Editorial position paper: how virtual is your research?

With this special editorial, I would like to continue my plea against the use of persuasive and ill-defined terms. I will first try to answer the question to what extent the use of ‘virtual’ is justified in the context of online exchanges. After analyzing which factors contribute to a number of issues and concerns, I observe that the term ‘virtual’ may be applied to a kind of research that feels unpalatable. This leads me into formulating some principles which I use to determine whether or not I send an article out for review. Principles to help the authors reflect on their research and the way they report on it. In fact, the real discussion is not about ‘virtual’, ‘blended’, ‘flipped’, ‘remote’, or ‘synchronous’, but about the ‘genuine’ nature of their contribution. But can we provide an accurate and justifiable definition of ‘genuine’ research?

1. Virtual exchanges

One of the phenomena that has surprised me the most in recent months is the increasing frequency of the term ‘virtual exchange’ compared to the initially more common term ‘telecollaboration’.

Telecollaboration, defined as online intercultural communication and collaborative learning with a view to developing linguistic, social, intercultural, and digital competences, has become a dynamic subfield of CALL. Experimental practices in tandem or lingua franca constellations are mushrooming, and recent examples of exchange projects (Cultura, eTwinning, Telecollaboration 2.0), research projects (TeCoLa, Evaluate, Evolve), organizations (UniCollaboration), events (IVEC Conferences), articles (Çiftçi & Savaş, 2018; Godwin-Jones, 2019; Rienties, Lewis, O’Dowd, Rets, & Rogaten, 2020), networks (the Virtual Exchange Coalition), doctoral dissertations (Nicolaou, 2020), book chapters (Dooly, 2017; O’Dowd & Dooly, 2020), journals (Journal of Virtual Exchange), and books (Guth & Helm 2010; Dooly & O’Dowd 2018) – just to mention a few examples – illustrate the vitality of this type of activity.

So where does this relatively sudden shift to ‘virtual exchange’ come from? Most dictionaries nowadays mention under the lemma ‘virtual’ meanings such as ‘being on or simulated on a computer or computer network’, ‘occurring or existing primarily online’, ‘using a computer and therefore without going anywhere or talking to anyone’. Not only dictionaries, but also government bodies and even European programs (such as Erasmus+) have taken over the term (O’Dowd 2018, p.3).

We need to respect this natural evolution of language and the changing meanings of words in particular. We can follow and analyze this evolution with frequency tools, quantitative linguistics, concordancer, and corpora. But we also need to advocate accurate terminology in science, especially in a vulnerable discipline like CALL. If activities are digital or online, then why not just use these terms?

The original denotation of virtual, according to the same dictionaries, is ‘approximating reality’, ‘almost real’, ‘almost complete’, ‘almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according to strict definition’, or ‘being such in essence or effect though not formally recognized or admitted’. Virtual collocates well with words such as absence, anarchy, certainty, collapse, disappearance, exclusion, extinction, halt, monopoly, obscurity, prisoner, revolution, slavery, spectator, standstill and stranger. Its usage is also acceptable in collocations with reality, conference, banking, world, memory, machines, storage, community, exhibition, gallery, library, mall, meeting, museum, pet, simulation, spectator, and tour. Meaning with almost all the properties and capabilities of the real, physical thing. But not all of them. Perhaps the best example of this is ‘virtual currency’:

Although digital and virtual are often used interchangeably when describing currencies based on an electronic medium, the term “virtual” has a negative connotation. “Virtual” signals something that is “seemingly real” but not exactly “real” when referring to a currency that is stored in a “digital” or electronic register. Indeed, in languages like Chinese, the word “virtual” is interpreted as “created from nothing” (虚拟的) in the sense that it is not “physical” but computer-generated or computer-simulated. However, the currencies often described as “virtual” are very “real”, in the sense that they exist. Thus, the more neutral term digital currency is generally preferred over virtual currency. (Nian & Chuen 2015, p. 6)

The term ‘virtual exchanges’ would suggest that online exchanges do have some limitations compared to real, physical exchanges. This is exactly where my shoe pinches. In my view, telecollaboration affords many more activities than its physical counterparts. Let me explain this a little further.

