Hayo:
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest installment of Voices from LLT, language learning and technologies, a very own special podcast. My name is Hajo Reinders and today I have the pleasure of chatting with two of our special issue editors, Matt and Bronson. Matt, would you like to say hi to our listeners and viewers?

M. Kessler:
Yeah, hi, hello everyone. Thanks for having us first and foremost. My name is Matt Kessler. I'm an associate professor of applied linguistics at the University of South Florida in Tampa, where I do research primarily in call, of course, and second language writing.

Bronson Hui:
Hi, thank you so much for having us. My name is Bronson Hui, Assistant Professor of Second Language Acquisition. I'm at the University of Maryland College Park. So I do research on ISLA, instructorless second language acquisition, and then COLE is part of my interest as well.

Hayo:
Excellent, and you two have been working very hard and for a long time on a special issue for language learning and technology. I know from experience how much work, time and effort goes into editing a special issue. So we are very keen to hear about the process that, well, let's start with how you came to identify.

your special issue topic as something that needed to be included. So Matt, maybe you can just take us off and just tell us a little bit about the topic that you address in the special issue.

M. Kessler:
Yeah, yeah. So Bronson and I have actually started, we've known each other for quite some time. We did our PhDs together at Michigan State University. So we're very familiar with each other and each other's work, but we don't really have a lot of interactions, let's say, in the academic world in terms of the research that we do. So we were kind of thinking about our own interests and how we might work together and do something interesting in the field.

and so multimodality is one of the areas where I think we, both have interests, but from very different perspectives, right? Bronson's is, you know, in Bronson, can jump in and correct me if I'm, I'm wrong, but more from the ISLA psycholinguistic perspective, really looking at the processing of multimodal input. And, mine's more from sort of a pedagogical classroom based second language writing perspective and looking at how.

multimodal activities are used in the classroom and what types of things teachers can do to improve their pedagogy. So there doesn't really, I think, seem like maybe a lot of overlap between those two except the word multimodality. But together, I think we sort of recognize through our reading that, you know, in Bronson's area in ISLA and psycholinguistics, a lot of this research, which is really interesting, is looking at input and sort of

processing of that input and those processes that go on. Whereas in second language writing, a lot of the research that I'm looking at is looking at the output, right? And we're, but we're not really looking so much at the input. So this special issue sort of stemmed from, from that in looking at how can we connect these, these two research areas in sort of having studies that look at what is going on in people's heads or, or, you know, what are they looking at when they're engaging with multimodal input?

And how does that result in learning and output over time? So that's really where that stems from.

Hayo:
Yeah, that's very interesting and it always amazes me how this sort of serendipity plays a major role in bringing people together who, like the two of you, then chat and say, hey, I'm looking at it from this side and you're looking at it from that side. Maybe we should bring the two together. So obviously that must have been one gap, I suppose, that you aimed to fill with the special issues, bringing these different elements, different aspects.

together. Beyond that, Bronson, what other areas did you attempt to address in the special issue?

Bronson Hui:
Yeah, I think one of the things that we talked about, know, when conceptualizing this special issue is the fact that, you know, there is what we call, you know, a mediation relationship, right? So between learning conditions, learning processes, and learning products. So oftentimes, you know, be it like a multimodal input study, like a caption study or reading while listening study.

or in writing study, right? So oftentimes people look at learning conditions and then the learning outcome. So the process in the middle, if I remember correctly, at least from the input side of things, right? The process is often overlooked. And if I remember correctly, Matt said that in the writing world, often people talked about the process and all that, but then the learning outcome is not always there.

So bridging, you know, the three pillars, you will, right, learning condition, learning processes, and learning outcomes, you know, is one of the things that we wanted to put more emphasis on.

Hayo:
So tell us a little bit about the process of initiating the special issue. mean, for some of our listeners, know, editing a journal issue is unfamiliar, the process of what that entails. So how did you, for example, try to find authors and contributions relevant to this topic?

M. Kessler:
Yeah, so I can go ahead and take that one. There are different approaches, right, as you mentioned, to sort of editing or putting together a special issue. For some journals, they like you in advance to sort of have your author list or, you know, prospective author list set. For other journals, they like maybe an open call where it's open to anyone in the field who happens to see that advertisement or call for proposals. And sometimes it's a combination of both.

