A viewpoint on the place of CALL within the Digital Humanities: considering CALL journals, research data and the sharing of research results

Conférence invitéeThe term "Digital Humanities" (DH) received much attention at the MLA (Modern Language Association) convention in 2009. The term is now in widespread use within the Humanities. CALL may be directly concerned: our field belongs to the Humanities and, from the outset, we have had a strong interest in computers and computing. Although various meanings and interpretations can be attributed to the term DH, this presentation will address issues related to ways of promoting CALL research in order to meet what may soon become research standards within the Humanities. Starting with a historical overview of the release of research results, i.e. in academic journals, we will examine whether CALL encourages multilingual publications. We will then turn to links between journals and research data. We will consider the position of several disciplines (including linguistics) regarding ways to enhance replicability by linking research results and researcher data, increasing the visibility and credibility of research. Another move towards enhancing the quality of CALL research may be to collect, organize and share data stemming from learning situations in such a way that analyses can be clearly and overtly processed and discussed in our community. With this in mind, we will introduce the notion of Learning and Teaching Corpora (LETEC), and illustrate this methodology with data from online multimodal interactions. Beyond CALL research issues, such data may have different applications, both within the area of teacher-training (examples of Pedagogical Corpora will be given) and the general field of linguistics. Finally we will examine how sustained access to research results (articles and data) can be provided in open-access formats and criteria the CALL field will need to meet to become compliant with the so-called "OpenData"