How does digital context influence interaction in large live online lectures? The case of English-medium instruction

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the evolving genre of university lectures. It focuses on synchronous online lectures. The aim of the study is to shed some light on how interaction between teacher and students unfolds in large English-medium instruction (EMI) lectures in the digital context. A qualitative multimodal microanalysis of an episode of interaction was performed from an (inter)action multimodal analysis framework. This preliminary exploratory study reveals the structural and multimodal complexity of interaction in live online lectures. EMI teacher’s semiotic resources combine to make meaning comprehensible in a lingua franca and to engage learners in a virtual context where there is not eye-contact with them. Suggestions are made to undertake contrastive studies on interaction in online and face-to-face lectures that may respond to the need of EMI teacher training. This paper aims to contribute to the literature of this still unexplored academic instructional digital genre.

KEYWORDS:

• Synchronous videoconferencing
• live online lectures
• large lectures
• interaction
• English-medium instruction
• multimodality

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the teacher who gave his permission to use the recordings of his classes. Without his collaboration, this research would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. EUDICO Linguistic Annotator (http:/www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/), developed at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MIP) (Nijmegen, The Netherlands).

2. Syllable prominence is marked in bold and capital letters.

3. // indicates that student talk overlaps teacher talk.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (Grant PPI 3 [2015–2017], EDUC-04).

Notes on contributors

Mercedes Querol-Julián

Mercedes Querol-Julián is an Associate Professor in the Department of English teaching at the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (Spain). She leads the research group PRODIGI (Personal and Professional Development through Digital Genres). Her current research focuses mainly on the areas of interpersonal relationships and multimodality in academic spoken discourses, with particular interest in online teaching and English-medium education at university. She has published on these topics in journals such as English for Specific Purposes or System, and book chapters in Routledge or John Benjamins.