Abstract
Telecollaboration, also called virtual exchange or online intercultural exchange, is a form of collaborative learning whereby language learners in different locations engage in computer-mediated communication to complete tasks online. There is ample evidence that telecollaboration promotes the acquisition of language skills, intercultural competence, and digital literacies. Challenges faced implementing virtual exchanges include differences in time zones, learning objectives, academic calendars, and cultural attitudes. The present article describes a case of a multilateral telecollaboration project based on the facilitated dialogue model involving four institutions—two in Europe and two in the United States—that was designed to prepare students for the experience of giving online peer feedback on collaborative writing assignments. Our initial goal was to explore the challenges students would face and the benefits they would receive from a complex telecollaboration project involving multiple institutions and two task sequences: 1) input and reflection on giving and receiving peer feedback, 2) completion of the collaborative writing task to be peer reviewed. However, new challenges and opportunities emerged after the switch to emergency e-learning and remote teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic. Relying upon multiple data sources—including correspondence, observations, class discussions, surveys, reflective writing, and information stored in virtual learning environments—our methods of data collection involved convenience sampling, while data analysis was predominantly descriptive. Our results demonstrate that even during a global pandemic, students and instructors face similar logistical challenges and reap similar benefits as has been reported in the literature. Yet our experience also reveals the resiliency of telecollaboration in the face of extreme disruption as well as the potential to exploit virtual exchange to develop learning strategies—such as methods for giving and receiving peer feedback—and meta-awareness of how language is used in the real-world—such as the implications of English as a lingua franca.
Highlights
A key goal of higher education in the 21st Century is to prepare students to succeed in diverse, global, and interdependent societies
The many factors which contributed to students dropping out of the Transnational Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange Project (TEP), their website projects, or even their English courses will be discussed in the subsequent sections
At this point it is important to note that that the proportion of Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski Krakow University (AFMKU) students who completed the TEP was much lower than the proportion of unibz and University of Las Vegas Nevada (UNLV) students
Summary
A key goal of higher education in the 21st Century is to prepare students to succeed in diverse, global, and interdependent societies. The covid-19 pandemic has provided further proof that universities need to offer students alternative opportunities to interact and collaborate with peers from foreign countries. Against this background, this article presents a case of a multilateral telecollaboration project linking seven classes taught by five instructors at two universities in Europe and two universities in the United States. The driving force behind the UNIcollboration initiative is the INTENT (Integrating Telecollaborative Networks into Foreign Language Higher Education) consortium, whose members published a position paper in 20144 that defines virtual exchange as “technology-enabled, sustained, people to people education programs” The UNIcollboration online platform allows instructors to find project partners for different forms of virtual exchange
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