the anonymity of the post-class surveys prevents knowing the
reasons why each student seemingly connected with the Plague Inc. unit,
the survey and observational results provided evidence to imply that the
game motivated the students and that students connected with its narra-
tive of epidemiology and medical symptoms.
But what about the learning of language? While there is no doubt
that students learned the vocabulary of the target field, the presence of
linguistic errors during their presentations raises questions about the
use of projects for learning language form: If students work in groups,
how can they recognize and correct errors on their own? With short-
term projects, the educator can easily note errors and address them in
future lessons, but this process may prove difficult for longer projects,
especially if the formal presentation in which their language learning is
showcased comes at the end of the course. Discrepancies between what
the students believe about their language development and what occurs
in the final product may be addressed through assessment rubrics that
can be made transparent to students as they move through the project
(see, for example, Beckett & Slater, 2005). In any case, further research
needs to address ways to incorporate a focus on form into projects that
adopt a GBL approach.
Naturally, not all types of play engage all people, and not all genres of
video games will engage every student. For this reason, educators must
use caution when using video games in the classroom. Annetta (2008)
makes it clear that video games cannot dominate the classroom expe-
rience nor replace the educator. Instead, and as this study illustrated,
video games can help students access the content and grapple with dif-
ficult real-world concepts in a more comfortable environment (Annetta,
2008). Girard et al.’s (2012) meta-analysis suggests that games are more
effective when they are supplemented with other instructional methods
than when they are used as the sole instruction method, perhaps due to
the fact that as people play games they often gain intuitive knowledge
(something that is difficult to explicate), and interaction with other group
members or with the teacher encourages the user to verbalize their grow-
ing knowledge. When designing a project around video games, therefore,
allowing students to group themselves by interest and game may prove
a good course.

100  Barnabas J. Martin
International relations (IR) scholar de Zamaróczy (2017) believes

that authentic games have a place in the classroom and in informing
research as well. He argues that people involved in IR should invest
time with computer games as “they provide a resource for normative
critiques of our existing state of global politics and . . . because empiri-
cally exploring their constitutive effects can help us better understand
how common understandings of global politics take root and are repro-
duced” (p. 5).

Serious games and educational games certainly deserve consideration
for use in the classroom as they are primarily designed to teach specific
content or skills. Authentic games, however, may provide a better fit as
they typically allow players significantly more freedom to choose and, as
Gee (2006) romantically puts it, “this proactive production by players
of story elements, a visual-motoric-auditory-decision-making symphony,
and a unique real-virtual story produces a new form of performance art
coproduced by players and game designers” (p. 61).

These conditions act as viable settings for project-based learning as
well. As people struggle to master video games, they devote a more
germane load to playing the game, and higher-level thinking and deep
learning are some of the outcomes. The hands-on nature of video games
ensures initial investment, and games that maintain intrinsic motivation
through varying difficulties, compelling narratives, and authenticity will
maintain investment, as this study has suggested.

The use of GBL in PBLL may become even more pertinent as virtual
reality games and systems become more commercially available and put
into use. As of 2017, 11 percent of U.S. households had the means for
using virtual reality and 33 percent of avid gamers planned to buy one
within a year (Entertainment Software Association, 2017). It is possible
to imagine students actively engaged in any subject area through virtual
reality.

PBLL often occurs in science, technology, engineering, and technol-
ogy (STEM) classes and less in the social sciences (Duke, Halvorsen &
Strachan, 2016). English language learners need to improve their abili-
ties in all content areas, and video games of any style and genre can
act as a bridge to integrate PBLL into a wide array of courses. Further-
more, students can work on projects either in groups or individually,
and this readily permits them to find video games that they enjoy while
reducing the risk of having to participate in activities they struggle to
connect with. Finally, not only can the use of authentic video games
in project-based language learning develop strong content knowledge
as this study has shown, it can foster the development of new litera-
cies beyond print, allowing students to nurture their own notions of
authorship, and immersing them in multicultural, multimodal learning
environments.

Plagues Infecting a Medical School 101

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6 Students Co-Learning Linguistics
Through PBL

A Cross-Cultural Telecollaborative
Implementation

Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso

Introduction
Project-based learning (PBL) has gained widespread popularity among
learners and teachers at different levels and in different contexts (Beckett,
2005). From a theoretical perspective, PBL fits well within sociocultural
and ecological frameworks of learning. Sociocultural Theory (SCT), as
explained by Lantolf and Beckett (2009), refers to “the notion that human
mental functioning results from participation in, and appropriation of,
the forms of cultural mediation integrated into social activities” (p. 459).
SCT acknowledges the centrality of social activity in learning; the sub-
theory of SCT, Activity Theory, argues that goal-oriented and socially
organized actions are central to learning (Lantolf  & Beckett, 2009).
These core principles from SCT are recognized in ecological frameworks
of learning. An ecological perspective of learning argues that meaningful
learning takes place in meaningful contexts and with a goal-oriented pur-
pose. Perhaps most distinctively, ecological perspectives recognize entire
situations, including the physical environment and the affordances the
physical environments offer, in learning contexts. Van Lier (2004) defines
affordances as “what is available to the person to do something with”
(p.  91). For example, computers being present in a classroom bring a
new set of affordances or opportunities for students and teachers to do
something with the computers that they could not otherwise do. The
concept of affordance is critical as ecological perspectives of learning seek
to answer what it is about environments “that makes things happen the
way they do? How does learning come about?” (p. 11).

This study combines PBL with the concept of affordance and imple-
ments PBL in a cross-cultural and telecollaborative way. Our goal is to
examine students’ perceptions of goal-oriented cross-cultural PBL made
possible by the affordances offered through technology with a focus on
self- and peer assessment. The chapter will begin with a brief review of
relevant literature followed by an introduction of the projects and meth-
ods of gathering and analyzing data. The subsequent sections will discuss
findings and present a conclusion.

Students Co-Learning Linguistics Through PBL 105
PBL and Telecollaborative Opportunities
Many recent definitions of PBL center around engaging students in learn-
ing knowledge and skills through a structured process including questions,
tasks, and products (Buck Institute of Education, 2003), contextualizing
learning by problem solving or product developing activities (Moss  &
Van Duzer, 1998), integrating language, content, and skills (Beckett &
Slater, 2005), enhancing collaboration among students, and encouraging
reflections on both the learning process and product (Stoller, 2006). Find-
ings from several studies appear to support the motivating impact of PBL
(e.g., Breunig, 2017; Zhang, Peng, & Hung, 2009). However, negative
or mixed perspectives of students have also been reported (e.g., Beckett,
2005). Beckett and Slater (2005) attribute students’ negative evaluations
of PBL to the fact that they cannot see the value of PBL and argue that
PBL is only valuable “provided that students  .  .  . can see the value of
learning through projects” (p. 108). For PBL to be positively perceived by
students, Beckett and Slater (2005) highlight the importance of “making
explicit the various components” (p. 115). This strategy is supported by
findings from a study by Chu et al. (2017) in which most students recog-
nized the benefits of PBL, and their perceptions were found to be positive.

