COLLABORATIVE FOCUS DISCIPLINE RESEARCH AND THE INTERNET:
A CONTENT-BASED INTERCULTURAL EXCHANGE

Loretta F. Kasper, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
Kingsborough Community College/CUNY

Brief Abstract: Research (see References) has demonstrated content-based instruction, especially sustained content study, to be effective in improving ESL students' linguistic skills, more quickly enabling them to pass institutional assessments and enter the college mainstream. As part of a sustained content course, students may be asked to choose a "focus discipline" to study over the entire semester, independently researching issues and reporting on findings in a series of papers. This research is facilitated when an extensive body of informational resources, as found on the Internet, is available. Because the Internet will likely become a key component of the college classroom of the future, to be fully prepared for college-level work, ESL students should become comfortable and proficient using it. While the Internet represents an abundant informational resource, its real educational potential lies in its ability to facilitate intercultural exchanges through which students across the country/world may work collaboratively, first gathering and sharing information, and then discussing and analyzing issues. The proposed study will explore this potential through a content-based intercultural exchange in which CUNY ESL students will conduct focus discipline research, collaborating via the Internet with college students in other parts of the country/world. The project goals include: (1)developing and refining ESL students' linguistic, research, and networking skills, (2)teaching and promoting Internet use and sustained content study on an institutional level, and (3)creating a web site of content-based resources to be used internationally.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Introduction: A number of studies has shown that content-based instruction accelerates students' progress through the ESL sequence by enabling theses students to attain higher pass rates on institutional reading and writing assessments (Babbitt & Mlynarczyk, forthcoming; Kasper, 1994; 1997). While content-based instruction can follow a variety of models incorporating a wide range of pedagogical activities (see e.g., Snow & Brinton, 1997; Kasper, forthcoming-a), a specific variation called "sustained content study," i.e., studying one content area over time (Pally, 1997), has been especially effective in facilitating and hastening the development of the linguistic and academic skills key to success in college.

I have been researching the effects of sustained content study for a number of years (Kasper, 1994; 1997), and my recent work has concentrated on how the Internet may be used to facilitate and enhance a specific activity which I call "focus discipline research" (Kasper, 1998; forthcoming-b). In this activity, students choose a focus discipline from among several content areas studied in the ESL course, and using the Internet as an informational resource, pursue sustained and independent study of that discipline over the semester, producing three progressive written reports and a research project (see Appendix). The focus discipline activity has yielded a number of educational benefits to my students, including higher pass rates on reading/writing assessments (92%), increased motivation, and greater confidence in their ability to handle academic tasks (as evinced by responses to feedback questionnaires).

Although the Internet has enormous potential as an informational resource, its real potential lies in its ability to facilitate the sharing of information through international and intercultural communication. It is the goal of the proposed study to explore that potential through a content-based Internet project that will engage ESL students at CUNY in collaborative focus discipline research with students in a college or university in another state or country. This project will enable students to develop and refine language skills and to practice and hone academic research skills. The project will also develop students' networking skills as they participate via the Internet in a content-based intercultural exchange, sharing information and discussing interdisciplinary issues with students across the country/world.

Project Goals: Based upon my previous findings, I expect that the proposed study will enable students to benefit from improved linguistic and academic skills, resulting in higher scores on institutional assessments and enabling ESL students to become full members of the CUNY academic mainstream more quickly. Moreover, because computers will likely become a key resource in the college classroom of the future, another goal of this study is to teach and promote the use of the Internet and sustained content study on an institutional and an international level. This will be accomplished through university colloquia and through the creation of a web site of content-based Internet and print resources that may be used internationally by teachers and students and of a class web site for the publication of student writings.

Background: Academic literacy, which "encompasses ways of knowing particular content…(and) refers to strategies for understanding, discussing, organizing, and producing texts" (Johns, 1997, p. 2), is key to success in college. Recent research demonstrates that ESL students' academic literacy skills are effectively developed through a functional language learning environment. A functional language learning environment may be defined as one that engages them in meaningful and authentic language processing through planned, purposeful, and academically-based activities (Adler-Kassner & Reynolds, 1996; Shea, 1996) that teach them "how to extract, question, and evaluate the central points and methodology of a range of material, and construct responses using the conventions of academic/expository writing" (Pally, 1997, p. 299). Because it engages students in close reading and in-depth discussion of salient issues in science, psychology, business, and other academic disciplines, sustained content study provides a functional language learning environment that enables students to acquire the linguistic and cognitive tools necessary for academic success.

