programme

Guidance for the Simuligne teleconferences
Conseils pour la gestion des forums Simuligne

Le texte, en anglais, est de marie-Noelle Lamy et les ajouts en français sont de Thierry Chanier.

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1. Introduction

These Guidelines only deal with 'facilitating' methods, and not with the nature and scheduling of Simuligne tasks, nor with the technological features of WebCT forums/'chats', nor with the location of the different forums/'chats's (as this information forms part of the training set in place by the Besançon team). The only thing you need to bear in mind when reading these Guidelines is that each tutor-group will have

These Guidelines cover facilitating in C. Le forum général s'intitule dans chacun des groupes "Principal".

The need for speed has meant that these Guidelines had to be left in English. The Lexica Online veterans among you will recognise entire sections (!) , but we have updated and augmented them using our more recent experience.

Finally: the very best 'guidelines' often come from the discussion that takes place between us during the course of the pilot. There is a forum specifically for this (Simuligne_Tuteurs), where only you the tutors, Marie-Noëlle, Xavière and, in this case, Thierry as well, will have access. I'm sure we can look forward to fruitful insights and really practical tips from that source!!

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2. Facilitator roles

Role in pacing the conference

Questions

Answers

Social induction

When you very first meet your group, you should appear on the forum before them, having posted a welcome message. Then your role is to greet the students individually as they enter the forum. Help everyone get to know each other, At this stage many of them say that they are unconfident (this is communication 'nerves' and is not restricted to writing in L2, see Harasim extract in Further reading:): if so, reassure them that they are ‘at the right level’ of French for Simuligne.

Technical induction

We have designed an 'Etape Zéro', which gives students time to get ready for using theWebCT software. By the time the 'Etape 1' of Simuligne starts, they should have no major technical questions but inevitably some will! And they will come to you for answers. If you know the answer, of course, give it! Sometimes another student will be faster than you and will provide it. During your training the Besançon team will explain what to do if you don't know the answer to a student query.

Early conversations: accents and English keyboards

This is a constant topic of discussion in the early phases of these conferences. Hopefully students who have teleconferenced with us before will have it sorted, but keep a list of French-character keystrokes at hand so as to resolve these queries quickly. In training, discuss this with Besançon to make sure you are using the best method for creating those special characters.

Les accents sont susceptibles de poser problème pour de multiples raisons : difficultés de les taper sur les claviers anglais, environnements WebCT qui n'accepte pas les accents dans les sujets des messages, par exemple, impossibilité d'utiliser des accents dans les noms de repertoires et de fichiers, etc. Aussi, nous vous recommandons vivement la ligne de conduite suivante :

Throughout Simuligne, what is my role in the presentation of course tasks?

Simuligne is 'clés-en-main'. Stimuli and instructions are up on the site already, as well as a rubric called 'Le pourquoi du comment', which aims to give rationales to students as to why they are being asked to do these tasks at each stage. But the human 'voice' behind all that is you. Your job is to be a regular presence on the forum. You will accompany the students as they carry out their tasks, encourage, sympathise, congratulate, re-explain the rationales if necessary, joke, tease (appropriately) etc. You will also deal with the students' questions, respond to remarks, draw attention to contributions of particular interest etc.

Keeping to the conference phases and pacing

The Simuligne scenario has been constructed with a clear breakdown and scheduling of tasks. We prefer to release new tasks at set times as it allows participants to ‘refocus’. Some Simuligne tasks are collaborative, and some are synchronous so you may need to chivvy some people. So the answer to the two questions about ‘fast’ students and ‘slow’ students is: don’t change the pace set by the team. If your group gets through each task fast, keep them chatting until the next task is due. Don’t set new tasks to your students (with the exception of 'Strategy modelling, see Role towards the group). In the past they've sometimes set themselves new tasks (e.g. translating entire poems!) Of course don't discourage them, unless it interferes with their 'core' Simuligne tasks!

Peaks of external work for students

Past experiments have often fallen foul of the TMA workload problem: students are happy to take part in the conference ... until they have a TMA deadline, and then they disappear (Note for the Besançon team: TMA means “Tutor-marked Assignment”). To avoid this we have recruited alumni. But some of our previous Lexica people were so keen that we have accepted them, even though they are currently registered on some of the OU French courses. Shortly after the start of Simuligne we hope to have a list of confirmed participants, with an indication of who is an alumni and who is a live OU student. We will let you have this information.

Pensez aussi au fait que les natifs de Besançon peuvent aider les apprenants dans leur travail. Ils peuvent jouer le rôle de compagnon. N'hésitez pas à le leur demander, s'ils ne l'ont pas déjà fait de leur propre chef..

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Role towards the group

Questions

Answers

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Techniques for conversation management

Questions

Answers

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3. Self-management for facilitators

Facilitators' messages

Questions

Answers

Time-management

Questions

Answers

Parts of the Simuligne task require you to read/hear and feedback on mini-assignments that individuals send to you. It will be clear to you from the training when this has to happen. Below are comments relating to the less prescribed part, i.e. the group’s forum.