PBL activities can differ in nature based on each individual context.
In terms of time frames, PBL activities may last for a few days (e.g., Lee,
2014), four to six weeks (e.g., Biasutti  & EL-Deghaidy, 2015; Zhang
et al., 2009), or a semester (e.g., Sadler & Dooly, 2016; Zachoval, 2013).
In terms of the actual project, PBL can be implemented in various ways
depending on the context and learning goals. In some settings students
collaboratively design projects themselves (e.g., Biasutti & EL-Deghaidy,
2015) while in others, projects are structured and designed for students
to complete (e.g., Lee, 2014; Zhang et al., 2009). This study follows the
latter approach.

With regard to the way in which learners collaborate, the emergence
of free or low-cost and accessible telecollaborative computer applications
(apps) such as Skype or Messenger has given rise to new opportunities and
modes of communication not previously available. PBL environments are
now frequently imbued with technology such as computers and everyday
access to the internet, providing new affordances and learning options.
Examples of technology-based PBL implementations include the use of
online discussion boards to investigate and report on a popular social
phenomenon (Zhang et al., 2009), the use of Hot Potatoes by ESL learn-
ers to learn prepositions (Lee, 2014), and the use of the virtual world
Second Life to create scenarios for health care management and para-
medic training (Beaumont, Savin-Badenb, Conradic, & Poulton, 2014).
Other examples include the use of wikis to develop primary school inter-
disciplinary projects (Biasutti & EL-Deghaidy, 2015), videoconferencing
and video clips to learn good and bad daily life habits (Dooly & Sadler,

106  Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso
2016), technology to write a research report about language and identity
to perform a case study analysis on knowledge management practice as
well as to develop a Windows program (Chu et al., 2017). The present
study differs from these in that it did not impose the use of one specific
app or technology but allowed students to make their own choices with
regard to everyday video-conferencing apps.

PBL literature is rich in implementations, but much remains unknown
about assessment during PBL. Researchers have mostly tackled the ques-
tion of assessment by focusing on a single aspect such as student and/
or teacher perceptions of PBL or learning gains as a result of PBL (see
Chen & Hirch, 2020, Chapter 12). The issue to be resolved, as Slater,
Beckett, and Aufderhaar (2006) pointed out, is to assess the development
of language, content, and skills involved in PBL. This, they argued, can
be done using formative assessment that can make explicit the various
components of PBL and help learners recognize its value (see Beckett &
Slater, 2005 for the Project Framework as a PBL formative assessment
tool). Frank and Barzilai (2004) used formative assessment for PBL to
evaluate pre-service teachers’ projects, such as a solar-energy-driven car to
address the problem of air pollution, and reported that formative assess-
ment facilitated students’ learning. Van den Bergh et al. (2006) also noted
that traditional methods are not sufficient for PBL assessment. Instead,
PBL demands various ways of assessment including self- and peer assess-
ment, performance-based assessment, and portfolio assessment (Van den
Bergh et al., 2006). Lee and Lim (2012) used peer evaluation in their PBL
study: Student teams evaluated other teams’ projects in aspects such as
participation in meetings and the quantity and quality of contributions to
the projects. Lee and Lim’s (2012) peer evaluation findings revealed that
peers evaluated each other on the PBL processes, which the instructors,
who focused on evaluating the PBL products, could not easily observe.
Our study contributes to this specific gap in the PBL literature by involv-
ing self- and peer assessment in the learning process.

The Present Study
The present study was a result of our desire as linguistics teachers to
provide our students with a meaningful learning opportunity. We believe
that PBL aligns with the social nature of the learning process via group
projects. Students from different countries and with different first lan-
guages (i.e., English and Turkish) but working on a common topic of
language acquisition provided a ripe opportunity to study inter-cultural
telecollaborative PBL. Specifically, we were interested in the processes of
how groups work together and bring different perspectives to the projects
related to first and second language acquisition that include discussions,
comparisons of personal learning experiences with examples, tasks that
entail the analysis of real language data, and reflections. The Introduction

Students Co-Learning Linguistics Through PBL 107
to Linguistics courses taught by the authors of this study lent themselves
well to this cross-cultural telecollaborative PBL implementation as they
both used the same textbook that includes the topics of first and second
language acquisition. By its very nature, our context was ideal for an
integrated approach to language and content, as described in Mohan’s
(1986) Knowledge Framework model that connects the two. This study
provided a means for our students to use English as a common language
to learn content in the field of linguistics and develop their ­language
and telecollaborative skills simultaneously. This project provided the
T­ urkish students with English-language learning opportunities and the
U.S. students with English-teaching opportunities through content-based
learning. In short, the project provided an ideal opportunity for the par-
ticipants to use language to learn about the field of linguistics (Slater &
Mohan, 2010).

In this study, we describe our PBL projects as a series of social, cross-
cultural, and telecollaborative activities designed for learning linguistic
content, solving linguistic problems, and developing language and tel-
ecollaborative skills. Our understanding of PBL is based on two defini-
tions: “Students are socialized through a series of individualized or group
activities that involve the simultaneous learning of language, content,
and skills” (Slater, Beckett,  & Aufderhaar, 2006, p.  242), and PBL as
“an instructional approach that contextualizes learning by presenting
learners with problems to solve or products to develop” (Moss & Van
Duzer, 1998, p. 1). We specifically aimed to find answers to the following
research questions:
1. How do students perceive their experiences of cross-cultural telecol-

laborative PBL?
2. How do students self- and peer assess their cross-cultural telecollabo-

rative PBL performance and processes?

Context and Participants
In total, 64 students participated in this study. Participants were students
enrolled in an Introduction to Linguistics class in one of two universities:
a state university in the Midwest United States (n = 32, 26 female & 6
male) and a private university in Turkey (n = 32, 29 female & 3 male).
The former group will be referred to as “U.S.” and the latter as “TR.”
The classes were taught by the two authors of the present study; par-
ticipants were thus chosen by convenience sampling. The U.S. and TR
classes were similar in terms of textbook, learning objectives, content,
and assessment. The U.S. students were a mix of second-, third-, and
fourth-year students representing different majors, but the majority was
in either Elementary Education or English. Elementary Education stu-
dents were taking the course as part of their Teaching English as a Second

108  Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso
Language (TESL) endorsement. All students were either native speak-
ers of English or highly proficient; two students were raised in Spanish-
speaking homes in the U.S. Ages ranged from 18 to 22. All TR students
were second-year students majoring in English Language Education and
were taking the course as a requirement. Their English language profi-
ciency was intermediate to high intermediate. Their first language was
Turkish and their ages ranged between 18 and 25.