When as part of sustained content study, students engage in focus discipline research, completing assignments of progressive complexity in which they define problems, examine evidence collected from a variety of sources, and make objective judgments on the basis of extended research, they learn to synthesize knowledge and practice the critical thinking skills necessary for a successful academic experience (Kasper, 1998). The educational benefits of focus discipline research may be further enhanced and facilitated by using the Internet as an informational resource.

While the Internet is effective in enabling individuals to access a wide range of information necessary for sustained content study, its real potential lies in creating a context for collaborative learning across classes of students within the same school, across the nation, or even the world. In fact, recent research has demonstrated that collaborative computer-based learning yields a number of significant educational benefits to students; specifically it facilitates growth in both linguistic fluency and complexity as it encourages learners to co-construct and share knowledge (Warschauer, Turbee, & Roberts, 1996) and engages them in tasks that require independent problem solving and critical thinking (Sotillo, 1998).

The proposed study will explore the educational potential of the Internet for sustained content study by setting up an Internet collaboration between CUNY ESL students and college/university students in another state/country. These students will work together on coordinated focus discipline research projects and will use the Internet to both access and share information. Depending on course registration, the overall study will involve a total of two to four high intermediate ESL classes, or one to two classes per semester, in collaborative Internet-based research. Based upon normal ESL course registers, it is expected that the study will involve approximately 40-80 CUNY ESL students. Through the Internet collaboration, students in these classes will produce three papers, each dealing with a key issue in their chosen focus discipline and a research project requiring the analysis and synthesis of information gathered throughout the semester.

References:

Adler-Kassner, L., & Reynolds, T. (1996). Computers, reading, and basic writers: Online strategies for helping students with academic texts. Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 23(3), 170-178.

Babbitt, M., & Mlynarczyk, R.W. (forthcoming). Keys to successful content-based programs: Administrative perspectives. In L. Kasper, Content-based college ESL instruction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Johns, A.M. (1997). Text, role, and context:Developing academic literacies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Kasper, L.F. (1994). Improved reading performance for ESL students through academic course pairing. Journal of Reading, 37(5), 376-384.

Kasper, L.F. (1995). Theory and practice in content-based ESL reading instruction. English for Specific Purposes, 14(3), 223-230.

Kasper, L.F. (1997). The impact of content-based instructional programs on the academic progress of ESL students. English for Specific Purposes, 16(4), 309-320.

Kasper, L.F. (1998). Focus discipline research and the Internet: Keys to academic literacy for at-risk college students. Paper presented at WebNet 98. Orlando, FL. Available online: http://members.aol.com/Drlfk/WebNet98paper.html

Kasper, L.F. (forthcoming-a). Content-based college ESL instruction. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kasper, L.F. (forthcoming-b). Sustained content study and the Internet: Developing functional and academic literacies. In M. Pally (Ed.), Sustained content teaching: Developing academic skills in ESL/EFL/writing classes (Chapter 4). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Pally, M. (1997). Critical thinking in ESL: An argument for sustained content. Journal of Second Language Writing, 6(3), 293-311.

Shea, P. (1996). Media, multimedia, and meaningful language learning: A review of the literature. Paper presented at WebNet 96. San Francisco, CA. [Online]. Available: http://aace.virginia.edu/aace/conf/webnet/html/159.htm

Snow, M.A., & Brinton, D.M. (Eds.). (1997). The content-based classroom: Perspectives on integrating language and content. New York: Longman.

Sotillo, S.M. (1998). English-as-a-second-language learning and collaboration in cyberspace. NJTESOL-NJBE Newsletter, Fall, 17-19.

Warschauer, M., Turbee, L., & Roberts, B. (1996). Computer learning networks and student empowerment. System, 24(1), 1-14.