So that's the approach that we took there. And I don't know, guess I should, I don't know. Do I keep going? Yeah, we lost him.

Bronson Hui:
No, think he said that it recorded locally on your computer. But I guess we will wait as well.

M. Kessler:
okay.

We'll wait. I can go again, yeah.

Bronson Hui:
So your mic is huge, right? But then is it just a USB or how does it work? Like do you?

M. Kessler:
It's... it's really not... well I guess it is. It's a stand. You can put it in different directions.

Bronson Hui:
But then what is the output? There's a USB-C that goes to your computer.

M. Kessler:
It connects to a USB. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So my room here is really echo-y. So if I have to record things, if I have to record things, then it sounds, it sounds like I'm in a hallway. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Bronson Hui:
Bronson Hui:
So the foam helps, right? The foam helps, okay. I see.

Bronson Hui:
We wanted to get one of those for the eye tracking that they they wanted to do something Yeah

M. Kessler:
It's not too, Hayao just sent me, yeah, he just sent us one, an email that says, my computer booted me out, be back in a minute. There it is. Yeah, it's not too bad, I think it was like 50, 60 dollars maybe.

Bronson Hui:
Yeah.

Bronson Hui:
Yeah.

M. Kessler:
Do remember how many submissions we had?

M. Kessler:
think it was like 60, 70 more?

Bronson Hui:
No, that many?

M. Kessler:
see.

Bronson Hui:
expression of interest, right?

M. Kessler:
Yeah.

M. Kessler:
Readings for special issue reposals.

M. Kessler:
I think we had 72. Oh, no worries.

Hayo:
Hey guys, sorry about that. Can you me? My computer decided to boot me up, but I think I figured out the reason why I had VPN running in the background and I think Riverside doesn't like that. So hopefully we'll be okay now because otherwise I'm on a Starlink connection. anyway, apologies for that. So if you recall the last question, Matt, you just started answering.

M. Kessler:
Yeah, I can hear you now.

Hayo:
So take that as questioned, as posed, that question. So whenever you're ready, if you just want to respond, I'll splice in my own question later.

M. Kessler:
Okay, yeah. So yeah, there are different approaches to special issues and sometimes they vary from journal to journal and sometimes the journals leave it up to the guest editors in terms of how they'd like to run that process. So sometimes that involves you inviting as the special issue editors, specific people, short list of people that you have in mind. And other times it involves an open call for anyone who might happen to see that call for proposals.

So we sort of chose a combination of those two we we reached out to leading scholars who work in multimodality in both of our areas and asked them You know if they had something if they might consider submitting a proposal but then we also put out a broader call with the help of the journal as well in terms of If is there's anything interesting that we might see so we ended up with a lot of submissions. I'm looking here

We ended up with over 70 submissions, which is pretty good. I would say having edited special issues before, you sometimes you may get 30, sometimes you may get 40. So we were, we were thrilled with 70 and that gave us a lot to work with. But from there, it involves sort of whittling it down, extending invitations for full papers. And then all of those papers went through the peer review process to see if they could ultimately make it into the special issue or not.

Hayo:
I can confirm 70 for those listening receiving 70 submissions for in as a response to a call for papers in a relatively specific field is a lot. So that clearly shows that the community is very active and that there are a lot of people working in this space, which is great to see. You mentioned of course that different journals have different ways of working and allowing or encouraging.

especially issue editors to take on particular approaches to call it for papers and so on. You know, not fishing for compliments, but how was your experience with LLT?

Bronson Hui:
Well, I think we sent an inquiry email first. I don't think LLT at the time that we initiated this had a regular call that people can respond to. So we sent an inquiry email to the editors there. And then we prepared a proposal and then the editors liked it and then we were invited to be on board.

What is the current policy now? Just in case anybody listening is interested in guest editing a special issue. For special issues.

Hayo:
At the moment, we have so many special issues lined up. There are only a very limited number that we can accommodate because of course, number of submissions, general submissions to the journal have increased so much that there is of course limited amount of space in the journal. So at the moment, we are not accepting any new submissions, new applications because it would be four years or something before we could publish it. So you're lucky. You're very lucky.

Bronson Hui:
Mmm.

Bronson Hui:
Yeah. We are lucky. Yeah, I was gonna say. I was gonna say, yeah. Yeah.

