Search

In the context of Virtual Exchange (VE) it is often assumed that participants will be naturally prepared to interact online successfully with their international partners. However, there is ample evidence in the literature to suggest that VE participants are usually unaware of effective communicative strategies in synchronous and asynchronous online communicative contexts. Through action research, this article investigates how teachers can provide scaffolding for both these communicative modalities in online intercultural environments. It reports on a qualitative content analysis of conversational and self-reported data from a corpus of three VEs that were collected and triangulated in order to identify when, in what areas, and in what ways students could benefit from pedagogical mentoring. The article then presents key mentoring stages and strategies that were identified and provides insight into the type of scaffolding that VE teachers can provide their students to help them achieve successful (a)synchronous online intercultural interaction.

Several studies on Virtual Exchange (VE) have highlighted positive learning experiences, increases in technological pedagogical and content skills (TPACK) and foreign language (FL) competence. However, most VE research to date use qualitative or descriptive case-studies of how VEs have been implemented, and what "might" have worked. In this large-scale quantitative two-study design, we explored how 622 pre-service teachers developed TPACK skills and (perceived) FL competence over time in 23 VEs across 34 institutions in 16 countries. In Study 1, we used a (quasi-) experimental design of 3 VEs in an experimental (n = 151) or control group (n = 77) to explore the impact on TPACK. In Study 2, we used a larger sample of 20 VEs and 394 participants to replicate and contrast the findings from Study 1 in a broader context. In contrast to our expectations, participants in the experimental condition did not have higher TPACK skills growth relative to the control condition in Study 1, which was further confirmed in Study 2. Nonetheless, in Study 2 pre-existing TPACK skills influenced the development of (perceived) FL competence over time, whereby those participants who further strengthened their TPACK skills during the VE were more likely to nurture FL competence. A major lesson from this large-scale implementation is that VEs do not generate TPACK skills and FL competence by osmosis. We encourage CALL researchers to carefully reflect on any positive or negative finding that something has "worked" when there is no comparison or control group included.

Virtual exchange (VE) is an umbrella term used to refer to the engagement of groups of students in sustained online intercultural interaction and collaboration with international partners under the guidance of their teachers. In the computer-assisted language learning literature, telecollaboration and eTandem approaches to VE have been researched extensively. However, this research has principally focused to date on learner gains and the impact on teachers has been much less explored. This paper identifies the impact of VE on foreign language teachers' practices and their professional development by examining the results of a qualitative study of 31 teacher trainers who engaged their classes in VE projects as part of a large-scale European project. The findings of the study suggest that participation in VE projects provides teachers with valuable experience in continued professional development and methodological innovation. In particular, VE was seen to open up opportunities for teachers to develop new professional partnerships, collaborative academic initiatives, to develop their own online collaboration skills, and also to introduce more innovative approaches in their current teaching practice.

Telecollaboration, or 'virtual exchange', are terms used to refer to the engagement of groups of learners in online intercultural interactions and collaboration projects with partners from other cultural contexts or geographical locations as an integrated part of their educational programmes. In recent years, approaches to virtual exchange have evolved in different contexts and different areas of education, and these approaches have had, at times, very diverse organisational structures and pedagogical objectives. This article provides an overview of the different models and approaches to virtual exchange which are currently being used in higher education contexts. It also provides a short historical review of the major developments and trends in virtual exchange to date and describes the origins of the UNICollaboration organisation and the rationale behind this journal.

Virtual exchange (VE) is an educational practice that involves the engagement of groups of learners in extended periods of online intercultural interaction and collaboration with international peers as an integrated part of their educational programs and under the guidance of educators and/or facilitators. Despite more than 20 years of research and recent large-scale initiatives such as Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange, this approach remains relatively unknown and often misunderstood in international education. Based on the qualitative and quantitative data of an Erasmus+ KA3 "European Policy Experiment," which brought together practitioners, researchers, and ministerial policy makers from five European countries and autonomous regions, this article examines the challenges involved in implanting and upscaling an innovative practice such as VE in university internationalization practices. A case study from a Spanish regional autonomy, which took part in the project, is used to highlight barriers to take-up and integration at classroom, institutional, and policy levels. The data also provide a clear illustration of how an international practice such as VE can gain recognition and support though the coordination of bottom-up and top-down initiatives.

This article provides an introduction to the EVALUATE project (Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education). This project aims to gauge the impact of telecollaborative learning on student-teachers involved in Initial Teacher Education in various European countries and regions. The project is funded by the Erasmus+ KA3 programme (EACEA/34/2015) and is a European Policy Experiment (EPE).

