Situated Group Design Challenge

Contextualization of Problem or Issue

Core French or French Second Language (FSL) students comprise over 30% of the Canadian public school population while French Immersion students now make up an additional 10%. Canada’s French Immersion programmes are forecast to grow, although there is evidence that this growth comes at the expense of FSL programmes (Lepage & Corbeil, p. 4).

The expansion of Core French, FSL and French Immersion programs across Canada roughly coincided with the emergence of ICT such as desktop computing, the Internet and mobile computing within North American school systems. (Parker & Davey, 2014) Recent technological developments promise to enhance second language instruction through the use of tools that provide meaningful interactions in a target language (Franciosi, 2017; Gill, 2011; Hess, 2011; Purushtoma et al., 2009; Ziegler & Feucht, 2012). Stephen Krashen, who developed the dominant cognitive theory of second-language acquisition (Krashen & Terrell, 1983), advocates strongly for using ICT to enhance instructional delivery. (Krashen et al., 2016)

Anecdotally, French-language educators complain of a lack of accessible digital resources for integration in their lessons. A lack of resources may deprive students of meaningful material in the language of instruction. Alternatively, resources may be available but educators struggle to identify digital tools in a World Wide Web that features very little French-language content (Sitsanis, 2018). Research suggests that a lack of awareness of available resources, and how to best integrate new technologies for educational purposes, are the major issues preventing ICT integration in the classroom (Turnbull & Lawrence, 2003; Delgado, Wardlow, McKnight & O’Malley, 2015.; Inan & Lowther, 2013) . Educators willing to integrate technology identify other obstacles preventing them from evaluating and adopting ICT resources as well, namely time constraints and lack of funds. (Ntuli & Kyei-Blankson; Karsenti & Gauthier). These realities likely prevent French second language educators from realising the educational potential of digital technologies.