The Projects
The instructors designed two projects revolving around the textbook con-
tent: a first language acquisition project (FLAP) and a second language
acquisition project (SLAP). The project work was designed as a major
assignment in both TR and U.S. class syllabuses and made up 25 percent
of the course grade. For both FLAP and SLAP, students were asked to
work in pairs telecollaboratively and create a critical written analysis
of real language data. The evaluation of the written projects was based
on four criteria addressing language, content, and skills: content of the
response (40%), organization of the response (10%), style/clarity (10%),
and collaboration (40%, as reported by the pairs in the reflections).

First Language Acquisition Project (FLAP)
The first language acquisition project (FLAP) required students to describe
the acquisition of English as a first language based on an analysis of real
language produced by a child, with examples from the data analysis and
discussions relevant to the content of the first language acquisition chap-
ter. To this end, students first needed to understand the first language
acquisition chapter, for which the instructors provided a list of discus-
sion questions for the pairs. Pairs first met online to discuss the chapter
questions and second to conduct the linguistic analysis and describe first
language acquisition. In the FLAP discussion meeting, students discussed
a set of questions provided by the instructors that addressed both content
and language and aimed to facilitate interaction by asking partners to
share their own knowledge and backgrounds relevant to the chapter top-
ics. The FLAP discussions included questions such as “Share five words
or phrases that are typical of caregiver speech in your native language
with your partner. What are they?” or “How does the order of acquisi-
tion of morphemes in Turkish compare to the order of acquisition of
morphemes in English?” In this way, students were engaged with knowl-
edge about language (both Turkish and English), which was central to
the learning of the first language acquisition chapter content, thus the
completion of FLAP.

In the FLAP linguistic analysis meeting, students performed an analysis
of real language data on the knowledge they built in the first meeting,

Students Co-Learning Linguistics Through PBL 109
applying their linguistic knowledge to real language data. The partners
examined transcripts of naturalistic speech data from conversations
between a caregiver and a child. The goal was for the students to con-
nect observations from real language data to the concepts presented in
the textbook, all the while negotiating the content with their partner
in another country via a video-conferencing app. The transcripts were
downloaded in the fall of 2017 from the CHILDES corpus (MacWhin-
ney, 2000). The transcripts represent recordings of one child and her
interactions with caretakers recorded at four different points in time and
reflecting the child’s speech at four different ages: 1 year 9 months old,
2  years 3 months old, 2  years 11 months old, and 3  years 3 months.
Based on analyses of the speech data, the students discussed knowledge
about language topics such as the ratio of child to caregiver speech and
the development of linguistic features within the child’s speech such
as morphological, syntactic, and semantic development. The students
related their observations and discussion to topics in the L1 acquisition
chapter. They concluded their analysis with a description of the acquisi-
tion of English as a first language, drawing upon examples from the data
analysis and connecting their discussion to the content of the L1 acquisi-
tion chapter.

Second Language Acquisition Project (SLAP)
The second language acquisition project (SLAP) required students to
write an argumentative response about transfer from L1 to L2 based on
an analysis of real language produced by a student, with examples from
the data analysis and discussions relevant to the content of the second
language acquisition chapter. To this end, students first needed to under-
stand the second language acquisition chapter, for which the instructors
provided a list of discussion questions for the pairs. Pairs first met online
to discuss the chapter questions and second to conduct the linguistic
analysis and describe first language transfer. In the SLAP discussion
meeting, students discussed questions such as “Give one example for
positive transfer and one example for negative transfer from you or your
partner’s second language acquisition experiences” or “How does your
partner feel towards her/his L2? What are the specific reasons for her/
his feelings?” In the SLAP linguistic analysis meeting, the pairs examined
real written language data produced by Turkish speakers of English as
a foreign language. They were provided with five paragraphs and were
asked to choose one to analyze. Students first focused on the form of
the language by identifying language errors in the text and categorizing
them as morphological, syntactic, or semantic errors. With this focus
on form in SLAP, we aimed to develop students’ knowledge about lan-
guage. Students then discussed how the language errors related to cross-
linguistic influence and gave examples of evidence or counter evidence

110  Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso
of positive or negative transfer from Turkish to English. They concluded
their analysis with a written discussion of whether they agreed or disa-
greed with the statement: “Most mistakes in the L2 are due to interfer-
ence from the L1.”

Procedures
The projects were implemented over four weeks in the fall semester of
2017. Because the fall academic semester begins on different dates in the
U.S. and Turkey, with the U.S. beginning about four weeks earlier, the
study was implemented in different weeks within the semester at each
university: weeks 10–14 for the U.S. students and weeks 6–10 for the TR
students. The textbook chapters of first and second language acquisition
were chosen as we believed they would be more engaging for students
because of their relevance to the students’ common goals as second lan-
guage teachers.

To create pairs, students were listed in alphabetical order by their sur-
names and were paired up in the same order. The same pairs worked in
both FLAP and SLAP throughout the project duration. Due to the eight-
hour time difference between the two countries, pairs met online outside
of class time for the projects. They were informed that they needed to
meet face-to-face online via a video-conferencing app and communicate
throughout the projects. Paying attention to the suggestion that student
autonomy regarding how to work increases student motivation and
engagement in PBL (Blumenfeld et al., 1991), students were given flex-
ibility in how often and when to meet, and which video-conferencing app
to use to complete the projects.

In total, the pairs met online five times to complete the FLAP and
SLAP projects. The first meeting served as an introduction for the pairs
of students. Apart from the first “meet and greet” meeting, students
met twice each for both FLAP and SLAP. In the first FLAP meeting, stu-
dents mostly used Skype (27%), FaceTime (23%) and WhatsApp (23%).
Some students used Messenger (13%) and a few reported using multi-
ple apps (10%) or just their phone (3%). In the second FLAP meeting,
Skype (29%) was again the preferred app followed by FaceTime (25%),
Messenger (17%), multiple apps (17%) and WhatsApp (13%). Stu-
dents made similar choices in the SLAP meetings as well: Skype (32%),
FaceTime (29%), WhatsApp (21%), multi apps (11%), and Messen-
ger (7%) in the first SLAP meeting and Skype (28%), FaceTime (28%),
WhatsApp (24%), Messenger (17%) and multi apps (3%) in the second
SLAP meeting.

The amount of time students spent during each meeting also var-
ied. For FLAP, most students talked for less than an hour (52% in the
first meeting and 44% in the second meeting). There were also sev-
eral who talked for an hour (26% in the first meeting and 41% in the

Students Co-Learning Linguistics Through PBL 111
second meeting) or more (23% in the first meeting and 16% in the sec-
ond meeting). For SLAP, the majority of students again talked for less
than an hour (46% in the first meeting and 53% in the second meet-
ing). Some talked for an hour (14% in the first meeting and 23% in
the second meeting) or more (39% in the first meeting and 23% in the
second meeting).

