Mats Deutschmann | Umeå University (original) (raw)
Papers by Mats Deutschmann
Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 3rd Conference stein(DHN 2018), Helsinki, Finland, March 7-9, 2018, 2018
Research Methods for Creating and Curating Data in the Digital Humanities, 2016
Online Course Management, 2018
The challenges in creating a collaborative environment for online learning are great. This chapte... more The challenges in creating a collaborative environment for online learning are great. This chapter describes some practical examples of community building in online learning contexts and discusses the effects of such activities. It draws its data from six years of online courses in English at Mid Sweden University, where the author was employed from 2003-2009 and worked with development and implementation of their Internet course program.
The EuroCALL Review, 2012
This paper presents further innovative use of virtual worlds under the pilot stages of ASSIS (A S... more This paper presents further innovative use of virtual worlds under the pilot stages of ASSIS (A Second Step in Second Life), a project funded by Umeå University. One of the aims of the project is to make use of the affordances offered by Second Life in order to raise sociolinguistic language awareness among teacher trainees and other students studying courses in sociolinguistics. Several experiments were conducted where creative use of the avatar in combination with so-called “voice morphing” (a tool which allows the voice of the speaker to be distorted so that a male speaker can sound more feminine and vice versa) allowed students to enter the virtual world incognito in order to “experience” a different linguistic identity. Activities were conducted in cross-cultural settings involving students from Sweden and Chile. The paper presents the initial stages of development of a model for how language awareness issues can be internalised through first-hand experience in virtual worlds.
Open Linguistics, 2020
This study explores how stereotypical preconceptions about gender and conversational behaviour ma... more This study explores how stereotypical preconceptions about gender and conversational behaviour may affect observers’ perceptions of a speaker’s performance. Using updated matched-guise techniques, we digitally manipulated the same recording of a conversation to alter the voice quality of “Speaker A” to sound “male” or “female.” Respondents’ perceptions of the conversational behaviour of Speaker A in the two guises were then measured with particular focus on floor apportionment, interruptions and signalling interest. We also measured respondents’ explicit stereotypical gender preconceptions of these aspects. Results showed that respondents perceived the male guise as having more floor apportionment and interrupting more than the female guise. Results also indicated that the respondents had explicit stereotypes that matched these patterns, i.e. that interrupting and taking space were deemed to be stereotypically male behaviour, while signalling interest was deemed to be a female featu...
International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 2009
Successes, Challenges, and Issues
This paper presents further innovative use of virtual worlds under the pilot stages of ASSIS (A S... more This paper presents further innovative use of virtual worlds under the pilot stages of ASSIS (A Second Step in Second Life), a project funded by Umeå University. One aim of the project is to make use of the affordances offered by Second Life in order to raise sociolinguistic language awareness among teacher trainees and other students studying sociolinguistics. Several experiments have been conducted where creative use of the avatar in combination with so-called "voice-morphing" allowed students to be exposed to, or experience different linguistic identities. In the following paper, we describe four such experiments. In the first, we recreated a classic sociolinguistic experimental design, the so-called matched-guise test, in order to test whether our female students were evaluated differently on various personal characteristics when they appeared as male avatars. Contrary to previous match-guise studies, our results showed that all the females were more positively evaluated than all the 'males'. However, this overall pattern was very likely a result of the poor quality of the female-to-male voice-morph. In the second experiment, students were offered the possibility of experiencing the opposite gender in a cross-cultural course setting in SL, in order to reflect over how this "gender change" affected the way they were treated in conversations. Only one student took this opportunity leaving few conclusions, except awareness of the ethically problematic aspects of such arrangements. In the third experiment, we used voice-morphing in SL to raise students' awareness of how gender stereotypes can influence their perception of teachers. In addition to the real (male) teacher, we created two voice-morphed teacher assistant avatars in SL, one male and one female. Student evaluations showed that they were partly influenced by stereotypes and partly not. The design of the experiment was criticized by the students, however, as they felt that they had had too little time with the teacher assistants to evaluate them properly and therefore gave average ratings. In the fourth study we used similar characters as in the previous study, but in an online lecture during which the real teacher spoke as himself and also gave talks, one as his female and one as his male PhD student. The students listening to the lecture evaluated the female PhD student as more likeable and the male PhD student as more intelligent. After, the design was revealed and the students reflected extensively on the result and how unconscious gender stereotypes influence how we judge people. The models and studies presented here point to the potential of virtual worlds as tools for awarenessraising activities regarding gender as a social construct.
