Exploring perceived and imagined presence in videoconference encounters between students

in Berkeley and Lyon.

Christine Develotte, ICAR, ENS de Lyon-Ifé

• Context • an overview of the particularities of screen-

mediated communication, as established in previous research

• perceived presence/imagined presence A few exemples

• Pedagogical consequences

Blended environment (in class and online via desktop videoconferencing)

•Intermediate level French courses at Berkeley•Second-year level (N = 20)•French 3: 15 week course

– meets five times a week for 50 minutes– from one to two hours of homework per night

•Interaction with Lyon tutors: each Tuesday

•Etudiants de M2 learning to teach French as a foreign Language université Lyon 2

•45 hours of teaching (3 hours per week)

Spatial context of synchronous pedagogical interactions between Lyon (6:10-6:50 PM)…

…and Berkeley (9:10-9:50 AM)

Hétérotopias (Foucault, 1984)

• The mirror functions as “heterotopia” in the sense that it makes the place where I am- when I look at myself in the mirror - both absolutely real, as it is connected to the space around it , but also absolutely unreal since in order to perceive that place

• Heteropia has the power to juxtapose within one single real place several spaces, several sites which are in themselves, incompatible .(…)

Three different environments associated with the screen

• the physical environment (the desk and the environment of each individual

• the imagined space (in a remote location, out of view of the camera)

• the space of the screen (the surface space, the touched space).

• For her “it is that multiplicity of spaces, created by the screen, that plays a role on interpersonal relations at a distance”. Chabert (2012)

• I guess the tutor was in the screen, I never tried to picture her where she would actually be in reality »

• You don’t feel like you are in a class in Berkeley, you don’t feel like you’re in Lyon, you just feel like you’re talking to somebody, except in a different language you’re used to. »

(Kern, 2014)

From heterotopia to “Heterosomia“

• “heterotopia created by new technologies

implies what one could call “heterosomia”: one has a body at the desk in front of the screen and another that appears on the screen” (Marcelo Vitalli-Rossati, 2014)

Marcello Vitali-Rossati (2014)

“I start calling by clicking on the video icon. If the other person answers, his video appears, next to mine. The structure is obvious: a contract has been set up between the two videos, namely between me – as I appear in the video and therefore in the virtual space - and the other, as he/she appears in the video. It is those two bodies who see each other and talk to each other. And they are the ones who act”.

Framing effects on presence

• on the American side, a female student wearing a military uniform

• On the French side, a student with a handicap who, during the interactions via screen, made sure the chair on which he was sitting, was not seen by his interlocutors .

the lack of “presence” perceived

• “I really felt that the screen acted as a barrier because the two students from Berkeley were face to face, and I was the only one facing the screen. As they interacted a lot with each other, I felt very frustrated because I had neither the access nor the ability to have a face-to-face exchange while I was sitting behind the screen. I experienced it as competing communication situations”.

« Screen as a site and site as screen » (Jewitt & Triggs, 2006)

A complex space that includes an imaginary component

David Malinowski and Claire Kramsch, UC Berkeley“The ambiguous world of heteroglossic computer-mediated language learning”

• Ann : “looking twice” at a man was “socially not like something you’re supposed to do unless you’re trying to hook up with someone.”

• Yet, online in the Skype-mediated video conferencing interaction with Jean, with students and tutors in front of webcams, watching each other’s representations on-screen, Ann had no choice but to look at “a French guy”, as she described Jean.

• “He was always looking back at us,” she told her interviewers, “so it was really like, the interaction, especially with a French male, was so foreign to me, even though I had been there for four months. (…) it was just really cool to be able to talk to someone and communicate with someone and have someone, like, look you in the eye (laughing) … it was just impossible for me in France to even think about that so it was really cool.”

“Learning “to look twice” at the intercultural other”

Apparent simplicity of screen mediated conversation

• contact was established very quickly; it is very natural, very spontaneous, which made for a very easy conversation”.

• “From the very first session, we felt very at ease to speak and at the end of each session, we felt that we could have continued to talk for ever.

Pedagogical outcomes

• “de-naturalize” the apparent transparency and simplicity of screen-mediated exchanges and showing/explain how complex it is

• provide students with a critical analysis of screen-mediated communication ;

• Of the importance of making students aware of the overlap of those 3 aspects : the technological, the linguistic and the cultural that are specific to that type of communication.