Speaking about affordances, a term coined by Gibson (1979), later adapted by Norman (2013), evolved as far as HCI and interaction design are concerned into a wide variety of acceptations. A frequently mentioned definition is ‘perceived action possibilities’. An affordance does not refer to the actual activity, but to what the user – in our case the learner or teacher – perceives, in line with technology acceptance models such as TAM and UTAUT. An affordance does not directly relate to goals either, but to concrete actions or activities that may contribute to realizing goals. The term has been used increasingly in CALL literature as a combination of technological, social, educational, and linguistic affordances. But ‘the CALL community has yet to engage in a theoretical discussion on the meaning of the concept’ (Blin, 2016, p. 42).

Blin (2016) makes a substantial contribution in this respect and offers an in-depth overview of the theory of affordances. What helps me most in my own situation is to define affordances of online exchanges in a pragmatic way as perceived possibilities of online activities that may contribute to the realization of someone’s language learning or teaching goals. Next to the obvious advantages in terms of time, space and money, the specific affordances of online exchanges – compared to physical exchanges – fan out into a wide range of activities such as coconstruction of digital artifacts (Dey-Plissonneau & Blin, 2016), pedagogical mentoring (O’Dowd, Sauro, & Spector‐Cohen, 2020), interacting in virtual worlds (Deutschmann & Panichi, 2013), peer criticism (Sadler & Dooly, 2016), gamified activities (Giralt & Murray, 2019; Jauregi & Melchor-Couto, 2017), task design (Hauck & Youngs, 2008), synchronous collaborative writing (Steinberger, 2017), or even less published topics such as 3 D printing, role play with avatars, team teaching, peer feedback, and peer evaluation, just to name a few. Anyway, many more than the perfunctory ‘present yourself’ and ‘talk about cultural differences’ conversation types.

As a side note, let me make three observations – hypotheses to be validated quantitatively – about recent literature on the topic of online exchanges. A first observation is that earlier literature on telecollaboration was more detailed in terms of concrete activities than the later literature on virtual exchanges. Statements in current literature on the topic remain more on the level of goals, such as global citizenship, intercultural communication, social inclusion (Turula, Kurek, & Lewis, 2019), twenty-first century skills, learner agency (Kohn & Hoffstaedter, 2017), critical digital literacy skills (Hauck, 2019), (trans)languaging (Messina Dahlberg & Bagga-Gupta, 2014), learning to learn (García-Esteban, Villarreal, & Bueno-Alastuey, 2019), and non-native speaker identity (Helm, 2018). All these are learning goals, not affordances. A second observation would be that recent publications focus less on the difference between virtual exchanges and physical exchanges, and on their respective theoretical added values (Luo & Gui, 2019; Schenker, 2019). The ideal situation might be the combination of the two. The Erasmus + Virtual Exchange website mentions:

Virtual exchanges function in a synergistic and complementary way with physical exchange programs. They can prepare, deepen and extend physical exchanges, and, by reaching new populations and larger numbers, fuel new demand for physical exchange. (Erasmus + Virtual Exchange, 2020)

Finally, despite the numerous successful European initiatives on the level of primary and secondary education (Jauregi & Melchor-Couto, 2018), most studies focus on higher education, which in terms of generalizability of findings poses a problem.

Online exchanges afford more activities than physical exchanges. So why call them virtual if virtual means ‘less than the real thing?’ Perhaps CALL researchers should have chosen the term augmented exchanges. They could have used digital exchanges, online exchanges, or simply telecollaboration. I am convinced that most users of the term are not aware of this terminological issue. But I also see two possible reasons for deliberately using the term ‘virtual’. First, when you do not see all the affordances offered by the medium and accept its limitations. Secondly, when you willingly and subliminally want to create expectations of something magical to happen. In that case, the term has become persuasive.

2. How virtual is your research?

Virtual has joined the list of pervasive but persuasive terms such as blended learning, flipped classrooms, twenty-first century skills, and digital natives. These terms have probably been coined to name new and largely unknown phenomena, but very few remember their originally intended meanings, and many use these terms with different connotations in mind. Persuasive terms convey a – mostly ungrounded – reason for using technology. They put pressure on teachers to use technology, without explaining why in terms of a clear rationale or of substantiated evidence.

The use of persuasive terms is often an indicator of a deeper problem. And as an editor, I am being confronted with similar indicators on a daily basis.

Indicator 1:

A submission starts with statements such as: “technology has revolutionized the way we live, work, teach and learn”. Or “with the rapid development of advanced digital technology, the global horizon has been expanding and has influenced today’s societies”. Why do authors feel compelled to start with some broad and vague opening line instead of coming to the point immediately? One of my most frequent types of advice is “delete the first sentence”.