Virtual exchange is a well-known pedagogical approach in foreign language (FL) education which involves engaging classes in online intercultural collaboration projects with international partners as an integrated part of their educational programmes. This paper begins by reviewing e-tandem and telecollaborative approaches to virtual exchange which are currently being used extensively in FL education and presents two case studies which illustrate the common learning outcomes and limitations of such approaches. I then propose an alternative model of virtual exchange which maintains many of the key characteristics of earlier approaches but which incorporates the principles of global citizenship education and which moves away from bilingual--bicultural approaches. I conclude by outlining the main characteristics of this model and presenting some examples of how this approach could be put into practice.

This article provides an overview of the most significant emerging trends and tendencies in telecollaborative practice. In order to achieve this, I review the recent literature in the area and I identify recurring themes from the Telecollaboration in Higher Education conference which took place in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland from 21 to 23 April 2016. The main trends identified include the diversification of telecollaborative partnerships and networks, the rise of critical and cross-disciplinary approaches to telecollaboration, the combination and integration of telecollaboration with other modes of education, and, finally, the emergence of videoconferencing as an important tool for online intercultural interaction.

Virtual exchange, or telecollaboration, is a well-known pedagogical approach in foreign language education that involves engaging classes in online intercultural collaboration projects with international partners as an integrated part of their educational programmes. This article focuses on the role of the teacher as pedagogical mentor in virtual exchange and examines the impact of the strategies and techniques that teachers use in their classes to support students' learning during their online intercultural projects. The article begins with a proposed categorization of pedagogical mentoring reported in the literature to date. It then reports on the outcomes of a virtual exchange project carried out by three classes of initial English teacher education in Israel, Spain, and Sweden that involved two types of pedagogical mentoring. Qualitative content analysis enabled the identification of the impact of mentoring that took place before the exchange and also revealed insights into what students learned when their own online interactions were integrated into class work. The article concludes by discussing the limitations and challenges of different types of pedagogical mentoring in virtual exchange and by outlining a list of recommendations for carrying out pedagogical mentoring in such projects.

In content and language integrated learning (CLIL) contexts, online communication technologies have great potential for supporting the development of students' foreign language skills and intercultural competence, and for increasing understanding of subject matter. One effective way of engaging CLIL students in motivating and innovative online learning is virtual exchange, or telecollaboration. Virtual exchange involves engaging students in online task-based interaction and collaborative exchange projects with partner-classes in other locations under the guidance of their teachers. This article explores in what ways virtual exchange can contribute to CLIL approaches and presents various examples from the literature of how this approach to online learning has been applied in CLIL contexts. Following that, some guidelines for good practice are presented which educators can consider when planning to introduce virtual exchange into their bilingual classrooms.

English-medium instruction (EMI) is widely believed in higher education contexts to support the internationalisation of universities, to make study programmes more accessible to international students and to enhance the international prestige of academic staff. However, the pressure on European institutions to offer subjects through English raises the issue of whether a sufficient number of teachers are capable of teaching their subject content through the language. Although some recent research has found that EMI programme directors are largely satisfied with the English proficiency of their teaching staff (Wächter and Maiworm, 2014. "English-Taught Programmes in European Higher Education. The State of Play in 2014". Bonn: Lemmens. Accessed November 17, 2017. http://www.aca-secretariat.be/fileadmin/aca_docs/images/members/ACA-2015_English_Taught_01.pdf), other reviews of current practice have highlighted a need for a more structured and rigorous approach to the language and methodology training of teachers (Dearden 2015. "English as a Medium of Instruction -- A Growing Global Phenomenon." Accessed 17 November 2017. http://www.britishcouncil.org/education/ihe/knowledge-centre/english-language-higher-education/report-english-medium-instruction; Halbach and Lázaro 2015. "La acreditación del nivel de lengua inglesa en las universidades españolas: Actualización 2015." Accessed November 17, 2017. http://www.britishcouncil.es/sites/britishcouncil.es/files/british-council-la-acreditacion-del-nivel-de-lengua-inglesa.pdf). This article reports on the findings of a survey of 70 European universities carried out in 2014-2015 which provides an overview of current practices in the training and accreditation of university teachers in EMI. The findings reveal a very eclectic range of approaches to training and accrediting teachers working in this area.

The importance of teachers' capacity to integrate and exploit computer mediated communication (CMC) in the foreign language classroom has been recognised by many of the leading publications in foreign language teacher education, including the European Profile for Language Teacher Education (2004) and the European portfolio for student teachers of foreign languages (EPOSTL) (2007). One of the essential CMC activities in foreign language education is undoubtedly telecollaboration. This is the application of online communication tools to connect classes of language learners in geographically distant locations with the aim of developing their foreign language skills and intercultural competence through collaborative tasks and project work (O'Dowd, 2007). This paper begins by presenting a model of competences for the telecollaborative teacher, which has been developed and verified by this author (2013) using the Delphi technique. The paper then presents UNICollaboration (www.unicollaboration.eu), an online platform, which has been developed reflecting these competences and a sociocultural approach to teacher education. Following that, the findings of four qualitative case studies of novice telecollaborators are used to inform the design of tools and training courses for educators in this complex activity of online foreign language education.

