Promoting Student Digital Citizenship Digital tools in different contexts: Virtual Exchange, Online, Blended and Hyflex teaching

The notion of digital citizenship has garnered much attention since the mid-2010s. The Council of Europe defines it as follows: Digital Citizenship refers to the ability to engage positively, critically and competently in the digital environment, drawing on the skills of effective communication and creation, to practice forms of social participation that are respectful of human rights and dignity through the responsible use of technology.

It is important to consider how both face-to-face and online language teaching can be linked to the development of digital citizenship. This is a multi-faceted question, as digital technologies can be used in various ways for language teaching. Virtual exchanges, for example, make use of digital tools to connect language learners in order to carry out pedagogically- structured interaction and collaboration. Language instruction can be entirely online, making use of technological tools for either synchronous or asynchronous communication and interaction, or instruction may be blended or hyflex, each using digital technological tools in different ways and therefore raising different questions of how to foster digital citizenship in each modality.

It is therefore essential to understand the role of digital technologies, the perceptions that users have of them and how these technologies can be used in online language teaching, including from a critical perspective (Cappellini et al., 2022; Murray et al., 2020; Schneider & Grassin, 2022).

As such, proposals for contributions may be included in the following areas, or in others related to the theme:

• Digital Citizenship within online interactions for language learning. Which aspects of digital citizenship are most pertinent to Virtual Exchanges? In what ways can Digital Citizenship Education be incorporated into the design and delivery of Virtual Exchanges?
• Online teaching strategies and promoting digital citizenship. How can digital citizenship be taught in online classrooms? What strategies can be used to encourage respectful social interaction in online language learning environments?
• Promoting digital citizenship in blended and hyflex teaching. What opportunities are there for fostering digital citizenship in the online classroom as well as a face-to-face classroom? How can the affordances of these modes be put to good use in training students about digital citizenship?
• Fostering digital citizenship using open source tools. What benefits do open source tools have for different modes of instruction?
• Digital safeguarding in online language learning contexts. How can teachers ensure that their students, regardless of their age, are safe in the online environments in which they are working? How can teachers identify the aspects that place their students most at risk?

Papers that are selected for the conference will automatically pass the first round of peer-review for a special issue of Alsic, which will be published later in 2023.

The format of the sessions will be 20 minutes for presentations + 10 minutes for questions.

Submission details:

Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words and include a bibliography and biographical notes on the author(s) (80-100 words). They should be submitted to marco.cappellini@univ-amu.fr no later than the 20th of October.

Important Dates :

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 20th of October

Notification of acceptance: 30th of October