Indicator 2:

A submission addresses the wrong readership. It explains things that are supposed to be known by the reader, stating the obvious on CALL history, typology, methods, technologies, learner training and teacher education. The abstract and introduction are generally far too basic and to some extent offensive for our readership, advanced researchers in CALL.

Indicator 3:

A submission describes research that is local. The name of the country is often already in the title. Researchers can use a country, even a school as a case, but the focus should always be on the generalizability of the findings and on their relevance for the global CALL community.

Indicator 4:

A submission focuses on a research question that does not seem to respond to a published or substantiated need in the CALL community, generally regarding attitudes, perceptions and expectations toward specific technologies, task types and pedagogical models.

Indicator 5:

There is no real focus on the technology-enhanced language learning and teaching process. The article deals with more general educational or technological aspects with language learners as a population, language skills as a learning objective or language education as a context.

Indicator 6:

A submission does not refer (sufficiently) to CALL research published in journals, books, conference proceedings, PhD dissertations or project reports. 30% of submissions to this journal do not contain any references at all to publications in CALL. For me a reason for Immediate Rejection.

Indicator 7:

Multi-, inter- and transdisciplinarity are important dimensions in any CALL research project, and it is always an attractive idea to publish articles from related disciplines such as speech technology, psychology, testing, robotics, statistics, artificial intelligence or linguistics. But if authors from these disciplines ignore and do not mention previous or related work in CALL, then it looks as though they were trying to escape peer control, looking for an easy outlet, not hindered in any way by possible harsh criticism from colleagues. Fortunately enough, we do have reviewers in these related fields.

Indicator 8:

Name dropping does not impress me or the reviewers. A couple of years ago, authors thought it was enough to mention (socio)constructivism, TPACK or simply the name Vygotsky, Levy or Warschauer in order to give their article a scholarly feel, as if the sheer mentioning of the name was enough to justify the research design.

Indicator 9:

To what extent are terms such as Big Data (not the amount of data but the sophisticated routines needed to extract information), deep learning, serious gaming, BYOD, MOOCs, complex dynamic systems, blockchain and “in the wild” being used with the originally intended meaning? Some authors do not get further than the level of informed opinion about these ill-defined terms. They are building on feet of clay.

Indicator 10:

Some contributions start from exaggerated expectations concerning technology in general, and Artificial Intelligence in particular. AI is “in” again, without anyone seeming to know what it actually means. The routines have not changed much, only the amount of accessible (open) data and processing capability (the true meaning of Big Data).

Indicator 11:

The sometimes exaggerated statistics – we often need an additional reviewer to check the formulas for us – irritate me more than ever before. Their complexity seems to be inversely proportional to the relevance of the topic, and to the correctness of the procedures like in the case of post-hoc analyses.

Indicator 12:

When starting to read an article I want to see three important argumentations: the reasoning for doing the research (rationale), the reasoning behind the choice of research question, and the reasoning behind the choice of research method. And these argumentations may be flawed if the arguments are not substantiated, if not enough arguments are given, or if the arguments do not lead to a conclusion at all.

Indicator 13:

Some authors do not show any identification with the research topic they present. They could just as well have written an article on the risks of hemithyroidectomy or cardiac catheterization. They do not want to solve an educational problem or serve the CALL community; they just want a publication.

Indicator 14:

Some articles have clearly been written by a young researcher, but they sometimes also carry the name of a senior colleague or their supervisor. In that case, the first author should describe in detail the exact role of each coauthor in the preparation, execution and management of the described research project.

Indicator 15:

Thanks to current plagiarism detection tools, we can nowadays easily uncover unreferenced text fragments. A special “gray zone” of plagiarism is self-plagiarism, which occurs more and more and which is due to the pressure to publish. It is quite normal that someone repeats his or her ideas in more or less the same words in different articles (what I am probably doing myself here), but the scope of this “self-borrowing” should not be too extensive.

One indicator is never fatal in itself, but the problem is that these indicators come in groups. Like symptoms of a disease. The more indicators, the more reasons for ‘Immediate Rejection’. But how do I justify and substantiate my decision?

Research methods in CALL have improved considerably over the last couple of years. Most articles are textbook research. But sometimes, even with excellently designed research, I still have this feeling that there is something missing. They are almost real, but not nearly as described. They are virtual. In the true meaning of the word.