Project Design:

Current state of research. Since the Spring, 1997 semester, I have taught high intermediate level ESL linked with the mainstream course, "Introduction to the Internet." As part of the coursework, my students learned to use the Internet to gather information both on content areas covered in class and on those of their own choosing. During the Spring, 1997 semester, my ESL students were involved in an e-mail partnership in which they corresponded via the Internet on a weekly basis with students at Beitberl University in Israel. Although that partnership did not involve a collaborative focus discipline research project, as proposed here, it did provide me with insights into some of the problems inherent in setting up and conducting intercultural exchanges via the Internet. During the Fall and Spring, 1998 semesters, my ESL students conducted focus discipline research using the Internet as a resource for gathering information, which they then shared with classmates who were studying the same focus discipline. Students in this course produced three progressive written reports and a research project in which they discussed and analyzed salient issues in the discipline under study (see Appendix).

Timetable for grant research. In Spring, 1999, prior to the start of this grant, I will use Internet resources to locate a partner class of college level students in another part of the country/world. The instructor of this class must be willing to coordinate course activities with me by implementing sustained content study, focus discipline research, and Internet collaboration into his/her course.

The grant will begin in Summer, 1999, and the summer will be used to plan, develop, and coordinate activities with the partner teacher. I will spend significant amounts of time engaged in online communication with this partner teacher. This communication will involve choosing texts, discussing and designing possible focus discipline projects in each of the content areas to be covered in the course, setting up a schedule of assignments, and agreeing upon and developing means of assessing student progress.

The content-based intercultural exchange will begin in Fall, 1999. Students will choose a focus discipline during the first week of the semester. They will work collaboratively with students in the partner class on projects agreed upon in advance by the instructors. As the semester progresses, time will be needed to monitor student progress and to make adjustments and modifications as necessary in course activities in the event that technological problems arise. Insights gained during the Fall, 1999 semester will be used to improve the collaborative intercultural exchange as it is implemented in the Spring, 2000 with students from new ESL and partner classes.

Dissemination of results.

· In collaboration with their classmates and Internet partners, each of the students in the study will produce a portfolio of writings, consisting of three progressive essays and a longer research project, all dealing with key topics in the focus discipline. With students' permission, these writings will be published on a class web site so that all students in the project may learn from each other. This class web site will also serve to illustrate the results of the Internet collaboration for others interested in sustained content-based instruction.

· A web site of content-based Internet and print resources will be created to assist faculty and students internationally in pursuing sustained content study and focus discipline research.

· The results of the study will be written up during the Spring and Summer, 2000 for national and international presentation at conferences (e.g., WebNet; TESOL) and publication in scholarly journals (e.g., Language Learning and Technology; System) in the fields of ESL education and Computer Assisted Instruction.

· Insights gained from this project will also be disseminated to CUNY faculty through faculty development workshops and colloquia.

· Workshops will be conducted to train CUNY faculty to deliver effective sustained content-based instruction incorporating focus discipline research and using the Internet as a resource for information and intercultural communication.

· A faculty development colloquium, which will bring together scholars from CUNY and other colleges, will be planned for the Fall, 2000. This colloquium will inform faculty of the educational applications of new technologies.

Appendix
Sample Focus Discipline Projects: Business

In their first paper, students who choose business as a focus discipline discuss how advertisers use the basic determinants of consumer behavior in designing product advertisements. They describe the types of ads that are most likely to appeal to or change consumer behavior. In their second paper, these students explain how and why infomercials are effective in inducing consumers to buy advertised products. They also explain how and why products sold through infomercials cost more or less than those sold in retail stores, and they describe the psychological and/or sociological needs that infomercials appeal to. In their third paper, these students explain how the Internet has changed the face of sales and marketing and describe the advantages/disadvantages of selling/buying products over the Internet.

In a final research project, which includes a bibliography of sources, students discuss how advertising strategies have changed as a result of developing technology. They do a historical analysis of advertising, beginning with the pre-television days of the early to mid-1900's, answering the following questions: What advertising strategies were used at that time? How effective were they? How did television change advertising? What were businesses able to do with television that they could not do before? What additional changes occurred in advertising with the development of computer technology? How has developing technology expanded the marketplace for both businesses and consumers?

For further information, please contact me at drlfk@aol.com

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