Data Collection and Analysis
Data for this study included students’ written responses to reflection
questions for FLAP and SLAP: one reflection for each meeting. The result
was four reflections for each of the 64 students. The reflections were
guided by 11 questions in total that aimed to gather information about
students’ perceptions of their performance and processes in the FLAP and
SLAP projects. Students were asked questions such as “Were you able to
answer all the discussion questions for FLAP/SLAP? Were you able to
address all the prompts for FLAP/SLAP? How was your/your partner’s
participation in the discussion? Do you think you/your partner prepared
well for the meeting? What is your overall impression of FLAP/SLAP? or
Do you believe that self-assessment via the self-assessment rubric affected
your FLAP/SLAP performance in any way? Explain.” All reflection ques-
tions were presented to students using the forum function of the online
learning management system Moodle and were completed by students
after each meeting.

Data from students’ reflection responses were analyzed using content
analysis, which involves coding the qualitative data for pre-determined
themes and counting frequencies of coded items within each theme
(Riazi, 2016). Students’ responses were coded around four themes that
referred to certain reflections, as outlined with examples of questions that
students answered from each theme:
1. workload (e.g., How does the workload for this project compare to

the regular workload for this class in terms of hours?)
2. perception (e.g., Were you able to address all the prompts through-

out the small project?)
3. self-assessment (e.g., Do you think you prepared well for this

project?)
4. peer assessment (e.g., Do you think your partner prepared well for

this project?)
Each response was coded by class code as U.S. or TR to be able to differ-
entiate responses between the groups. Student perceptions were coded as
positive, negative, or mixed for (1) their perceptions of the PBL approach
to learning in general; (2) communication before and during each meet-
ing; (3) performance in each discussion; and (4) performance in each

112  Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso
linguistic analysis. Student self-assessments were coded as positive, neg-
ative, or mixed for (1) their participation and (2) preparation in each
meeting. Students’ peer assessments were coded as positive, negative, or
mixed for (1) their peer’s participation and (2) preparation in each meet-
ing. Some example codes and their meaning are:
• TR_workload_less indicates that the Turkish students believed that

the workload for the PBL activities was less than the workload nor-
mally required for the class
• TR_peer_assessment_positive indicates that the Turkish student had
a positive perception of his or her partner’s ability to contribute to
the project work
After creating the coding schema, one quarter of all student reflections
were coded by the two authors, and inter-coder reliability was calculated
through percentage agreement. The overall percentage agreement for all
coding was found to be 91 percent (i.e., 444 total coded responses with
406 agreements and 38 disagreements); the percentage agreement for
data analysis reflections on L1 acquisition was 92 percent (i.e., 223 coded
responses from 26 students with 206 agreements and 17 disagreements,
and 221 responses from 28 students in second language acquisition dis-
cussion task reflections with 200 agreements and 21 disagreements). All
disagreements were re-visited in a discussion between the authors and an
agreement was decided upon.

Findings
1.  How Do Students Perceive Their Experiences

of Cross-Cultural Telecollaborative PBL?
First, students’ perceptions of cross-cultural telecollaborative PBL experi-
ences were explored by evaluating their responses to reflection questions
for FLAP and SLAP. Figure 6.1 summarizes overall student perceptions.
As can be seen, the TR students had a more positive impression of the
PBL approach implemented in this study at each point in the project than
their U.S. counterparts. This is particularly so after the linguistic analysis
in FLAP, at which point only 33 percent of the U.S. students had a posi-
tive perception of the project compared to 89 percent of the TR students.
The following student comment captures the tenor of the U.S. students
with “mixed” perceptions upon completion of the linguistic analysis in
FLAP: “It was a lot of work to get done in a short amount of time. It was
interesting, but very time-consuming.”

However, after the linguistic analysis in SLAP, we see that the percep-
tion of the overall project at this late juncture is positive with 80  per-
cent or more from each group reporting positive perceptions. The U.S.

Figure 6.1  Overall student perceptions of FLAP and SLAP

114  Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso
students’ positive perceptions of the overall project increased from
69  percent to 80  percent from FLAP’s first meeting to SLAP’s second
meeting. Meanwhile, the TR students’ positive perceptions of the overall
project hovered between 86 and 90 percent after each meeting.

Figure  6.2 focuses specifically on the students’ perceptions of the
communication aspect with their partners. Positive perceptions of com-
munication were lowest after the FLAP discussion meeting for both
the U.S. and TR student at 74 and 68 percent respectively. The follow-
ing student comment reflects the anxiety apparent in some of the TR
reflections: “Before we started to talk about the Chapter 13, I feel very
nervous because I thought that I could not explain and discuss about the
academic things. However, we could easily discuss and understand our
opinions clearly.” It appears that some of this anxiety dissipated among
the TR students after the first FLAP meeting as their positive perceptions
of communication increased with each meeting with 96  percent of TR
students reporting positive perceptions of communication after the SLAP
linguistic analysis meeting. This finding illuminates how PBL positively
contributes to developing students’ language skills.

Following is a selection of comments that are illustrative of positive,
negative, and mixed perceptions of cross-cultural telecollaborative PBL:

Positive student comments:
This project is giving me a live perspective about a topic that I never
would have thought twice about before—I think that working with
international students for this unit will greatly increase what I take
away from each unit.
(U.S. student, FLAP first meeting)
I think that was great. I compare the English and Turkish as a lan-
guage acquisition and I can see differences and similarities. I some-
times I realize that when I acquire English as my second language,
I experience some similar steps with children who acquire English as
the first language.
(TR student, FLAP first meeting)
It was a great opportunity to do this project with my partner because
we were able to analyze the examples of what we have learned so far.
Analyzing those data and discuss them with Maddie (pseudonym)
was very beneficial for both of us. I believe that we did a great job
and we are both happy about it.
(TR student, FLAP second meeting)
I love this project. It helps me learning linguistics more effectively. As
I prepared before our meeting, I read the chapter and by means of
finding examples on the subject I can evaluate my learning process.

Figure 6.2  Student perceptions of communication during FLAP and SLAP

116  Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso
Finding concrete examples is really helpful for my learning. Then
I discuss these questions with my partner which helps me seeing the
subject in her perspective as a native speaker. Learning with my peer
is more effective.
(TR student, SLAP first meeting)

Negative student comments:
Sometimes we were disconnected because of the slow internet, but
then we connected again . . . I think my partner had a problem on
the internet.
(TR student, SLAP first meeting)
It was more difficult than the other assignments but it was helpful to
analyze data to understand the first language acquisition.
(TR student, SLAP second meeting)

Mixed student comment:
I am enjoying this project, especially now that I have seen that my
partner is as hard-working and understanding of the chapter as I am!
My only frustration is the time change and fitting in time to meet
with our busy schedules but we are making it work!
(U.S. student, FLAP first meeting)

Through comments such as these we can see that students seemed to
appreciate exposure to the perspectives of their partners. While nega-
tive and mixed comments were less frequent, one of the most prevalent
opinions was that the project was too time-consuming compared to the
regular class workload.