Etape 0 and first part of Etape 1

Try to be present on the forum on a daily basis, or every two days. At the very beginning just send in brief encouraging to make it clear that you are there, and that a social group is forming. ‘Encouragement to interaction’ can start from the utset, but limit it to social interaction.

After the middle of Etape 1

  • Send in ‘holding messages’regularly. Vary the way in which you do this. See EXAMPLE 9, EXAMPLE 10and EXAMPLE 11
  • Encouragement to interaction’ messages should also be sent in fairly frequently (say every 2 days).
  • Thought-out responses’ take more of your time, so be more sparing with them. Try to make them as group-oriented as possible (e.g. by including names of group members with interesting things to say on the matter). You could decide to post your ‘Thought-out responses’ on the same day every week if that makes it easier for you, but tell them so e.g. ‘Je vais y reflechir et je vous dirai samedi ce que j’en pense’ Whenever you promise to come back with a contribution, you must of course honour the promise.

Effective use of message headers

Specific headers e.g. 'Ce que je pense des traversins a la francaise' or 'Les "campus novels", un genre litteraire britannique?' are easier for all participants to work with than vague ones that say e.g. ‘Reponse à Annabelle’, or ‘Probleme difficile’. So do make sure your message headers are useful to students and encourage students to focus their message headers too.

N'oubliez pas ! WebCT, n'accepte pas les accents dans les titres de messages (de forum ou de courriel). Il n'y a, par contre, pas de problème pour en mettre dans les corps des messages.

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4. Language policy

Questions

Answers

Echoing

This is a technique for tackling accuracy non-intrusively, and you should aim to use it whenever feasible. It's what we all do when teaching face-to-face and here’s an example:

Student : Je le trouve difficile à comprendre les mots de la chanson 'Le temps des Cerises'.
Facilitator: Bonjour tout le monde! Myrah trouve difficile de comprendre les paroles de la chanson 'Le temps des Cerises'. Qu'en pensez-vous, les autres? Quelqu'un peut-il l'aider?
Evaluations of past projects has shown that whilst we have always used this technique, students haven’t always realised that we were doing it, and they later regretted not having been told. You’re very welcome to reinforce the message that students should pay attention to the way you rephrase some of their language. (Needless to say you will only be able to deal with major errors. To ‘echo’ every error would be unmanageable in terms of time, and ruin the spontaneity of the conversation).

Our own errors

We all make them! Non-French native tutors get subtle things wrong sometimes, and U.K.-based French natives can be guilty of inadvertent anglicisation. As for typos, they are bound to happen. None of this should worry you. Should you feel particularly horrified that you have posted a message with a glaring error, you can always post another one and make amends.

5. Further reading:

We realise that there is very little time for you to read up on text-based conferencing. But in case you are really keen, here are some ideas:

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Selected illustrative examples from Lexica 1998 (L210 students)

EXAMPLE 1

Facilitator

Bravo, R. et A.! Vous etes les premiers a vous parler regulierement et le contenu de vos contributions m’impresssionne beaucoup.
Qu’est-ce que vous faites ce week-end? Peut-etre que les autres du groupe nous diront, eux aussi, ce qu’ils vont faire – ou auront fait.
A la prochaine.

EXAMPLE 2

Student 1, on 1/5/98

Bonjour a tous!
[...] Je suis content de devenir membre du groupe! Il me fallait necessaire de trouver le mot juste pour ‘join’parce qu’il existe plusieurs mots aux sens differents [...]
Amities et a bientot,

Student 2, on 6/5/98 [Between 1/5 and 6 /5, there were replies from the facilitator but none was about the word ‘to join’]

Bojour, j’ai lu votre message ce soir et puis j’ai commence a faire le travail sur le text Barbara. La j’ai trouve le verbe <s’impliquer> pour join. Je ne sais pas si on peut dire je suis content de m’impliquer au groupe, mais j’ai l’impression que s’impliquer a le sens de joindre quelque chose et de faire un bon effort, de travailler bien qu’est-ce que vous en pensez?

EXAMPLE 3

Student 1 on 5/5/98

Dans l’article sur la chanteuse Barbara j’ai choisi les mots <giflait l’air.>, et <griffait le silence>. Je trouve tout de l’article et les deux dernieres locutions en particulier, tres difficile. ‘Gesticulating’? ‘Beating out the tempo’?? pour la premiere, et pour la deuxieme, ‘breaking the silence’? Aidez-moi quelqu’un ou quelqu’une. Je nage completement!

Facilitator on 6/5/98

Bravo! Vous etes le premier a commencer la tache, mais comme vous le savez peut-etre, on a des problemed de diskettes. Plusieurs de vos camarades attendent le logiciel alors ils ne peuvent pas encore repondre a vos questions. Ils pourraient peut-etre vous expliquer ce qui se passe?.
A vous, les autres!

