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What will the interactional patterns be?Individual, pair and group work are all standard forms of communication in the faceto-facemode of most courses, and they can also be found in the computer modetoo. Neumeier (2005) identifies 11 interactional patterns for the CALL mode, whichare grouped under three headings:■■■■■■interaction through computers/networks (synchronous/asynchronous)e.g. student to student, teacher/tutor to studentinteraction with computers networks, e.g. student and teacher/tutor to computerinteraction at computers/networks e.g. student and student in collaborationat the computer.It is easy for a blended learning course designer to underestimate the number ofinteractional patterns that working with technology presents, and I will be the firstto acknowledge that in the Bosnia and Herzegovina blend I did. One of the mistakesI made during the redesign process was to remove the need for students to sharecomputers and therefore work together by providing them with one computer each.What I believed to be an improvement to the design removed the need for studentsto work collaboratively, which to quote Beatty ‘is among the most useful ways inwhich learners acquire language at the computer’ (2003: 99). Keedwell (Chapter 13)also recognised a design flaw in relation to interaction patterns in his blend: ‘I hadinitially visualised the course as a two-way dialogue between trainer and trainee andneglected the critical element of peer interaction.’Other authors recognised different interaction patterns in their design, withEydelman (Chapter 3) saying ‘…the design of this course allows for a variety ofinteraction patterns from those initiated by the teacher to those initiated by thestudent(s).’ However, it was the third interaction pattern ‘at the computer’ thatwas most commonly referred to in the case studies with the key word being‘collaboration’. With the exception of four authors the rest referred to collaborationin their case studies in a number of different ways, such as:■■a key consideration in task design (White et al., Chapter 8)■■a way to encourage participation (Ingham, Chapter 15)■■a way to foster a socio-constructivist approach (Douglas and Paton, Chapter 10)■■a way for students to learn from each other and improve their answers (Ingham,Chapter 15; Hirst and Godfrey, Chapter 9).What will the learners and teachers/tutors roles be?Within any learning environment teachers and learners alike adopt different rolesat different times, which the use of technology further affects. This leads Neumeier(2005) to speculate that with the introduction of CALL the learners are exposed toa wider variety of roles than if the course were simply face-to-face. For teachers/tutors it also means differing roles between the modes, i.e. classroom teacher andonline tutor.The change in roles was recognised in a number of the case studies, with Aborisade(Chapter 2) summing it up by stating ‘We have learned that teacher roles are236 | Conclusion