Figure 6.3 summarizes students’ perceptions of workload for the PBL
approach as compared to the regular class sessions throughout the rest
of the semester. We present student perceptions for only the linguistic
analysis in FLAP and SLAP since we found the workload of chapter dis-
cussions to be similar to the workload of regular class work. Figure 6.3
shows that students clearly find the PBL work to be more time-consum-
ing than the more traditional teaching approach employed throughout
the rest of the semester.

Student comments:
I thought it was very time-consuming and I wish we could have just
gone over a few of the text files [that contain the data for the lin-
guistic analysis] in class during a lecture or worked on it in class in
groups.
(U.S. student, FLAP second meeting)

Students Co-Learning Linguistics Through PBL 117

Figure 6.3  Student perceptions of the workload of PBL compared to regular class
sessions

I spent about 3–4 hours more on this project than the regular work-
load for this class. However, as this project is related to linguistics
and language acquisition, it helps comprehend the lessons better.

(TR student, FLAP second meeting)
In sum, the results of the first research question show that students
perceived PBL positively despite its heavier workload than the usual
approach to learning in the course. Students’ comments clearly indicate
that they recognized the value of studying the topics of first and second
language acquisition together and completing two related projects.
2.  How Do Students Self- and Peer Assess Their

Cross-Cultural Telecollaborative PBL Performance
and Processes?
Students’ perceptions of self-assessment and peer assessment of their
cross-cultural telecollaborative PBL performance and processes were
explored by evaluating their responses to FLAP and SLAP reflection
questions. Figure 6.4 summarizes student perceptions of self-assessment
in FLAP and SLAP. The TR students varied in their self-assessment of
their overall performance on each meeting. For instance, after the FLAP
discussion meeting only 47  percent of the TR students had a positive
perception of their performance while 24 and 28  percent had mixed
and negative perceptions, respectively. This is in stark contrast to the
100 percent of U.S. students who had a positive perception of their FLAP
discussion. However, we see that the TR students’ positive perceptions of
their performances increased in the meetings that followed. The second

Figure 6.4  Student perceptions of self-assessment in FLAP and SLAP

Students Co-Learning Linguistics Through PBL 119
SLAP meeting, for example, had the highest rate of positive perceptions
among the TR students at 96 percent.

The U.S. students, in general, had very positive perceptions of their
ability to complete activities in pairs across the project, never dipping
below 92 percent of students having positive perceptions. Some responses
from U.S. and TR students regarding their pair work include:

Some of the questions are hard to answer but we were able to answer
all the questions for chapter 13 [FLAP]. I was able to discuss about
all questions because I  read the chapter, underlined the significant
parts and took notes. I was well prepared so I managed to participate
[in] the discussion.

(TR student, FLAP first meeting)
We were able to answer all the questions prior to our meeting and
discuss and go over most of them in our meeting.

(U.S. student, FLAP first meeting)
We even discussed more than what the prompts asked us to.

(U.S. student, FLAP second meeting)
We have answered all the questions but she had some problems with
Turkish words and he had no video call so I couldn’t show how we
are writing. I mailed the writings and IPA formats to her.

(TR student, FLAP first meeting)
We nearly addressed them. However, we had some difficulties about
semantics part.

(TR student, FLAP second meeting)
Figure  6.5 presents the average percentage across the four FLAP and
SLAP meetings. As can be seen, all students in general felt positive about
their counterparts’ participation. However, the TR students had a lower
average of “positive” perceptions about the U.S. students’ participation
in the projects.

Figure  6.6 presents averages of students’ perceptions of their own
and their peers’ participation across the four FLAP and SLAP meetings.
Self- and peer perception of participation was slightly lower among the
TR students when compared to the U.S. students. While approximately
96 percent of US students reported positive perceptions of their TR coun-
terparts in terms of PBL participation, approximately 86 percent of TR
students reported the same for the U.S. students.

The difference between the TR and the U.S. students in peer assess-
ment of participation is reflective of the peer assessment of preparation

120  Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso

Figure 6.5  Students’ self- and peer assessment of preparation across FLAP and
SLAP

Figure 6.6 S tudents’ self- and peer assessment of participation across FLAP
and SLAP

previously reported and in Figure  6.6. Indeed, some TR student com-
ments reflect this connection:

Maybe my participation was more than my partner in the project
completion because I was a little more prepared.

(TR student, FLAP second meeting)

Students Co-Learning Linguistics Through PBL 121
My partner did not well prepared on Tuesday because she had not
enough time to study on the project but it was not problem for me.
I  helped her to combine the questions with chapter  13. Although
she did not participate well at the beginning, my partner contributed
equally to another meeting.

(TR student, FLAP second meeting)
I think my partner was very well prepared for the project.

(U.S. student, SLAP second meeting)
Overall, students’ positive perceptions demonstrated that in the end they
were generally satisfied with their own and their peers’ preparation for
and participation in FLAP and SLAP projects, with the U.S. students
being only slightly more positive than the TR students. The U.S. students
perceived their TR partners positively from the first PBL meeting to the
last while TR students perceived their U.S. partners much more nega-
tively in the first meeting but more positively for the rest of the meetings.

Discussion and Conclusions
Overall, both the TR and U.S. students had positive perceptions of the
cross-cultural telecollaborative PBL despite a few students with negative
or mixed perceptions. These findings contrast with the findings of previ-
ous PBL studies which have found that although PBL is considered to be
an effective way to teach, doing projects is not favored by all students
in some PBL implementations. In Moulton and Holmes’ (2000) study, a
high number of students dropped out of the language class and “resented
being asked to accomplish nonlinguistic tasks” (p. 28). In another study
(Beckett, 1999), half of the students, who just wanted to focus on gram-
mar and vocabulary, found PBL to be distractive. Compared to these
studies, we did not receive any negative reactions from our students that
indicated they found the projects unrelated to the course content or dis-
tractive. The fact that we designed FLAP and SLAP to facilitate the simul-
taneous learning of language, content, and skills might explain students’
generally positive reactions to our study. Different from previous studies
in which students did projects with the primary aim of language devel-
opment, students in our study focused on the content of first language
acquisition and second language acquisition chapters of their linguistics
textbook while using language to develop their knowledge about lan-
guage and solve linguistics problems based on real language data. Beck-
ett and Slater (2005) describe this simultaneous learning of language,
content, and skills as a valuable way to help students “see the value of
project-based instruction” (p.  115). Our findings support their frame-
work by demonstrating the value and inherent integration of language,
content, and skills in PBL.

122  Aysel Sarıcaoğlu and Joe Geluso
The language proficiency level of students participating in PBL imple-

mentations and the target of practice (i.e., language, content, or skills)
may also have a role in how students perceive PBL experiences. In our
study, the U.S. students were native speakers of English and TR students
were in their second year of undergraduate study majoring in English
Language Education. Our explicit focus was the completion of FLAP and
SLAP while the development of language and telecollaborative skills was
integrated within the projects. In her PBL study with undergraduate stu-
dents, Poonpon (2011) used PBL to enhance language skills of students
at a Thai university and reported that they found the PBL implementa-
tion to be appropriate for their course. In another skills-based PBL study,
undergraduate students at Khon Kaen University also perceived PBL pos-
itively and recognized its value and benefits (Srikrai, 2008). Contrary to
these studies, others which targeted the learning of language through PBL
had more negative results (e.g., Beckett, 1999). In line with what Beck-
ett and Slater (2005) proposed in their Project Framework, it appears
that PBL works better when implemented as an integrative approach to
language, content, and skills. That is, PBL inherently provides the oppor-
tunity to build language, as language is the tool through which students
understand the knowledge and skills developed in a project.