Designs for Learning, 2009
Through the grant “Virtual Campus for Life Long Learning” (NUV, 2007), we have gained experience ... more Through the grant “Virtual Campus for Life Long Learning” (NUV, 2007), we have gained experience in the design and building of a virtual island or “sim” in Second Life for the purpose of education. ... ub.umu.se. Publications. ...
Island Studies, 2014
Many studies have shown that Second Language (L2) Medium of Instruction (MoI) policies in Africa ... more Many studies have shown that Second Language (L2) Medium of Instruction (MoI) policies in Africa are linked to educational inequity, substandard teaching practice, low literacy skills and poor over ...
International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2014
This study investigates the effects of unequal power relations on participation in a group of stu... more This study investigates the effects of unequal power relations on participation in a group of student teachers and invited professionals in two collaborative workshops in Second Life. The data includes recordings, group reflections, and individual questionnaires. Participation was examined from the aspects of floor space, turn length, and utterance functions and complemented with student reflections. The results show that at a general level, the differences of floor space and turn length between the invited professionals and the students were small. Moreover, the invited professionals did more conversational management than the students, while the students performed more supportive speech acts. There were, however, individual variations.
New Initiatives
Lifelong learning skills have moved from being a side-affect of a formal education to skills that... more Lifelong learning skills have moved from being a side-affect of a formal education to skills that are explicitly trained during a university degree. In a case study a University class undertook a translation from Swedish to English in a keystroke logging environment and then replayed their translations in pairs while discussing their thought processes when undertaking the translations, and why they made particular choices and changes to their translations. Computer keystroke logging coupled with Peerbased intervention assisted the students in discussing how they worked with their translations, enabled them to see how their ideas relating to the translation developed as they worked with the text, develop reflection skills and learn from their peers. The process showed that Computer Keystroke logging coupled with Peer-based intervention has to potential to (1) support student reflection and discussion around their translation tasks, (2) enhance student motivation and enthusiasm for translation and (3) develop peer-to-peer supported reflection as a lifelong learning skill.
Pedagogical Models and Constructivist Approaches
Internationally, Second Life (SL) has in recent years become accepted as a platform for innovativ... more Internationally, Second Life (SL) has in recent years become accepted as a platform for innovative educational activities at many universities. One such activity includes ways of enabling students coming in contact with other students in so-called telecollaboration. Using an Activity Theoretical model, the present case study describes the design and initial implementation of a telecollaborative learning activity between four universities in Second Life. The four student groups were all attending quite different programs and the main challenges encountered were that of accommodating the different needs taking the diverse motivational objectives of each group into account, and making use of affordances the tool (SL) in this pursuit.
Current debate in education suggests the need to promote learning contexts where learners can bec... more Current debate in education suggests the need to promote learning contexts where learners can become increasingly active in the co-construction of knowledge within their learning community. Ironica ...
… and Teaching in the Virtual World …, 2009
... carefully schedule the courses so that our participants could attend, taking aspects such as ... more ... carefully schedule the courses so that our participants could attend, taking aspects such as ... learning will depend on a number of factors including the learners' digital competence, learner ... What Tasks are Suited for SL It is common knowledge that foreign language classrooms in ...
International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2013
This paper presents some of the overall frameworks and models for language learning that were use... more This paper presents some of the overall frameworks and models for language learning that were used under Avalon (Access to Virtual and Action Learning live ONline), an EU co-funded project aimed at developing language-learning scenarios in virtual worlds. The introduction and background summarize some of the theories that constitute the starting points for the designs and are followed by a discussion of how the affordances of virtual worlds support the communicative language-learning model used in the project. The authors’ main focus then turns to pedagogic design, where the authors present the methods used during the project and some generic aspects of course designs that were developed. The article ends with a more specific look at examples of task design from the courses given under the project framework.
… Conference ICT for …, 2010
... Schneider, Christel, (author) ICC show less... Mittuniversitetet Fakulteten för humanvetenska... more ... Schneider, Christel, (author) ICC show less... Mittuniversitetet Fakulteten för humanvetenskap. Institutionen för humaniora. ... The project is a transversal programme which targets language learners from the Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus and Grundtvig communities. ...
This article explores the development of a course for teaching a language in a virtual world. In ... more This article explores the development of a course for teaching a language in a virtual world. In particular we evaluated the'Course entitled," Social English for Doctoral Students" that took place in the spring semester of 2007. This course activated learners and educators using a variety of support media including Marratech, an online conferencing system, and Second Life, a virtual world platform. The pilot course formed part of a one year project sponsored by The Norwegian University program (NUV) entitled" A Virtual Platform for Life ...
Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries 3rd Conference stein(DHN 2018), Helsinki, Finland, March 7-9, 2018, 2018
Research Methods for Creating and Curating Data in the Digital Humanities, 2016
Online Course Management, 2018
The challenges in creating a collaborative environment for online learning are great. This chapte... more The challenges in creating a collaborative environment for online learning are great. This chapter describes some practical examples of community building in online learning contexts and discusses the effects of such activities. It draws its data from six years of online courses in English at Mid Sweden University, where the author was employed from 2003-2009 and worked with development and implementation of their Internet course program.
The EuroCALL Review, 2012
This paper presents further innovative use of virtual worlds under the pilot stages of ASSIS (A S... more This paper presents further innovative use of virtual worlds under the pilot stages of ASSIS (A Second Step in Second Life), a project funded by Umeå University. One of the aims of the project is to make use of the affordances offered by Second Life in order to raise sociolinguistic language awareness among teacher trainees and other students studying courses in sociolinguistics. Several experiments were conducted where creative use of the avatar in combination with so-called “voice morphing” (a tool which allows the voice of the speaker to be distorted so that a male speaker can sound more feminine and vice versa) allowed students to enter the virtual world incognito in order to “experience” a different linguistic identity. Activities were conducted in cross-cultural settings involving students from Sweden and Chile. The paper presents the initial stages of development of a model for how language awareness issues can be internalised through first-hand experience in virtual worlds.
Open Linguistics, 2020
This study explores how stereotypical preconceptions about gender and conversational behaviour ma... more This study explores how stereotypical preconceptions about gender and conversational behaviour may affect observers’ perceptions of a speaker’s performance. Using updated matched-guise techniques, we digitally manipulated the same recording of a conversation to alter the voice quality of “Speaker A” to sound “male” or “female.” Respondents’ perceptions of the conversational behaviour of Speaker A in the two guises were then measured with particular focus on floor apportionment, interruptions and signalling interest. We also measured respondents’ explicit stereotypical gender preconceptions of these aspects. Results showed that respondents perceived the male guise as having more floor apportionment and interrupting more than the female guise. Results also indicated that the respondents had explicit stereotypes that matched these patterns, i.e. that interrupting and taking space were deemed to be stereotypically male behaviour, while signalling interest was deemed to be a female featu...
International Journal of Information Communication Technologies and Human Development, 2009
Successes, Challenges, and Issues
This paper presents further innovative use of virtual worlds under the pilot stages of ASSIS (A S... more This paper presents further innovative use of virtual worlds under the pilot stages of ASSIS (A Second Step in Second Life), a project funded by Umeå University. One aim of the project is to make use of the affordances offered by Second Life in order to raise sociolinguistic language awareness among teacher trainees and other students studying sociolinguistics. Several experiments have been conducted where creative use of the avatar in combination with so-called "voice-morphing" allowed students to be exposed to, or experience different linguistic identities. In the following paper, we describe four such experiments. In the first, we recreated a classic sociolinguistic experimental design, the so-called matched-guise test, in order to test whether our female students were evaluated differently on various personal characteristics when they appeared as male avatars. Contrary to previous match-guise studies, our results showed that all the females were more positively evaluated than all the 'males'. However, this overall pattern was very likely a result of the poor quality of the female-to-male voice-morph. In the second experiment, students were offered the possibility of experiencing the opposite gender in a cross-cultural course setting in SL, in order to reflect over how this "gender change" affected the way they were treated in conversations. Only one student took this opportunity leaving few conclusions, except awareness of the ethically problematic aspects of such arrangements. In the third experiment, we used voice-morphing in SL to raise students' awareness of how gender stereotypes can influence their perception of teachers. In addition to the real (male) teacher, we created two voice-morphed teacher assistant avatars in SL, one male and one female. Student evaluations showed that they were partly influenced by stereotypes and partly not. The design of the experiment was criticized by the students, however, as they felt that they had had too little time with the teacher assistants to evaluate them properly and therefore gave average ratings. In the fourth study we used similar characters as in the previous study, but in an online lecture during which the real teacher spoke as himself and also gave talks, one as his female and one as his male PhD student. The students listening to the lecture evaluated the female PhD student as more likeable and the male PhD student as more intelligent. After, the design was revealed and the students reflected extensively on the result and how unconscious gender stereotypes influence how we judge people. The models and studies presented here point to the potential of virtual worlds as tools for awarenessraising activities regarding gender as a social construct.
