You are interested in other Deaf cultures ?
You belong to the american signing community and you wish to pass on your knowledge about the American Sign Language and the written English to Deaf French learners?
Or you belong to the French signing community and you wish to pass on your knowledge about the French Sign Language and the written French to Deaf American learners?
You want to get to know better the culture of the other community and share your own culture with them?
You like interaction through the internet and you are curious about making a new kind of pedagogical and personal experience?
Come and join us on E-SCALE, our deaf E-space for Signed Collaboration Abroad on Language E-learning!
The Laboratoire de Recherche sur le Langage of the Blaise Pascal University in Clermont-Ferrand and the Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. have launched in April 2014 the first beta version of the E-SCALE language (m)OOC. [1]
In this free online course, learners of both communities find a web-based collaborative learning environment and a place for linguistic and cultural exchange.
E-SCALE is aimed at Deaf learners willing to improve their level of LSF and written French or ASL and written English. The pedagogical setting includes 8 weeks of training, based on multimodal interactions between participants within synchronous and asynchronous activities. The Deaf e-space provides educational resources and involves web-based video-interaction, textchat, collaborative editing of documents…
- A training that is divided into 2 phases
The 8 weeks of the MOOC are divided into 2 phases:
- 2 levels of involvement in the tutorship
There are two possible levels of engagement: a first extended circle of “collective” tutors with a 4-week engagement, some of which may continue and form in phase 2 a core of “quadrem tutors and co-tutors” (4 weeks).
– The “collective” tutors hold about 2 hours weekly of consultation where they answer various questions with regard to languages, technical matters and content, and they moderate the forums used for the asynchronous parts.
Count around 3 working hours weekly (during phase 1).
– The role of the “quadrem tutor and co-tutor” is to support and encourage small Franco-American groups of four learners (“quadrems”) during phase 2, to watch over the process of the synchronous sessions, and to guide the participants in their work between the sessions and for the achievement of their final outcome. They follow each activity.
Amount of time to be determined accordingly to the number of quadrems and tutors registered.
Moreover every tutor and co-tutor undertakes to attend a hands-on pre-(m)OOC training that lasts 3 weeks, where the E-SCALE team informs them also about the different stages, the way of working with the platform, the research protocol and the rules which must be followed to implement it during the (m)OOC and to collect the appendant data.
The tutors will never have to teach classes, but they provide educational mentoring to the course participants. The experience acquired during the tutorship and the project data can be reinvested in the personal research work of the tutor/co-tutor.
The tutor has to bring in motivation to build up intercultural dialogue between the learners and to work with the colleagues from the other country.
- Required linguistic competences:
The working languages of the E-SCALE project are written English and French, as well as ASL and LSF. A satisfactory level of mastery of ASL and written English or LSF and written French is expected from the tutors and co-tutors (basic knowledge of the writing and/or signing of the other country are a plus).
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[1] Massive Open Online Course – interactive and free of charge
E-SCALE 