Another possible explanation for our students’ positive perceptions of
the cross-cultural telecollaborative PBL may be that the goals of the PBL
activities were clear for them. In the Project Framework, Beckett and
Slater (2005) argue that students should recognize “the language, con-
tent, and skill development which occurs through project work” (p. 110).
Our students knew that the goal of our PBL activities were to master the
content of the L1 and L2 language acquisition chapters and to apply that
knowledge to real language data analysis, while interacting with peers,
which might have helped them see the value of PBL.

As Malinowski and Kramsch (2014) noted, online intercultural meet-
ings come with technical difficulties. The main critique from our students
was the time difference between the pairs’ countries. Time zone differ-
ences, which have been reported as a factor negatively affecting online
intercultural learning experiences (e.g., Liu, Liu, Lee, & Magjuka, 2010),
are an issue especially for students collaborating from countries with a
time difference of more than four or five hours. One comment from a
U.S. student also draws attention to the idea that tools that provide face-
to-face communication should be chosen for telecollaborative PBL, espe-
cially when native and non-native speakers interact: “Not being able to
see her mouth move actually made understanding her a little bit harder,
I’m sure she would say the same. But visually seeing her speak helped me
to understand what she was saying.”

Because PBL involves students actively participating in the educational
process by giving them full responsibility as learners, the process takes
more time than do usual classroom implementations. Earlier studies

Students Co-Learning Linguistics Through PBL 123

observed that the workload and difficulty of the PBL activities caused
negative attitudes in students (e.g., Beckett, 1999; Moulton & Holmes,
2000). While our students also reported that the workload of the PBL
activities was more than the regular class workload, this did not lead
to negative perceptions. As Gómez-Pablos, del Pozo, and Muñoz-Repiso
(2017) aptly stated, “innovative practices need extra time” (p. 510), and
it was very pleasing that the extra time required by this approach to
pedagogy did not result in overall frustration among the students.

There has been ample research on PBL, but Dooly and Sadler (2016)
pointed out that telecollaborative PBL studies are rare. While telecol-
laborative PBL is an innovative teaching practice, how to best design PBL
around telecollaboration for positive learning experiences and outcomes
remains a relatively unexplored issue. This study is an example of how
goal-oriented and structured telecollaborative PBL can lead to positive
student perceptions. An important contribution for future research would
be to supplement such perception-based investigation of telecollaborative
PBL with an analysis of language learning and skills development.

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7 ‘What Do You Zinc About the
Project?’

Examples of Technology-Enhanced
Project-Based Language Learning

Melinda Dooly and Dolors Masats

Introduction

In the past few years there has been considerable public interrogation
about the role of technology in today’s globalized world. In a parallel
fashion, there is a growing recognition of the impact that technologi-
cal resources can have on learning environments (Jones & Binhui, 2011;
Masats, Dooly, & Costa, 2009; Norman, 2014), ranging from the ways
in which teachers and students communicate in (and out of) the class-
room to the use of technology in order to promote student interaction
with broader and extended audiences worldwide (Dooly, 2010, 2015,
2017; Dooly & O’Dowd, 2018).

As Masats et al. (2009) suggested, today’s children are brought up in
a ‘wired’ society and soon grow into skillful and eager users of technol-
ogy. Yet, as Lambert and Cuper (2008) have argued, the development
of 21st-century skills is only possible when technologies are habitually
and sensibly used in the classrooms, not merely as ‘fun gimmicks’ that
replicate teacher-fronted learning tasks. Today’s teachers’ challenge is to
teach new skills, not simply to teach old skills better (Chen et al., 2000;
Dooly, 2018). This undoubtedly requires a profound reflection upon
what it means to efficiently design communicative target language learn-
ing events that fully integrate communication technology (Dooly, 2018)
as part of the learning process. Learning tasks should be planned and
implemented around and with technological resources so they are used
creatively by learners in ways that resemble potential situations in the
‘real world’—including the use of multiple technological tools to inter-
act with others for problem-solving, sharing of knowledge, collaborative
thinking, and the presentation of ideas (Dooly, 2010, 2017).

This premise extends to language education. By interrogating the
embeddedness of technologies in our lives, and especially its integration
in classroom practices, we soon come to recognize that learning must be
situated and rooted in the learner’s participation in all social practices,
including their everyday use of technological resources. The adoption of

‘What Do You Zinc About the Project?’ 127
the premises of project work (see Beckett, 1999; Beckett & Slater, 2005)
into language education, combined with rich technological resources, can
be a way to take up the call to innovate and promote 21st-century com-
petences, through what Dooly and Sadler (2016, p. 54) call “Technology-
Enhanced Project-Based Language Learning” (herein TEPBLL).

Along with the incremental use of digitally supported communication
in teaching practice, there must be research into the outcomes of such
practices. In this sense, Dooly and Sadler (2016) argued for more varied
research into TEPBLL focusing “on validating the approach via individ-
ual results of products stemming from its application” and “extensive
investigation of processes” (p. 54). Such work, they argued, would facil-
itate better understanding of “how the integration of project content,
materials, resources, technology, teaching strategies, and human interac-
tion all contribute to the successful implementation of TEPBLL” (p. 54).
They posed that an exemplar means of combining technology, language
learning, and project-based learning is through telecollaboration, which
Dooly (2017) defined as

the process of communicating and working together with other peo-
ple or groups from different locations through online or digital com-
munication tools (e.g., computers, tablets, cellphones) to co-produce
a desired work output.

(pp. 169–170)

According to Dooly (2017), telecollaboration can be carried out in
classrooms, homes, workplaces, and/or laboratories synchronously or
asynchronously. In education, telecollaboration can focus on learning,
social interaction, dialogue, intercultural exchange, and communication,
which are important in/for language education. While there is a growing
number of studies on telecollaboration in higher education (cf. O’Dowd,
2016; Sarıcaoğlu & Geluso, 2020, Chapter 6 in this volume), research on
telecollaboration with young language learners is scarce. Inevitably there
is the inherent complexity of teaching a foreign language to young learn-
ers: Foremost is the need for materials and activities of short duration
that require minimal technological skills, compared to what is needed
when students are older. Additionally, the use of technology in a foreign
language learning classroom must engineer situations where all learners,
regardless of their age, use what (foreign) language knowledge they pos-
sess in a realistic, meaningful, and communicative way (Dooly & Sadler,
2016). This chapter aims to be a contribution to this area.