M. Kessler:
Wow.

Hayo:
And we're lucky to have you, so that's good. So I was actually curious to learn, and maybe Bronson, can start here and then Matt, you can chip in, what you learned from the submissions that were made. And I'm asking about two insights that you gained. like maybe Bronson, you can start with this one. Looking at the 70 papers, which of course includes what, like 60s?

Three or whatever it is that you didn't get to include but I'm sure some of which were very interesting What did you learn from? this large number of submissions about the state of this specific field

Bronson Hui:
Well, mean, it's amazing as you said, right? So that, you know, this community is really active and then the topic is really diverse. What I really see is the use of technology, not just in language learning, but also in research, you know, we're talking about, for example, eye tracking, and then that could reveal, you know, the cognitive processes that people go through when they encounter multimodal input, right? So be it reading while listening or captioned video or whatnot,

So that part is really exciting. And I think the trend will go on with eye-tracking devices being more mobile. We have web-based eye-tracking coming up. so eye-tracking can be done with a laptop now. So I think these are very exciting developments in the field, especially when talking about...

how people process different sources of input, right? Auditory, visual, pictorial information, for example.

Hayo:
Just staying with you Brunson for a moment. So generally speaking of the 70 papers, what would you say about the, shall we say average quality of those submissions?

Bronson Hui:
Good, good. would say like a lot of them are excellent, but you know, we have a really limited amount of space that we have. But we see a lot of paper having a lot of potential. Some of them, you know, it's a peer review process after all, right? And then it's a matter of also resources allocation, right? So we cannot accept everybody. That's unfortunate. But I would say the quality is good, you know, it's excellent.

not just in terms of quantity, 70 is a big number, relatively, but then the quality we are also very happy with.

Hayo:
That's really good to hear and to those of you listening who may have submitted a proposal that was not accepted, I hope you can take heart in this observation that the average quality was just very high and that it's often very difficult for editors or special issue editors to have to decide which ones to include. So if your paper wasn't included, it's not necessarily an indication that the quality was not there. It's just a matter of a lot of competition and only so many papers that can be.

that can be accommodated. Matt, with the papers that eventually did get accepted and that will very soon I think go online if they haven't already started going online, what have you and Bronson learned from those papers, from the special issue as it will appear?

M. Kessler:
Yeah, I would say in the special issue itself, we've sort of organized the contributions into three separate areas. We've got a handful of studies that look at vocabulary acquisition. We've got a handful of studies that look at aspects of digital multimodal composing and sort of writing output that people produce. And then we've got a couple that look at the intersection of speech and pragmatics as well. So one of the things we learned is just, I mean,

In terms of the topics that people are focusing on it, it's so wide. And the research methods themselves are incredibly diverse as Bronson was talking about. mean, a lot of triangulation happened in a lot of these studies. Most of the studies that we, think, accepted were mixed methods. So we've got things like, let's see here, know, pair talk, students written products, keystroke logging.

think alouds all coming together, you know, three, four different methods or instruments coming together in studies, providing really rich data in terms of what is happening when students are looking at something, what are they thinking about at least, you know, what are they verbalizing? And then how does that translate, you know, into learning vocabulary or learning pragmatics or, or, you know, other forms. so really just the variety of topics themselves.

and the variety of methods that people are using in one singular study, I think is really impressive.

Hayo:
Nice. And maybe this is a question both of you would like to answer. I'll leave that up to you. But I guess partly based on your special issue, but also everything you've learned from reading those 70 abstracts and submissions. In your estimation, where is the field heading now? Like what are you most excited about, say, for the next three years?

Bronson Hui:
I think a lot of the stuff that we see, as I said, I'm repeating a little bit with online eye tracking, people collecting data online, and then really looking at the actual processes of language learning with technology. I think this is where it is going. Apparently AI is a thing. There's a huge momentum there.

The key after all is how people would interact with it and then the learning process, what kind of learning processes would lead to better learning. So with online data collection and people can be at their home, be in mobile app or whatnot, I think this is where researchers can dive a little deeper.

Hayo:
about any of this.