3. How genuine is your research?

A research project can be perfectly designed, an article perfectly written, but there is still this question in my mind: How virtual is your research? I can also try to formulate this question in a more positive way: To what extent is your research real or genuine? These terms may be perceived as at least as persuasive as the term virtual itself. But we can try to explain and embody them in a better way. Based on literature, publication policies, feedback and advice from associate editors, reviewers and editorial board members, and my personal experience as editor of this journal, I have identified the following five indicators of genuine research: need, identification, competence, relatedness and autonomy (the last four in a free interpretation of the frequently mentioned self-determination needs).

3.1. Need

The push/pull paradigm has been a familiar phenomenon for several years now. On the one hand, authors may be ‘pushed’ or driven toward a topic, research project and publication because they just have to choose a topic. The pressure to publish (Colpaert, 2012). This leads to the choice of a more fashionable topic, the perfunctory name dropping or an abundance of statistics. On the other hand, based on their interests, passion, experience, and vision, authors may also be ‘pulled’ or interested by the needs from the field, in education or in society in general. They just want to do it. And it shows.

The traditional and perhaps most important question is as follows: To what extent does your research contribute to the field or community? What are the needs? What does society need? What does education need? What does the CALL field need? Does the author respond to this need in research, education or society? Is this need already well documented or does the author at least clearly show that this is a need?

While needs in society and education are obvious and well-known, also easily acceptable as rationales for research, the identification of needs in CALL research is less obvious. Despite CALL conferences (Colpaert, Aerts, & Oberhofer, 2014) and articles (Gillespie, 2020; Levy, Hubbard, Stockwell, & Colpaert, 2015) on the topic, there is still a certain resistance against too formally identifying them. The question is: how can we evaluate an article without formulating these needs beforehand and say that an article does not contribute to the field afterwards?

In my view, it should be rather easy to provide prospective authors with a list of priority topics. Design. Since the early work on design by Hémard, Bertin, Hubbard and Peterson, few authors (except, e.g., Grobler, 2020) have continued along that path. Aspects of mental acceptance, identification, self-regulation and motivation, building on Deci and Ryan, Dörnyei and Ushioda, Venkatesh… Tasks as the link between teaching and learning, regrouping F2F with remote students, applying Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. The need for Open Data. Smart CALL (which is the theme of our XXIst International CALL Research Conference www.call2021.org). Personalization and contextualization of the learning process. Transdisciplinarity (Hubbard & Colpaert, 2019). The difference between teacher and student perceptions regarding task acceptability. And finally: the affordances of telecollaboration, as described above.

We should define such a list as a CALL community. Not as an exclusive list. Authors would remain free to choose any other topic, but they should explain the reason why very clearly.

3.2. Identification

There are many publications on the identification of a research topic, but I have not found any about identification with a research topic. Identification with stands for the extent to which you feel connected with a topic or subject: you have a personal reason, you develop a certain interest or even passion – excusez le mot – and it shows … Two questions in this respect: why is a certain amount of identification a good thing and how can we measure this?

We have always learned and taught that a scholarly article should never be (too) emotional nor personal. Some researchers opt for a kind of distant and cold ‘laboratory’ research style without any observable personal connection nor commitment. Other people are so familiar with the field that they no longer see the forest for the trees. They are so passionate that they become persuasive without using the correct argument for persuasion. They are unable to look at the topic from a distance, with a neutral angle of attack. So what should be the appropriate balance between identification and distance?

Not only the goals we pursue, but also the reason why we pursue them contribute to our well-being (Sheldon, Ryan, Deci, & Kasser, 2004). Identification does not only relate to the level of motivation, but it is also about the locus of causality (what Is the source of the motivation): is it more external or more internal? Authors may conduct research and write articles due to external factors like the pressure to publish, the quest for promotion or survival, competition, power, fear for a negative evaluation … but also out of enjoyment and self-realization. Identification with something means that this something defines our identity, our personality to a certain extent.

A certain amount of identification increases the credibility and acceptability of an article. It makes it more genuine. But how can an editor measure or even feel this? In fact, there are two gauges: content and style. An author can mention the reason for doing the research, both in terms of needs and in terms of identification, (s)he can explain why (s)he is the right person for doing so, talk about possible impact etc. Secondly, the style. While this remains Fingerspitzengefühl and intuition, as a former quantitative linguist, I am convinced that it should be possible, and for those who are looking for interesting research topics: the progress in the field of sentiment analysis looks promising.

3.3. Competence

Show you know the field. What are your credentials? Competence stands for the knowledge, experience and vision you have as a language teacher, language learner, language user, linguist, researcher, conference participant, author, reviewer, designer, user, …

How can I see this? Well, competent authors come to the point more directly. The less competent, the more authors are inclined to explain the basics of a particular topic or discipline. They kick in open doors. Try to convince the readers of something obvious. Because they have just learned it themselves.