First, we will briefly trace the roots of TEPBLL and then we will ana-
lyze two classrooms (ages 6 to 7 and ages 12 to 13) in which students and
their teachers are taking part in project-based language learning, sup-
ported through technology. We will focus on tasks in which technology-
based classroom interaction serves to contextualize and guide learning as

128  Melinda Dooly and Dolors Masats
part of a wider telecollaborative project. Our discussion of the first class
concentrates on teacher talk and how a teacher mediates through technol-
ogy to present very young learners emotionally engaging and motivating
tasks to either review or introduce new language forms. Our discussion
of the second class focuses on how technology shapes peer interaction
between three pre-adolescents and triggers language awareness.

Technology-Enhanced Project-Based Language
Learning (TEPBLL)
Project-based learning (PBL) can be traced back a full century to Dewey’s
(1916) postulation that “learning by doing” is the only possible path to
success. As discussed in Chapter 1 of this volume, PBL has gained support
in all curricular subjects, including second and foreign language learning
(see Beckett & Slater, 2005; Fried-Booth, 2002; Stoller, 2006) and technology-
enhanced project-based language learning (Dooly, 2011, 2013, 2015,
2017; Dooly  & Sadler, 2016; Mont  & Masats, 2018). Dooly (2013)
argued that task-based language teaching (TBLT) and PBLL are often
confused as both approaches rely on classroom proposals that are
goal directed, focused on meaning, and have clearly defined outcomes
(Bygate, Skehan, & Swain, 2001; Ellis, 2003). The difference between
the two approaches lies in the notion that in PBLL, the project’s goal
is authentic and the addressee of the project’s outcome is real (appli-
cable to situations outside of the classroom), whereas in TBLT the
reason for the task is often only indirectly related to something ‘in
the world’; instead the task is often a simulation of a ‘real’ event in a
situation designed by the teacher to elicit specific language practice.
Thus, both PBLL and TEPBLL are based upon the belief that language
learning is stimulated when the teaching approach adopted in the class-
rooms connects both content and target language to students’ reality
outside of the classroom. Oftentimes, this is carried out in collabora-
tion with teachers from other disciplines (González, Llobet, Masats,
Nussbaum, & Unamuno, 2008; Masats & Noguerol, 2016; Moore &
Nussbaum, 2011).

Sequentially integrated cycles is a key feature of PBLL and TEPBLL.
These approaches challenge learners to complete tasks that are cogni-
tively, interpersonally, and communicatively demanding and which lead
to final output that has an impact on an audience outside the school and
is embedded in the community itself. In TEPBLL, learners are ensured
opportunities to use the target language for an authentic purpose since
they are likely addressing a wider audience than their mates in the class-
room—ideally, they are discussing, debating, sharing, and co-constructing
knowledge with partners around the world while learning about and
through the target language. It is not simply about getting language
learners to ‘talk’ with others outside of their classroom (Dupuy, 2006).

‘What Do You Zinc About the Project?’ 129
It is about collaborating together—oftentimes with partners on the other
side of the world—to co-construct the project’s final product.

Methodology of the Study
The principal approach of the study is that of Conversational Analysis
(CA). Stemming from work by sociologists Harvey Sacks and Emanuel
Schegloff in the early 1960s, CA focuses on ‘naturalistic’ data of social
interaction. In particular, it focuses on ‘talk-in-interaction’ as the loci
for tracing the organization and sequencing of shared meaning-making
(Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008). The use of CA has been well-established in
language classroom research (e.g., Barraja-Rohan, 2011; Markee, 2015;
Markee  & Kasper, 2004; Masats, 2008; Seedhouse, 2013), and more
recently CA has begun to be utilized for research in online and telecol-
laborative language learning environments (cf. Balaman & Sert, 2017a,
2017b; Dooly, 2018; Dooly  & Tudini, 2016; Jenks  & Firth, 2013;
Tudini, 2010, 2013).

The first set of data stems from an Internet-mediated exchange between
six-year-olds at a school near Barcelona, Spain, and seven-year-olds at a
school in Ontario, Canada. The project, entitled Traveling Through Arts,
was designed to be cross-disciplinary and multilingual (Catalan, Spanish,
and English) so that multiple competences would come into play. The
research aimed to see what, if any, development took place in various lit-
eracies—linguistic (e.g., interactional competences), digital competences,
artistic competences, and intercultural competences. In this project,
the young language learners were introduced to the work and artistic
approaches of two artists locally known in the respective communities of
the schools. While studying their artwork, they were also introduced to
different disciplinary topics, for instance, geography (locations depicted
in the artwork) and social science: type of transportation (e.g., discus-
sions about how the artists might have traveled to these locations) as well
as spatial and temporal concepts (distances across the globe, amount of
time needed to arrive, etc.).

The second data set stems from an intercultural telecollaborative pro-
ject entitled How to Make a Difference. The project took place as part
of a telecollaborative exchange between two middle schools in Sweden
and Spain. It was designed as a series of shared activities and creative
tasks in which the students worked together on the socio-political topic
of Syrian refugees in Europe, mediated through the use of English as
their lingua franca. The project aimed to guide the students through a
series of research and discussion activities to help them understand what
it means to be a political refugee and to get a better understanding of
the current European Union (EU) policies about relocating Syrian refu-
gees. The final output was a blog aimed at raising public awareness of
the situation and suggestions about ways EU citizens could positively

130  Melinda Dooly and Dolors Masats
contribute to resolving some of the challenges faced by refugees and local
administration. The students in both groups of this second data set were
performing at lower-intermediate and intermediate level of proficiency
of English. Both studies were research ethics approved. Parents’ consent
was obtained for under-age participants and pseudonyms are used for
anonymity.

Technology as a Space for Learning
The notion of ‘space for learning’ was coined by Walsh (2011) to refer
to the actions taken by learners and teachers to enhance communica-
tion in the classroom (in particular in the target language). It also refers
to the ways in which the participants adjust their language forms and
interactional patterns in accordance to the features and demands of
the on-going classroom task and in order to attain a pedagogical goal.
We would argue that during the implementation of TEPBLL, technol-
ogy contributes to the creation of spaces for learning. For example, in
Extract 1, the six-year-old language learners are playing an online match-
ing game designed by the teachers and researchers to help the students
review content knowledge learned thus far in the Traveling Through
Arts project. The learners have to associate the landmarks depicted in
the artwork by a Catalan artist (Joan Abelló) with the cities in which
they are located (for instance, Abelló’s painting of the Moulin Rouge is
expected to be matched with Paris). We can observe how the matching
game helps establish the micro-context for this learning space. In this
space the teacher mediates the learning through technology so that the
interactional patterns trigger both the linguistic and the content knowl-
edge the students already possess.

Extract 1. Traveling Through Arts. Describing the First Screen on
an Online Matching Game (The transcription key can be found in the
Appendix at the end of this chapter).