M. Kessler:
Yeah. And in terms of, yeah, in terms of building on that as well, I think specifically for me and my area involving writing and digital multimodal composing, I think probably, you know, about a decade ago, there were a lot of questions being posed around, should we be integrating multimodal forms into the classroom? Right. If so, to what extent, how much should teachers be allowing their students to, leverage non-linguistic modes, right. In the classroom.

for communication purposes. I think we've seen a real shift and we're seeing it in this special issue too of not should this be allowed, but when should we use it strategically for specific purposes, right? I think there's sort of a collective understanding now that multimodality is not a bad thing, right? That when any new idea comes in, it's always of course attacked and as it should be, right? It should be wrestled with and interrogated critically.

But I think there's sort of this real movement now to saying, okay, we understand that this is generally a good thing, but what's it good for? And what is it not good for? So I think a lot of the research questions we're seeing are a little more strategic about contextual uses of multimodality in terms of projects and genres and tasks and when should we use them and why.

Hayo:
Nice one. Just two final questions really. either of you or both of you can answer this one. If I may say a graduate student or an early career researcher working in this space, what advice, if any, might you have for me either in terms of publishing or submitting to a special call for papers for a special issue or in terms of the research that you think would be really productive for me to focus on?

Bronson Hui:
I I always teach my students to get a mentor text. And there's so much that you can learn from an example, be it the writing style, be it the topic, be it the literature. So get a mentor text and then see what you can follow, you know, and then because these are published articles that has gone through peer review. So that would be one of the key advice that I would give.

M. Kessler:
Yeah, I would also say don't, if you're thinking about a special issue, don't hesitate to reach out to the guest editors and ask just, you know, straight up, is this something that, you know, might be considered? Does it seem like it might be a fit? I think a lot of times the special, you know, students are very hesitant to reach out to an editor or somebody they don't know like this. But in most cases, right.

the editor or special issue editors are very happy to tell you, yes, that sounds like something that might be a fit, please submit something or no, right? Which will save you a lot of time as a graduate student, spending, writing your abstract, having people look at it. I think it's better to just ask and be direct in that regard.

Hayo:
Yeah, great advice, well said. I guess the only final question I have is, is there anything that I should have asked or that you would have liked to talk about or any other words of wisdom you want to impart on our audience before we say goodbye?

M. Kessler:
of wisdom. Bronson, you... you're always so wise, Bronson. What do you... do you have anything?

Hayo:
I know it's a total order, but you know.

Bronson Hui:
nothing in particular that I can think about right now I don't know

Hayo:
Okay, and that's fine, that's perfectly fine. So for both of you, what's next? Any big projects, any exciting developments?

Bronson Hui:
No mages got promoted.

Hayo:
well done. Congratulations. Very nice. Well deserved. You've been working very hard. yeah. Okay. No pressure.

Bronson Hui:
Yeah.

M. Kessler:
Thanks. Thanks.

So Bronson's next, he'll be next. In terms of projects, I'll have an edited volume coming out with Routledge on multimodal practices in higher education. So it ties in nicely with this special issue, sort of looking at how different genres are used in higher education contexts. And so that'll be something to look out for here soon.

Bronson Hui:
We'll see.

M. Kessler:
and it's sort of connecting research and practice. The first half of the book is looking at how do people research multimodal genres in higher education and the second half is more pedagogically oriented in which some of the authors have recounted how they're actually using them in different contexts for different purposes. That should be next year. So it's all done. We're just going through the publication process now.

Hayo:
When is that coming out?

Excellent. Okay. Well.

Hayo:
Right, okay. I will put a link to it in the show notes if you have one. Bronson, anything exciting on the horizon for you?

Bronson Hui:
Well, we have a couple of papers on reading while listening in particular, know, surprise surprise using eye tracking. So we looked at, you know, how people learn vocab, you know, with reading while listening. We also have been looking at how people learn words with multiple meanings. So these are some of the new directions that I'm taking in research.

Hayo:
Wonderful, you keep on adding to the body of knowledge. Thank you both for your scholarship. Brunson Hoy, Matt Kastler, thank you again for your hard work and your excellent special issue. until we meet again.

M. Kessler:
Thanks so much for having us.

Bronson Hui:
Thank you for having me.

Hayo:
Bye bye. Okay, well done. You are both natural born interviewees. So good job. I see yours, Matt says 99 % uploaded. So basically as soon as we end, I check in.