ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book describes the implications for learners exposed to new media spaces in terms of four types of educational situations: learners learning autonomously outside of class; interpersonal videoconferencing; inter-class videoconferencing; and mostly asynchronous multimodal communication. Advances in the field are made by teachers who have a certain freedom to determine their practices. Concerning methodology, the conjuncture of multifarious psychological, social, linguistic, and semiotic aspects involved in the analysis of multimodal discourse requires multiple perspectives and needs to be interdisciplinary. Online encounters may thus prepare learners for using the Internet as a legitimate communication medium in its own right. Numerous research directions have opened up in the area of on-screen inter-cultural exchanges. On-screen, learners nominate topics spontaneously among themselves—and these are questions about identity, racism, or other sensitive topics.
