UNICollaboration Research Seminar on Virtual Exchange

UNICollaboration is accepting proposals through Feb. 15 for a research seminar on virtual exchange (VE) June 5-6 in Aix en Provence, France. Proposals on all topics related to VE will be considered, provided that a strong focus on research is present. Proposals will be accepted from different theoretical frameworks and disciplines, including, but not restricted to, Educational Sciences, Psychology, Sociology, Business, Language Sciences, and Computer Sciences.

Particular consideration will be given to proposals developing interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary approaches on VE.

UNICollaboration is a cross-disciplinary professional organization that supports the development of telecollaboration and virtual exchange (VE) in higher education. One of its two main objectives is to promote the development and integration of research and practice in VE across all disciplines and subject areas in higher education. To further this goal, this seminar seeks to gather people interested in VE research to share and discuss their research methods and results.

Proposals are welcomed on the following topics, among others:

• Research methods, such as mixed methods, design-based research, conversation analysis, multimodal (inter)action analysis, social semiotics, action research, visual methods, narrative research, and corpus-based research.
• Theoretical frameworks and their introduction into research on telecollaboration and virtual exchange, such as feminist research, de/coloniality, critical digital literacy, digital and/or global citizenship.
• Research ethics, ranging from data collection and participants’ enlightened consent to corpus sharing, research integrity and transparency of research procedures.
• Researching virtual exchange in fields different from language education (business, healthcare, etc.).
• Research on language use in virtual exchange outside language education.
• Researching teaching-learning methodologies used in virtual exchange.
• Researching intercultural and/or plurilingual learning in telecollaboration and virtual exchange.

Formats

Presentations will be in one of the following formats:

1. Young researcher presentations. These presentations will take place during the PhD workshop in the programme. They are aimed at discussing at length ongoing research by PhD students and young scholars. The presenter will be asked to submit a 3000 word paper one month before the seminar for the other participants to read beforehand. The presentation at the seminar will last 5 minutes, followed by 25 minutes of discussion.
2. Regular presentations. These will be 20 minutes-long presentations followed by 10 minutes of questions and answers. These presentations will take place during parallel sessions.

Keynote speakers will be streamed online. One of the parallel sessions will be in hybrid format, allowing participation from a distance. The workshops will be held locally only.

Submission process

15th January: opening of the platform for submissions. Submissions for all formats should be 500 words long, references excluded. Proposals are to be submitted here https://resem2023.sciencesconf.org/submission/submit You will have to create an account and log in to access the submission platform.

15th February: deadline for submissions.

15th March: feedback to the authors

7th May: after acceptance, for young researcher presentation only, submission of the 3000 words paper.

Programme (time in Central European Summer Time)

Day 1:

9.00-9.15 Coffee and welcome

9.15-9.30 Opening of the seminar

9.30-10.30 Keynote 1

10.30-11 Coffee break

11-12.30 Parallel sessions

12.30-2 pm Lunch

2-4 pm PhD Workshop

4-4.30 Coffee break

4.30-5.30 Parallel sessions

Day 2:

9.00-9.30 Coffee and welcome

9.30-10.30 Parallel sessions

10.30-11 Coffee break

11-12.30 Research ethics workshop

12.30-2 pm Lunch

2-3 pm Keynote 2

3-4 pm 2 Parallel sessions

4-4.30 Coffee break

4.30-5.30 Parallel sessions

5.30 Closing

Registration

Registration will be open mid-March. Registration will be through the UNICollaboration website (registration page to be announced). Participants will need to be members of UNICollaboration (https://www.unicollaboration.org/index.php/join/).

The registration fees for the research seminar will be as follows:

Individuals: 100 euros Students: 50 euros

Scientific Committee

Christine Blanchard, Université Clermont Auvergne, Laboratoire de Recherche sur le Langage

Marco Cappellini, Aix Marseille Université and Laboratoire Parole & Langage

Melinda Dooly, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Luana Ferreira-Lopes, University of Deusto, Teaching Innovation Unit.

Marta Giralt, University of Limerick

Francesca Helm, University of Padova

Sake Jager, University of Groningen, Applied Linguistics

Paola Leone, Università degli Studi del Salento

Anna Nicolaou, Cyprus University of Technology

Alexandra Reynolds, Université de Bordeaux and Laboratoire Cultures Éducation et Sociétés.

Müge Satar, Newcastle University

Ciara R. Wigham, Université Clermont Auvergne and Laboratoire Activité, Connaissance, Transmission, éducation