EXAMPLE 4

[Strategy modelling: a facilitator replies to a student who was asking about the meaning of ‘chaloupait’:]

Vous n’avez pas trouve le verbe ‘chalouper’ mais est-ce que vous avez cherche le nom qui en est la racine? Il est certainement dans le dictionnaire. A vous de le trouver!

EXAMPLE 5

[Strategy modelling: a facilitator tackle a question posed by two students about the meaning of the phrase 'au-delà du dicible', found in an article but nowhere to be found in their dictionaries.]

Merci, vous deux, car avec de courts messages, vous avez posé des questions importantes. D'abord, prenons le problème des informations qui ne sont pas dans le dictionnaire. Dicible n'y est pas. [...] . Mais réfléchissons: nous avons tous dans la tête des connaissances qui peuvent nous servir. Par exemple: DICible est de la famille de DICtée, DICtion, et même bénéDICité. Quel est le sens qui est en commun à tous ces mots? Pouvons-nous par conséquent déduire le sens de: 'au-delà du dicible'?

EXAMPLE 6

Facilitator

Bonjour, P. et bienvenue.
Je suis tres contente de vous lire. Vous avez raison, notre groupe est tres competent et ils se parlent regulierement. Vous aussi, vous ecrivez couramment!
Merci d’avoir partage avec le groupe vos propres methodes – je suis sure que le groupe en profitera.
J’attends avec interet votre prochain message.

EXAMPLE 7

Facilitator

Salut, D.
Et felicitations – vous etes ledeuxieme du groupe a commencer la premiere tache. A propos, est-ce que vous avez lu la reponse de R. (je crois que c’est lui) ou il presente sa liste?

EXAMPLE 8

[Two students had chatted about where they were from. One was from the Dales. The other lived in the South of England but had a favourite watercolour hanging in her lounge: 'Beckermonds' by Sam Chadwick, though she mentioned in passing that she didn’t know who Chadwick was or where Beckermonds was. The dialogue went on:]

Student 1 (Dales-based)

[...] J’ai fait des recherches de Sam Chadwick qui est bien connu pour ses aquarelles. Il peignait... [etc]. Beckermonds est un petit hameau comme vous decrivez au bout de Wharfedale au commencement de Langstrothdale....[etc].

Student 2

Bonjour R.
Je vous remercie mille fois de vos renseignements sur Sam Chadwick qui m’interessent beaucoup. Je suis particulierement heureuse de savoir la location de Beckermonds, que j’ai maintenant trouve sur une carte. Un resultat inattendu de Lexica !

[Possibly as a consequence of successful socialisation these two students went on to become the most prolific interactants in the conference.]

EXAMPLE 9

Student

[...] J’ai choisi <chaloupait>. Je dois dire que j’adore le son de ce mot <chaloupait>. Il evoque une danseuse ou meme une tigresse, une etre souple et gracieuse. Finalement il y a personne qui peut me donner une bonne traduction de la phrase <a queue et a attendre>? Je suis completement demontee.
Demain on va a la Norvege ou habite notre fille cadette mais je me remettrai dans mon travail quand je rentrerai le 24 mai.

Facilitator

Oui, vous avez raison, votre liste contient des mots qui ne sont pas ceux qui viennent immediatement a l’esprit quand vous faites vos TMAs! Je laisse le soin aux autres de la commenter, pour l’instant. Je vous ecrirai de nouveau vers la fin du mois apres votre retour de Norvege. Bonnes vacances!

EXAMPLE 10

The supportive hands-off approach: a student wanted more information concerning the rationale for Task 1 (selecting words). The facilitator avoided answering this directly, but instead reinforced the student in his self-help strategy.

Student

[...] Je me demande, quelles especes de mots , doit-on choisir? [...] J’etais frappe par deux locutions des profs. <Au gre du vent>, j’avais oublie la signification de ‘gre’ et j’aimais bien le son de ce mot et de cette expression. <Mon dada a moi> m’interessait parce que je n’avais jamais rencontre le mot ‘dada’, donc on avait fait un lien avec les artistes Dadaistes. Ca me plait. Ces mots, ces expressions ne sont pas dans les textes [du corpus de Lexica] mais s’ils en y etaient je les aurais choisis, mais le choix aurait ete apres une consultation du dictionnaire et peut-etre la concordance.. Donc, si vous voulez, et si J. dit qu’il est quelque chose d’a propos, peut-etre la question de choix de mots pour etudier soit encourage un debat?

Facilitator

R.e: sujet du debat.
Merci, R., bonne idee!
D’abord , laissez-moi vous rappeler que c’est a vous de choisir le sujet de vos debats. Celui que vous proposez me semble tres interessant, et je crois que vous trouverez des expressions pareilles dans le dictionnaire de Collins.
Je reviendrai a votre message ce week-end. Pour l’instant je n’ai pas le temps d’en dire plus, excusez-moi.
A bientot,

EXAMPLE 11

Vous allez commencer a faire la deuxieme tache. J’attends votre travail avec interet. [... ] Il faut que je lise les autres messages maintenant, alors a la prochaine.

© Université de Franche-Comté, Open University 2001.