Developing EFL students’ digital empathy through video production

Fostering EFL Learners’ Digital Empathy through Multimodal Composing

“…podcasting, video, webpage), this study incorporated video production of narratives into a secondary EFL class to examine the potential impact of DMC in relation to digital empathy development. This study not only resonates with the calls of Friesem (2016) and Chen (2018) to engage students with video production for more digital empathy in language classrooms, but also contributes to the research on DMC by examining its empathetic dimension, an aspect that remains largely unexplored, particularly in secondary EFL educational contexts.…”

“…García-Pérez, Santos-Delgado and Buzón-García (2016) have also argued that the social and interactive dimensions afforded by new technologies in education have made digital empathy a key literacy for promoting learning process in online environments. In the new language learning contexts created by digital media, being digitally empathetic, reflexive, and socially responsible can thus be considered an important way of doing, relating, thinking and being when English learners engage with online and offline practices of reading, writing and communicating afforded by digital media and multimodal technologies (Chen, 2018; Schieble and Kucinskiene, 2019).…”

“…In recent years, scholars (e.g. Chen, 2018) have taken digital empathy as a learnable and teachable skill. Nevertheless, researchers have pointed out that among the components of digital literacies, the social-empathetic/emotional dimension is the most difficult facet to develop as it involves cognitive (empathetic understanding) and metacognitive (adopting others’ perspectives) aspects, in addition to the affective aspect (Eshet-Alkalai, 2004).…”

“…As technological advancements have led to radical changes in the way contemporary learners of English as a second/foreign language (L2/EFL) read, write, and communicate, the problem of students’ lacking digital empathy is becoming a growing concern among language educators, researchers, and policy makers (Chen, 2018; Friesem, 2016). Such concern over empathy deficit has also received much attention beyond the field of English language teaching, as a number of studies in general educational settings have reported a surge of (cyber)bullying and a decline of students’ empathy in both online and offline contexts (Konrath et al, 2011; Ribble and Miller, 2013).…”

“…Researchers have attributed these problems to the impact of media and technology, suggesting that the possibility to share thoughts, feelings, and behaviours instantly through digital channels tends to remove the empathetic social filters that are common in traditional communications and thereby leads to more impersonal and uncritical interactions (Konrath et al, 2011; Terry and Cain, 2016). Given that the learning contexts of English and the needs of English learners continue to be significantly shaped by digital technologies and social media, the development of L2/EFL learners’ digital empathy is of paramount importance (Chen, 2018), thereby research on how students’ digital empathy can be promoted and how students can learn to participate as empathic and responsible members of relevant social groups and communities online is warranted.…”