@article{discovery10143065,
            year = {2020},
           month = {June},
         journal = {Journal of Education, Innovation, and Communication},
           title = {Maintaining and Enhancing Students' Collaborative Learning in a Japanese EFL Higher Education Context},
           pages = {91--106},
          volume = {SI},
            note = {This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.},
       publisher = {Communication Institute of Greece},
          author = {Kanno, M},
             url = {https://doi.org/10.34097/jeicom\%5fSP\%5fjune2020\%5f4},
        abstract = {Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a huge shift towards digital forms of education.
Although Japan has never gone into full lockdown, students have been strictly kept at home and
socially isolated from classroom learning for extended periods. Teachers were urged to create
online teaching and learning resources and began to consider the most suitable technologies to teach
their courses. This paper reports on a teacher's ongoing efforts to develop and deliver distancelearning English as a foreign language (EFL) courses in a higher education context. Drawing on a
view that learning is social development, the researcher focuses on the concept of social presence in
peer-to-peer communication that could enhance collaborative learning in a virtual classroom.
Synchronous distance learning courses were developed utilising a text-messaging application and
collaborative text-editing software with the aim to establish a communicative learning space.
Analysis into the students' interactions in Slack workspaces - a text messaging applicationindicated a variety of interpersonal, open, and cohesive communication that signalled psychological
closeness in the virtual learning environment. Group discussion sessions revealed that students
could feel connected to each other in the synchronous EFL courses, which demonstrated the
robustness of social interaction despite physical distancing. Major difficulties lay in three areas:
technology, the nature of the task, and some students' task preferences. These three areas need to be
addressed when designing and delivering a distance learning course.},
        keywords = {Collaborative learning, Computer-mediated learning, Distance education, Peer support,
Social presence}
}