6. Instructor’s Roles
Instructors should ideally:
- provide scaffolding for students’ experience by giving them guidance and informed insight
- facilitate students’ purposeful interactions, discussion, and reflection
- facilitate student learning by providing them with opportunities to engage in intercultural interactions
- facilitate students active and intentional engagement with differences - in people and in the communities, both locally and globally
- value students’ insights and perspectives they bring to COIL
- manage intercultural group work and group dynamic of students
- encourage students to be respectful, mindful, and empathetic towards all participants in COIL
- provide culturally sensitive and constructive feedback
Instructors are expected to:
- select and design tasks
- monitor task procedures
- give advice to students
- provide students with examples of appropriate online interaction strategies
- facilitate discussion
- assess students’ performance and deliver feedback
(Corbett et al, 2024, p. 59, O’Dowd, R., 2021, n.p.).
Students’ autonomous learning and instructor’s balanced scaffolding:
Essentially, students are expected to work, collaborate, and learn in COIL independently of the instructor. Students generally benefit from the guidance and support provided by the instructor. However, an over helpful instructor might actually hinder students’ autonomous learning.
How to provide a balanced scaffolding in online discussion (e.g. in e-forum):
- Facilitate discussions rather than dominate them; encourage diverse perspectives and peer interaction.
- Let students direct the flow of the exchange but remind them they should contribute to the discussion regularly by responding to other students’ posts.
- Insert your own comments within the students’ discussion sparingly as they might overshadow or detract from the genuine peer-to-peer interaction.
- Be mindful of the impact of your presence and avoid overly authoritative responses that could stifle conversation.
- Expressing your own views on the topics in discussion may encourage students to be more willing to contribute. But it might also make them more self-conscious about the quality of their own contributions and less likely to reach out to others. Students may also consider your expression of a point of view as an authoritative response to an issue, it might inhibit their diverse perspectives and prematurely end the discussion.
(Corbett et al, 2024, p. 78, 81)
Tips for instructors
What to do when:
Students are to use technological tools that are new to them:
Find time and space for rehearsal and some mock interactions in the new online platform so that students get a feel for the affordances and limitations and you can deal with any troubleshooting before the online collaboration starts (Corbett et al, 2024, p. 86).
Students experience issues such as doubts, misunderstanding or even disagreements:
- find time and space outside of the COIL (for example in face-to-face class) for students’ reflection; treat such issues as teachable moments and help students to self-monitor and evaluate their feelings and behavior [see also Managing conflicts] (Corbett et al, 2024, p. 77, 89).
- facilitate online discussion:
‘Let me see if I understood you correctly. So you’re saying that…’ > when students hear their own statement repeated back in different words, it will help both sides clarify a potential misunderstanding.
“I see what you mean, and many very intelligent people reach a similar conclusion. How would it affect your opinion if you learned that …” “How do you think you would see this problem differently if you were a [member of a different social group]?”
Critique must not elicit shame > validate identity while evaluating statements and behaviors.
(Lee et al, 2012, pp. 97-98).