Mariangela Picciuolo
University of Bologna
Disclosing the virtus in virtual learning: power shifts in EMI classroom discourse
Some unintended consequences resulting from COVID-19 are likely to evolve over time, such as the intersection of two trends in international higher education (Querol-Julián & Crawford Camiciottoli, 2019): English-Medium Instruction (EMI) and online learning. Italian EMI lecturers, in particular, who were already struggling to cope with language and pedagogical issues, had to adjust to the new media which is characterized by the co-occurrence of different literacy practices (Gee & Hayes, 2011). Surprisingly, this might prove to be a blessing in disguise for the internationalisation of higher education. This experimental study examined the effects of computer-mediated instruction on lecturer-students interaction occurring in synchronous-video lectures in an English-mediated academic course at an Italian university. The preliminary findings of the study draw upon empirical material that consists of 15 teacher-led lectures delivered in both conventional and online settings, with approximately 30 hours of interaction material. Our interests here relate to accounting for how the positioning of the participants in classroom discourse varies across the two learning environments by particularly focusing on turn-taking and linguistic stance. In particular this study illustrates how technology mediated multimodal communication affects power shift between teacher – student interaction as reflected by discourse moves in the EMI classroom. The study investigates classroom discourse from a discursive analytical perspective with a view to measuring and comparing turn-taking and linguistic stance as detectors of lecturer-student power asymmetry shifts. This, in turn, might provide some clues as to whether technology enhances or hinders communication in EMI classrooms. Preliminary findings show that the lecturers who actively use different modes as text chat, whiteboard, audio and video tend to position themselves more as facilitators than leaders in the classroom dialogical space, thus engendering a power shifts which promote students’ engagement and increase “the[ir] responsibility over the learning process” (Viberg & Messina Dahlberg, 2011: 131). Similarly, even lecturers less likely to adapt to the new artifacts available in the online environment seem nonetheless to profit from it, particularly as regards clarity and understandability in oral speech. The findings of this study have implications for designing training programs to enhance lecturers’ communication efficacy in the EMI classroom, crossing the border which separates language and pedagogical competence.