Designs for Learning, 2009
Through the grant “Virtual Campus for Life Long Learning” (NUV, 2007), we have gained experience ... more Through the grant “Virtual Campus for Life Long Learning” (NUV, 2007), we have gained experience in the design and building of a virtual island or “sim” in Second Life for the purpose of education. ... ub.umu.se. Publications. ...
Island Studies, 2014
Many studies have shown that Second Language (L2) Medium of Instruction (MoI) policies in Africa ... more Many studies have shown that Second Language (L2) Medium of Instruction (MoI) policies in Africa are linked to educational inequity, substandard teaching practice, low literacy skills and poor over ...
International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2014
This study investigates the effects of unequal power relations on participation in a group of stu... more This study investigates the effects of unequal power relations on participation in a group of student teachers and invited professionals in two collaborative workshops in Second Life. The data includes recordings, group reflections, and individual questionnaires. Participation was examined from the aspects of floor space, turn length, and utterance functions and complemented with student reflections. The results show that at a general level, the differences of floor space and turn length between the invited professionals and the students were small. Moreover, the invited professionals did more conversational management than the students, while the students performed more supportive speech acts. There were, however, individual variations.
New Initiatives
Lifelong learning skills have moved from being a side-affect of a formal education to skills that... more Lifelong learning skills have moved from being a side-affect of a formal education to skills that are explicitly trained during a university degree. In a case study a University class undertook a translation from Swedish to English in a keystroke logging environment and then replayed their translations in pairs while discussing their thought processes when undertaking the translations, and why they made particular choices and changes to their translations. Computer keystroke logging coupled with Peerbased intervention assisted the students in discussing how they worked with their translations, enabled them to see how their ideas relating to the translation developed as they worked with the text, develop reflection skills and learn from their peers. The process showed that Computer Keystroke logging coupled with Peer-based intervention has to potential to (1) support student reflection and discussion around their translation tasks, (2) enhance student motivation and enthusiasm for translation and (3) develop peer-to-peer supported reflection as a lifelong learning skill.
Pedagogical Models and Constructivist Approaches
Internationally, Second Life (SL) has in recent years become accepted as a platform for innovativ... more Internationally, Second Life (SL) has in recent years become accepted as a platform for innovative educational activities at many universities. One such activity includes ways of enabling students coming in contact with other students in so-called telecollaboration. Using an Activity Theoretical model, the present case study describes the design and initial implementation of a telecollaborative learning activity between four universities in Second Life. The four student groups were all attending quite different programs and the main challenges encountered were that of accommodating the different needs taking the diverse motivational objectives of each group into account, and making use of affordances the tool (SL) in this pursuit.
Current debate in education suggests the need to promote learning contexts where learners can bec... more Current debate in education suggests the need to promote learning contexts where learners can become increasingly active in the co-construction of knowledge within their learning community. Ironica ...
… and Teaching in the Virtual World …, 2009
... carefully schedule the courses so that our participants could attend, taking aspects such as ... more ... carefully schedule the courses so that our participants could attend, taking aspects such as ... learning will depend on a number of factors including the learners' digital competence, learner ... What Tasks are Suited for SL It is common knowledge that foreign language classrooms in ...
International Journal of Virtual and Personal Learning Environments, 2013
This paper presents some of the overall frameworks and models for language learning that were use... more This paper presents some of the overall frameworks and models for language learning that were used under Avalon (Access to Virtual and Action Learning live ONline), an EU co-funded project aimed at developing language-learning scenarios in virtual worlds. The introduction and background summarize some of the theories that constitute the starting points for the designs and are followed by a discussion of how the affordances of virtual worlds support the communicative language-learning model used in the project. The authors’ main focus then turns to pedagogic design, where the authors present the methods used during the project and some generic aspects of course designs that were developed. The article ends with a more specific look at examples of task design from the courses given under the project framework.
… Conference ICT for …, 2010
... Schneider, Christel, (author) ICC show less... Mittuniversitetet Fakulteten för humanvetenska... more ... Schneider, Christel, (author) ICC show less... Mittuniversitetet Fakulteten för humanvetenskap. Institutionen för humaniora. ... The project is a transversal programme which targets language learners from the Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus and Grundtvig communities. ...
This article explores the development of a course for teaching a language in a virtual world. In ... more This article explores the development of a course for teaching a language in a virtual world. In particular we evaluated the'Course entitled," Social English for Doctoral Students" that took place in the spring semester of 2007. This course activated learners and educators using a variety of support media including Marratech, an online conferencing system, and Second Life, a virtual world platform. The pilot course formed part of a one year project sponsored by The Norwegian University program (NUV) entitled" A Virtual Platform for Life ...