Participants: TR (teacher), PA (Pau), Student 3 (ST3), Student 11
(ST11), Student 12 (ST12), chorus of students (SS)

138. TR: Pau/ what can you see here? what can you see?
Notes: what’s this?
(0.02)
139. PA: ((brings students up to board where matching
140. (trans) game can be seen on screen. points to the
TR: paintings.))

quadres
paintings
yes\ (.) how do you SAY quadres in English?

((turns to class))

(2.09) ST11: ‘What Do You Zinc About the Project?’ 131
141. TR: ph- ph- PA:nt-
142. ST11: [PA:int-]
143. Notes [ppp °PA:inting°]
144. ST11: ((TR points to student))
145. TR: PA:INTING
give me five (1) ((holds out hand; sound of hands
146. SS:
147. TR: slapping)) super excellent pai:ntings: can you
148. SS: repeat?
149. ST12: PA:INTINGS
150. TR: how many have we got? ((holds up fingers as if to
count)) one ((points to first painting))
151. SS: two (.) three (.) [four] (.) five ((the teacher moves
152. TR: finger to point to each one as they count))
153. ST3: [FIVE]
Notes: great\ five different paintings (.) fro:m ((holds up
154. TR: five fingers)) (0.44) Rob Gonçalves? ((students
raise hands)) what do we have here?
JOAN ABELLÓ
I don’t know\ will you read please? where is
france here?
PA:ris (.) France
((student gets up to point to the words under a
painting that read ‘Paris’))
ahh:: good memory\

In turn 138, the teacher utters a series of sentences to ask Pau (PA),
one of the students in the group, to describe what he can see in the first
screen of the game (‘What can you see? What’s this?’). Pau provides his
answer in Catalan (quadres; turn 139), and the teacher then asks for a
translation of the Catalan word used by Pau (turn 140) from the rest of
the class. As she observes that the student who attempts to answer (ST11)
is having problems articulating the word (turn 141), she then pronounces
the first syllable (turn 142) and lets the group (SS) chorus the complete
form (turn 143). Immediately after, she signals to the student who had
first attempted to answer (ST11) to repeat the word produced by the
group who then successfully reproduces the lexical form which has been
highlighted (turn 144). The teacher congratulates him (turn 145) and
then asks the rest of the class (SS) to recite it, which they do in chorus
(turn 146).

Once the teacher has elicited verbal evidence that all the students
have comprehended the meaning of the word “painting” and know
how to pronounce it, she then uses this assimilated knowledge to elicit
new information from the students. To do so, she makes use of the

132  Melinda Dooly and Dolors Masats
language forms students are already familiar with (in this case numeri-
cal units up to 10, in English). First, she uses her fingers to encour-
age students to count the pictures on the screen (turns 147 and 148),
then she summarizes their answer: “great\ five different paintings” and
finally latches on to this answer to formulate a new question, using an
elongated pronunciation of ‘from’. She deliberately provides the name
of the wrong painter “from Rob Gonçalves” (turn 150) to elicit their
content knowledge of the paintings. Students demonstrate that they
have understood her by providing the name of the painter who actually
produced the artwork shown on the screen (‘JOAN ABELLÓ,’ turn
151). Throughout the brief interaction, the teacher has oriented the
focus of the students onto the highlighted target word ‘painting’. So,
using technology, the teacher has managed to get the students to notice
and practice a target lexical form (painting) while contextualizing and
embedding the interaction so they are reviewing previously learned con-
tent knowledge (e.g., geographic locations, artists’ work) which they
had been working on in the project.

The teacher then continues the activity by trying to make the learners
grasp why there are words underneath the pictures. At this point, it is
important to comment that this group was only beginning the process
of learning to read in their L1, so their literacy skills in English were
limited. This explains why the teacher wants to make sure they recognize
the words (which are the names of the cities) depicted in the paintings. In
previous sessions of the project, students had struggled to locate the cities
on a world map, so the teacher does not explicitly instruct them to read
the words; instead, she asks about the name of the country that one of
paintings depicts (‘Where is France here,’ turn 152) and expects students
to read only one of the names on the screen to provide the correct answer.

Extract 1 illustrates a moment in the classroom interaction in which the
teacher has not yet asked the students to use the available technology (the
game consists of clicking on the screen to match the picture with a word).
At first glance it might seem that technology does not have a key role in
the creation of a learning space at that particular moment. However, it is
actually the presence of the technology that affords the “appropriate lan-
guage use (way of interacting) [so] the teacher [increases] students’ learn-
ing opportunities” (Walsh  & Li, 2013, p.  248) as the teacher engages
the students in a preliminary discussion of the oral and written target
language forms which are involved in the matching game. Moreover,
this use of sustained oral interaction with an individual and the whole
group broadens the communicative opportunities of the learning space,
especially given that the technology in use could have been used in a
more ‘traditional mode’ of classroom IRF1 (Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975).
Perhaps more importantly, the technology has also been used as a scaf-
folding tool (as a means to an end, not as an end in itself) for acquiring
the content and language knowledge needed to continue with the project,

‘What Do You Zinc About the Project?’ 133
which involves creating an e-book of the two artists based on their paint-
ings and locations where they were painted.

Technology, at times, also serves as a tool to scaffold the introduction of
new language forms in real contexts of use. As previously described, during
the Traveling Though Arts project students had to become familiar with the
work of the two painters. As part of this process, the students were invited to
visit a virtual gallery in Second Life2 that contained paintings from these two
artists along with art from other well-known artists such as Van Gogh and
Rembrandt. There were several activities planned for this virtual art gallery
tour, with the final one leading the students to discover the paintings of the
Canadian artist (they had not yet been introduced to his work) after listening
to descriptions of the paintings dictated by their Canadian telecollabora-
tive partners in recorded messages sent to them prior to the class. Snoopy
(manipulated by a researcher sitting at the back of the room) was the avatar
that served as a guide for the students as they explored the art gallery. This
meant that the young language learners had to interact with Snoopy by giv-
ing him simple directions on where to go in order to get him to move and
view the different paintings in the virtual art gallery.

Extract 2 captures the moment in which the teacher presents the gal-
lery to her students. The next analysis allows us to observe the role of
technology, in this case the platform Second Life, plays in this context.

Extract 2. Traveling Through Arts: Presenting the Virtual Gallery to
the Kids.

Participants: TR (teacher), Student 1 (ST1), MC (Marcel), RO
(Rolando)

15. TR: one volunteer/
16. ST1: yo ((raises hand))
trans: me
(0.02)
17. ST2: yo
trans: me
(0.44)
18. TR: Marcel\ could you tell SNOOPY go: left
Notes: ((Marcel stands up))
19. MC: Snoopy\ (.) go left
20. TR: AHH ((gasps)) (0.05) ((looks at Snoopy avatar on
screen as it turns left and then walks))
Notes: ((fakes surprise and looks at students))
(0.76)
21. TR: look (.) STOP ((Snoopy stops)) and Snoopy stops
(.) you see STOP is a very important word
because Snoopy will [stop]
22. ST1: [mola]