Educators representing all educational sectors are currently confronted with a myriad of challenging issues arising from the rapidly expanding integration of in-formation and communication technologies (ICTs) into educational contexts. These issues include mainly technical, administrative, and, most importantly, pedagogical issues (Tammelin 1996; 1997; 1998a). One of the main challenges emerging from the pedagogical issues is the call for renewed pedagogical thinking. As Sajavaara (1998, 99) aptly puts it, although the technical facilities are available, transferring old pedagogy into the new ICT-enhanced educational settings is not going get one very far. Indeed, it could be argued that a successful transition from a four-wall, teacher-fronted classroom into open, collaborative network-based learning envi-ronments involves a profound rethinking of one’s rationale for being a teacher or a learner.
As it does not suffice to only recognize the new needs arising from the issues revolving around the educational use of ICTs, many countries have drawn up strategies and taken concrete measures to respond to the challenges presented by these needs. In Finland, the Ministry of Education’s strategy “Education, Training and Research in the Information Society: A national strategy for 2000–2004”
(1999) approaches the issue from multiple perspectives. For instance, it focuses attention to criticism leveled at the lack of coordination and randomness in the de-velopment of and research into network-based education in the Finnish educational arena. This criticism is founded on the results of a nation-wide evaluation project carried out by Sitra, the Finnish National Fund for Research and Development, re-garding the use of ICTs in all Finnish educational sectors (Sinko & Lehtinen 1999).
Consequently, one of the four key areas outlined in the strategy’s plan for
imple-mentation centers on the development of collaborative network-based learning en-vironments as well as the development of methods for teaching and materials for studying in such environments. As the plan indicates, such developments call for systematic research and an efficient application of the results produced by such research.
From the perspective of Finnish higher education, Sitra’s evaluation report does not give the overall development of the pedagogical use of ICTs a very high mark either. In fact, the evaluation report states that the development of pedagogi-cally sound applications in higher education has not been very coherent. For exam-ple, the report points out that the pedagogical and technical support given to pro-jects carried out by single university departments is often scant and that the ideas generated in connection with various pilot projects do not often find their way to the use of others in a purposeful way.
On the global level, Salomon (2002, 71) reflects over the impact of ICTs and asks somewhat provokingly, “Technology and pedagogy: why don’t we see the promised revolution?” His question is in line with Sinko’s (1998, 217) argument which implies that although ICTs have come into classrooms and homes, the new learning paradigm has been mere rhetoric. Sinko further states that the new concept of learning seems to serve more as an argument for using ICTs instead of being actually implemented. He warns about the danger that the early majority of educa-tional institutions will adopt only the technology and reproduce their existing prac-tices in a new framework. Salomon (2002, 72), who shares Sinko’s apprehensions, further argues that technology becomes trivialized “in the way it is allowed to do precisely that which fits into the prevailing educational philosophy of cultural transmission and training for the world of yesterday.”
It is against the background described above that this study set out to examine the issue of introducing a technological innovation—a collaborative network-based learning environment—into foreign language and business communication teach-ing in Finnish higher education. As pointed out by Tella (1998a, 168), language teachers have for long had the tradition of using educational technology in their teaching. It is therefore somewhat surprising that the systematic integration of ICTs into language education seems slow compared, for example, with the rate at which language labs were fairly rapidly adopted into general use in Finnish schools and universities. On the other hand, the use of computer technology as such has been widespread in language education since the early 80s. This is evidenced by the prolific literature from the past twenty years on computer-assisted language learn-ing known as CALL. However, the emergence of such educational telecommunica-tions media as e-mail, computer conferencing, the World Wide Web, and video-conferencing has changed the face of CALL. Chapelle (2000, 204) has attempted to clarify this change by referring to CALL that does not require networking as “pre-network CALL”. Kern and Warschauer (2000, 1) advocate the use of an altogether
new term to describe the new mode of language teaching by calling it NBLT or network-based language teaching. As for the relationship between NBLT and CALL, Chapelle (2000, 222) suggests succinctly that NBLT represents an expan-sion rather than a reconceptualization of CALL.
As an area of research, network-based language teaching is still young. As Kern and Warschauer (2000, 2) point out, there is a growing amount of general research on computer-mediated communication (CMC), but in the field of NBLT there are still only a relatively limited number of large-scale published studies available. In Finland, no extensive published studies on network-based foreign lan-guage teaching seem to have emerged since Tella’s (1991; 1992a; 1992b) pioneer-ing research into introducpioneer-ing international communications networks and electronic mail into Finnish secondary school foreign language classrooms. Research on NBLT seems particularly scarce in Finnish universities and polytechnics although both obligatory and optional foreign language and business communication teach-ing is extensively offered by them. Some related studies conducted in the field of higher education are to be noted though. For instance, although Marttunen’s (1997) research on studying argumentation by electronic mail is not within the sphere of foreign language education, it does focus on Finnish university students’ argu-mentation skills and is therefore of special interest from the perspective of this study. Furthermore, Finnish students in the discipline of language teacher educa-tion have been subjected to participaeduca-tion in network-based environments and such endeavors have been researched (cf. e.g., Mononen-Aaltonen 1999; Kuure, L., Saarenkunnas, M. & Taalas, P. 2000; 2001). In addition, viewed from an interna-tional perspective, Warschauer’s (1997) study on electronic literacies among cul-turally and linguistically diverse college students is significant.
In their analysis of the current state of NBLT-related research, Kern and War-schauer (2000, 16) have identified a specific area in the field of network-based lan-guage education, which they consider still so new that very little research has yet been published. As they point out, the area that has been insufficiently investigated includes the particular impact of the use of multiple media on the teaching and learning experience and the pedagogical aspects related to such an experience. On the one hand, this present study hopes to make a contribution to attempts to fill this particular gap, while on the other hand, conducted as action research, the study seeks to combine theory with practice, by taking up the challenge of introducing a new technology-enhanced course format into language and business communica-tion teaching in higher educacommunica-tion.