Telecollaboration, or "online intercultural exchange" (OIE), refers to the application of online communication tools to bring together classes of language learners in geographically distant locations with the aim to develop their foreign language skills and intercultural competence through collaborative tasks and project work. Many studies have demonstrated the potential of this activity for supporting collaborative learning and developing intercultural awareness. This article focuses on the implications for teachers and addresses the question: what are the skills, attitudes and knowledge which a foreign language teacher needs to establish and successfully carry out an online intercultural exchange with their learners? To answer this question, the paper presents research based on the Delphi technique, consulting a large group of "experts" and "experienced practitioners" and achieving a gradual consensus on the necessary telecollaborative skills, knowledge and attitudes. The final set of competences is presented and problematic issues related to the model are discussed with reflections on the comments from the experts who participated in the study.

Foreign language telecollaboration refers to virtual intercultural interaction and exchange projects between classes of learners in geographically distant locations. While research findings on telecollaboration have confirmed its valuable contribution to students' foreign language, intercultural and electronic competences, a preliminary research study carried out by O'Dowd (2010) revealed that the activity remains relatively peripheral in nature and has yet to be taken up by a significant number of university educators. With this in mind, a large scale quantitative and qualitative study was carried out on telecollaborative activity in European higher education which involved a survey of over 300 university lecturers and students and the collection of 7 case studies of representative telecollaborative exchanges which involve universities in many European and non-European contexts (Guth, Helm, & O'Dowd, 2012). Based on data taken from these case studies, this article explores the barriers which practitioners encounter when organising online intercultural exchanges and then identifies the strategies they used to overcome these barriers. (Contains 1 table.)

In this paper I argue that online intercultural interaction and exchange remains a relatively peripheral "add-on" activity in most foreign language classrooms. In its current state, it is yet to be considered an integral part of curricular activity and it does not yet form a significant part of high stakes assessment procedures. Against this background, it is becoming increasingly difficult for educators to justify to learners the value of their online work. I present here an overview of what online intercultural exchange involves and discuss what have been its contributions to foreign language education. I then present findings from a survey of telecollaborative practices and discuss why this activity has yet to become a "normalised" part of foreign language learning.

We performed a two-phase, year-long research project that explored the impact of peer feedback on language development. We investigated specifically how and when post-secondary learners of English and Spanish provide corrective feedback on their partners' use of the target language in weekly asynchronous discussions by assigning them to one of two conditions: e-tutoring, in which students were asked to provide peer feedback on any linguistic form they perceived as incorrect; and e-partnering, in which students were not required to provide peer feedback but could do so on their own initiative. We examined the frequency and type of language use by coding the feedback for language-related episodes (Swain & Lapkin, 1998) and for feedback strategies (Ros i Sole & Truman, 2005). The findings indicate that students in both conditions preferred an inclusion of feedback on form as part of their exchange, but such feedback only occurred when explicitly required in the e-tutoring condition. Pedagogical implications include the need to situate peer feedback on form within current models of telecollaboration and to assist students in using feedback strategies such as reformulations, which do not rely on a deep understanding of the target or native language grammar. (Contains 8 tables and 1 note.)

This paper reports the findings of three qualitative studies which were carried out in university level EFL classes in Germany. The three groups used various combinations of communication technologies such as email, web-based message boards, and video conferencing in order to engage in online exchanges with different partner classes in Ireland and the USA. The research was aimed at establishing, firstly, how such virtual intercultural contact can contribute to the development of intercultural communicative competence, and secondly, what skills and knowledge both students and teachers need in order to engage successfully in this complex online learning activity. The research revealed that the success of such exchanges often depends on their appropriate integration into the language classroom and that it is necessary to reassess the role of the teacher in telecollaborative exchanges.

It is by now well established that telecollaborative exchanges frequently end in "failed communication" and do not automatically bring about successful negotiation of meaning between the learners. Instead, the intended pedagogic and linguistic aims of online interaction are repeatedly missed, and projects may end in low levels of participation, indifference, tension between participants, or a negative evaluation of the partner group or their culture. The reasons offered in the literature are rather diverse in nature, and there has so far been no attempt to offer a comprehensive overview of such areas of dysfunction. Starting from a review of the existing body of research, this paper develops a structured inventory of factors which may lead to cases of failed communication in online exchanges. In sum, 10 different factors are suggested at four different levels: individual, classroom, socioinstitutional, and interaction. Examples of communication failure taken from two exchanges will be used to illustrate how these factors are interconnected and influence each other. It is concluded that a more discriminating perspective of such problem areas, both among the tutors and the students, can help to further increase intercultural awareness and lead to a better understanding of the dynamic nature of online communication. (Contains 1 figure and 4 notes.)