There was considerable discussion regarding the amount of scaffolding provided (or not) in the chapters. For instance one group found that there was a lack of language support for the students when the teachers-students were exchanging emails (Mynamar refugee - Sabadell school). The lack of modality (mostly only emails) was also found to be a bit lacking.
Other comments were how many of the telecollaborative projects had different learning objectives according to the partners. This is an important point -it highlights the fact that there is no need for the groups to go lockstep in the process when designing and implementing telecollaborative projects. This is true within the same group; as we’ve just seen with the reading circles. Everyone, even in the same class, has to view, see, read or discuss the exact same materials. Teachers tend to fear that there is ‘uneven’ learning if not all the class materials are equally distributed but studies show that this is not a problem, moreover, even when students are all exposed to the exact materials with the exact same amount of time, the learning outcomes will almost inevitably be different. Along these lines, one group pointed out how the design and implementation can aim to cover what they called ‘the low floor’ and the ‘high floor’ - planning so that students of all learning levels can feel included. At the same time, it was also mentioned that it is not always easy to reach ‘balanced’ learning objectives if they are not the same across the board for all participants.
Several groups pointed out the relevance of the projects were for making connections with the ‘real world’. Mentioning that language education (and all education for that matter) often struggles to find ways to keep learners motivated; the chance to contextualize students’ interests while capitalizing on the opportunities for them to develop specific communicative skills (e.g. negotiating, discussing, sharing) with telecollaborative partners during the projects is seen as a great benefit of telecollaboration.
Another group pointed out the enhanced use of jigsaw - a staple of task-based language learning, in telecollaborative projects (the ‘pieces’ are discussed and negotiated amongst international partners, not just class peers).
Several chapters discussed projects that involved having one group teach each other, or else working together to create materials to teach a third party. This was considered a very motivating and empowering feature of the projects.