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As more formal academic coursework moves online, especially to synchronous, multimodal sessions, the issue of directing and ensuring learner attention becomes particularly problematic. Polyfocalilty – individual and group attention distributed between and among information and communication sources and their varying modalities – becomes particularly challenging for online language education. This study set out to determine what instructional strategies online instructors are employing during their live conferencing sessions to meet such challenges. Seven online Russian language educators were interviewed concerning their practices. These instructors report instructional strategies that are addressed in the context of new media and new learning practice.

In the past decade, providing language instruction via computer-mediated communication (CMC) has seen tremendous growth throughout the world. With this increase in asynchronous instruction have come questions concerning the role of the instructor as it determines the quality and impact of learning and of what optimal faculty development might consist. This study addresses the question: Can simulated instructional conversations using CMC be used effectively in faculty professional development? An online professional development course for foreign language higher education faculty was designed, implemented, and its processes and outcomes documented and examined. Results indicate that readings, discussions, simulated practice, and reflections concerning engagement in instructional conversations can indeed foment awareness of the anatomy of effective online instructional conversations for foreign and second language instruction.

Where learner discourse has been the focus of much recent research on asynchonous online instruction, the specific forms of instructional discourse used by online educators has yet to be examined. Indeed, the majority of work in the area of foreign language and telecommunications has concentrated on student-student, student-peer interaction, and the kinds of language these contexts encourage. No research to date has tackled the real and potential scripts for educators in online conversations that are potentially instructional in nature. Our study examines the online teaching strategies employed by the teacher of a second-year Russian class that integrated computer mediated communication (CMC) for extended language practice and additional “embedded” instruction through the teacher's careful interventions. Techniques such as saturating the discourse with target forms, recasting, and corralling learning were successfully incorporated as instructional discourse and responded to as such by learners. Such instructional interventions mimic those of the ideal communicative classroom where instructors attempt to direct a focus on form while engaging learners in the active negotiation of meaning in the target language. The advantages of CMC in this regard include the opportunity for both teacher and students to stop the clock, examine the language being used in the online conversation, determine teachable and learnable moments, and respond accordingly.