Less competent authors juggle more with names and ill-defined fashionable concepts to hide their lack of knowledge and experience. Someone who has never learned another language or taught another language can refer to theories, but not interpret and evaluate these models and theories on the same level. They are more subject to critiquelessly adopting pervasive models and theories. Competent authors also find interesting, rare references and do not limit themselves to the perfunctory Levy, Warschauer, Vygotsky or Deci & Ryan.

3.4. Relatedness

Relatedness stands for the extent to which you build on CALL research in literature (even if they are only indications or hypotheses), refer to CALL colleagues in other CALL-related Journals such as Language Learning & Technology, ReCall, CALICO Journal, JaltCall or System. But also in less traveled PhD dissertations, project reports, books, and conference proceedings.

These references are not only needed to show that you are competent, but also to show your respect for your colleagues in CALL. The most important argument is that one of the premises of the rationale behind a research question should always be that there is not enough knowledge available. So you need to show what has already been studied and how, and what has not yet been analyzed and why.

Another aspect of relatedness, more subliminally, is that you show how you interact with CALL colleagues.

3.5. Autonomy

Autonomy stands for the extent to which the author shows originality and creativity in his/her approach. Originality in the choice of the topic, the angle of attack, less frequently cited references, in the methodology, in the execution or in the data analysis. We could call this ‘author agency’. A paradigm shift is always refreshing. Another way of looking at literature, at technology, at the learner or at the teacher.

The number of authors is probably inversely proportional to author autonomy, especially when bigger names are added at the end of the list.

3.6. Summing up

A virtual article scores low on these five criteria. I realize that this set of indicators of genuine research is quite different than the traditional academic evaluation grid in most countries. But it has appeared to be quite useful for me to determine whether or not I send an article out for review. And I hope it will be useful for authors as well: they can use it to reflect on their research designs and on the way they report about their results.

4. Final considerations

The discussion of telecollaboration versus virtual exchange is perhaps a false discussion as the real problem is that we fail to see the affordances of online exchanges. What is the specific added value of online exchanges, what is the specific added value of physical exchanges and how can they brought together in a well-designed multimodal environment?

More importantly: Does distance matter? Does technology matter? It is not about blending, flipping or virtual. The real matter is about creating the most appropriate multimodal language learning environment. A multimodal learning environment seeks the most appropriate balance with four components: autonomous learning, collaborative learning, coaching and instruction. It should be built around axes such as remote/F2F, synchronous/asynchronous, individual collaborative, autonomous/guided, … In a multimodal environment both online and physical exchanges, synchronous or not, can have their place.

An article can describe a perfect research design, textbook methodology and flawless project execution, but it can still leave an unpalatable impression. The editor of this journal asks himself if he can require – before sending an article out for review - that an article correspond to clearly stated needs in education, that the author have a reason for conducting this research and identifies him/herself with the topic in some way, that the author show some competence and familiarity with the topic and the field of language learning and teaching (as learner, teacher, policy maker, researcher …), that an author build on CALL publications (also conference proceedings and doctoral dissertations) and that (s)he show some originality and autonomy in the approach.

The reviewers decide on the quality of the research; the editor decides based on the profile of his journal. And this is why I will decide to add these indicators of genuine research to the instructions for authors and to the guidelines for reviewers.

The use of persuasive terms, especially for justifying our research topics and methods, is endangering the future of CALL as a respectable discipline. Focus on real issues, build on knowledge, and use terminology accordingly.

Any self-respecting discipline should work on a domain-specific terminology which reflects a coherent set of common concepts, principles, and models. This is the case in the fields of law, medicine, technology, and economics, but less in ‘softer’ or younger disciplines such as pedagogy, instructional design, and computer-assisted language learning.

I hope this editorial contributes to a worldwide discussion on the topic.

Jozef Colpaert
Department of Training and Education Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Antwerp,
Antwerp, Belgium
[email protected]

Acknowledgment

I wish to thank Claire Bradin-Siskin, Alex Boulton, and Phil Hubbard, for their valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jozef Colpaert

Prof.Dr.Jozef Colpaert teaches Instructional Design, Educational Technology and Computer Assisted Language Learning at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. He is editor of Computer Assisted Language Learning (Taylor and Francis) and organizer of the International CALL Research Conferences.