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The Challenges of Telecollaboration
The complexities of the objectives of telecollaboration ("telecollaborative tasks can and should integrate the development of language, intercultural competence, and online literacies" ) can generate a series of challenges and issues for educators and learners. O’Dowd and Ritter (2006) examined and categorized the potential reasons for failed communication in telecollaborative projects, sub-dividing them into four levels which, the authors point out, can also overlap and interrelate:


 * individual
 * class
 * socio-institutional
 * interactional

Challenges at Individual Level
O'Dowd and Ritter focus their attention initially on the individual level. The researchers indicate the psychobiographical and educational backgrounds of the telecollaborative partners are potential sources for dysfunctional communications, with focus on the following two primary aspects:

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC)
The concept of intercultural communicative competence was established by Byram (1997) who stated that there are 5 dimensions (or '5 savoirs') that make an individual interculturally competent: these are a combination of skills of interpreting, of relating, of discovery and of interaction, attitudes, knowledge and critical awareness. Learners who embark on a telecollaborative project with immature intercultural communicative competence may have difficulty in carrying out the tasks usefully. For example, teenage students may struggle to have full understanding of how the differences in collectivist and individualistic societies will affect the behaviors of their members, potentially generating very different communication styles and patterns and potential misunderstandings.

Motivation and expectations regarding participation in the project
Dissonance in terms of motivation and commitment levels and expectations are also potentially sources of tension and misunderstanding for learning partners. For example, long response times can be interpreted as a lack of interest or short responses as a lack of openness or friendliness (Ware, 2005).

Teacher-teacher relationship
Fundamental to a successful telecollaborative project is the nature of the teachers' own collaborative partnerships. Solid teacher partnerships are essential to the success of telecollaboration and ideally should be constructed and consolidated well before the students embark on the project. O'Dowd and Ritter place the teacher-teacher relationship on the class level. Compatibility, in terms of type of project sought, or of the linguistic level of one's students, does not automatically guarantee compatibility in terms of teaching style, commitment levels, communication skills or of personality. According to O'Dowd and Ritter (2006), telecollaboration can be viewed as "a form of virtual team teaching" which demands high levels of communication and cooperation with a partner whom they may not have met face to face. Furthermore, since telecollaboration has been devised as a vehicle both for linguistic and intercultural communication, educators themselves also have to learn to be 'intercultural speakers' (Byram, 1997) and avoid the same culturally inappropriate behaviors, typecasting, culture clashes and misunderstandings which they are responsible for steering their learners away from.

Task design
The teacher-teacher relationship comes into play also in the sphere of task design. Teachers will be heavily influenced by the curricular needs of their own institution, and which are unlikely to match exactly the requirements of their partner institute. The themes and sequencing of the tasks must, therefore, be the result of a compromise which satisfies the curricular needs of both sides. Reaching compromises necessarily implies that the partners be willing to invest time and energy to the demands of planning, and that they are sensitive to the needs of others. Teachers also need to be wary about neglecting content in order to address the substantial technological elements of the project.

Learner-matching procedures
Successful pair and group formation is crucial to successful telecollaboration, however factors such as age, gender, foreign language proficiency, or unevenly distributed groups, can impact projects substantially, leading to the dilemma of whether it is more advisable to leave pairings and groupings to chance or to attempt to assign partners according to a rationale, however challenging foreseeing compatibilities and incompatibilities might be.

Local group dynamics
In telecollaborative projects, most of the attention tends to be focused on the online interactions and relationships, with the consequent risk of neglecting the local group. The local group is the context within which communication, interaction, negotiation and, thus, a large part of the learning process take place. Consequently these relationships also require the teachers' guidance and monitoring.

Pre-exchange briefings
A comprehensive preparatory phase is an essential element in effective telecollaborative projects. If teachers can forewarn learners of likely issues which might arise, the learners will be better equipped to deal with the issues in such a way that does not compromise the quality of the exchange. Potentially problematic areas include include technical problems, a lack of information about one's partner and his/her environment, as well as partners' expectations not matching.

Technology
Both the types of available technological tools and access to them can impact the learners' relationship with their partners. More sophisticated technological tools on one side can make a less well-equipped telecollaborative partner feel he/she is at a disadvantage. Moreover, restrictions in accessibility can materially limit opportunities for partners to interact, with repercussions on the construction of the relationship, including generating an erroneous impression of disinterest when a learner with limited technological access is less responsive than a partner who has unlimited access.

General organization of the course of study
O'Dowd and Ritter include in their list of socio-institutional challenges the organization of the learners' general course of studies, and refer to Belz and Müller-Hartmann's (2003) identification of four key areas which can influence the outcome of German-American telecollaborations:


 * differences in academic calendars
 * differences in assessment modalities
 * differences in the educational background of the teachers and in their aims
 * differences in student contact hours and in the university infrastructure

All the researchers agree that these differences can greatly affect the outcome of the project, as they can generate differing expectations regarding the volume of work, the meeting of deadlines, and so forth. O'Dowd and Ritter also indicate the pairing of students whose main focus of academic interest may not be the same as a possible source of dysfunction, in addition to the potentially substantial impact of a clash of institutional policies and philosophies regulating and underlying all aspects of the learning and teaching processes.

Differences in prestige values of cultures and languages
In sociolinguistics, the concept of prestige refers to the level of regard accorded certain languages, or forms of the same language, such as dialects. Since telecollaboration involves intercultural communicative competence as much as purely linguistic skills, the interactions between telecollaborative partners can be negatively affected by prestige-based attitudes both to language and culture, which in turn can lead to the ranking of one language and culture over the other, with serious repercussions on the functionality of the telecollaborative partnership.

Challenges at Interactional Level
At this level, cultural differences relative to communicative behaviors, such as attitudes to the use of small talk, can be a source of misunderstanding and misinterpretation, and can have potentially damaging effects on the quality or usefulness of a telecollaboration. These interactional divergences can occur within the following communicative domains:


 * Illocutionary (the intention behind utterances such as promising, threatening or requesting)
 * Discourse (features of contextualized language use, such as the setting, voice pitch, style or posture)
 * Participation (how the communications are organized in terms of turn-taking, speed of responses, and so forth)
 * Stylistic (tone and register, including the appropriateness of humor, slang or formal lexis)
 * Nonverbal (in telecollaboration this refers to the area of compensatory modes of expression as substitutes for missing visual and paralinguistic cues, such the posting of emoticons)