Telecollaborative Project Research Articles

Engineers Taking a Stance on Technical Communication: Peer Review of Oral Presentations via the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project

Introduction: To present technical content clearly and effectively for global users of English, engineering students need to learn how. About the case: Technical communication classes in Spain and the US engaged in an international telecollaborative project between cross-cultural virtual teams in which students in Spain developed oral presentations that were then peer-reviewed by counterparts in the US. Situating the case: Research on international professional communication and, more specifically, virtual exchange is rapidly growing to explore how instructors can help students gain key competencies such as audience awareness, intercultural sensitivity, and an understanding of English as a lingua franca. Approach/methods: As part of the Trans-Atlantic & Pacific Project network, this project focused on spoken communication. Data were analyzed from feedback forms used by US students to evaluate oral presentations, and on prelearning and postlearning reports completed by students in Spain, as well as from class discussions accompanying the project. Results/discussion: Through reflections on pragmatic strategies that facilitate exchange and collaboration in English as a lingua franca, the engineering students became more fully aware of the importance of rhetorical and linguistic factors that affect meaning-making for engineers internationally. Conclusion: Results suggest that students who participate in transnational virtual exchange projects integrate their desire to acquire knowledge with an awareness of the importance of sharing knowledge through mindful and inclusive communication practices. Technical and engineering communication instructors from different countries can heighten their students' audience awareness, and cultural and language sensitivities through such projects.

Flipgrid: um app de vídeo para o intercâmbio virtual, a proximidade e a aprendizagem de línguas

Nos intercâmbios virtuais, o primeiro contato entre os estudantes é um momento chave, já que determina a forma como os estudantes se relacionarão entre si durante todo o processo de aprendizagem. O aplicativo Flipgrid pode ser uma ferramenta útil para desenvolver um primeiro contato tanto em projetos de telecolaboração como em contextos educativos digitais. O objetivo desse artigo é explorar as estratégias técnicas, comunicativas e afetivas que os estudantes que participaram em o projeto de telecolaboração HI-UB durante o semestre de primavera de 2019 utilizaram em suas primeiras interações para alcançar a proximidade. Os dados foram obtidos tanto das gravações em vídeo realizadas em Flipgrid por 22 alunos do programa de Máster da Universidade de Barcelona e 11 estudantes de espanhol como língua estrangeira da Universidade de Islândia, como de suas reflexões. Os resultados mostram que este primeiro encontro assíncrono em vídeo lhes foi útil, já que os ajudou a reduzir a ansiedade, proporcionou uma boa atmosfera emocional e fomentou sua motivação às tarefas posteriores do projeto de telecolaboração.

Developing business students’ intercultural competence through intercultural virtual collaboration: a task sequence implementation

Purpose Allowing for interaction with foreign cultures without the need to travel, intercultural virtual collaboration represents a potential tool to develop business students’ intercultural competence. This study aims to explore students’ perceptions towards the implementation of a research-based task sequence in a project in which undergraduate Business students from Spain collaborated virtually with undergraduate business students from The Netherlands during a semester. More specifically, this paper investigates what intercultural competence indicators were mostly developed by the sequence implemented; how much each task from the sequence in question developed different intercultural competence indicators; and how much students enjoyed participating in each task. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected through after-task reflection questionnaires. A quantitative analysis of Likert-type questions was carried out and open-ended responses were used to illustrate findings. Findings Results reveal that the task sequence developed different dimensions of students’ intercultural competence and, particularly, fostered a positive attitude towards intercultural relationships, increased students’ cultural knowledge and awareness and equipped students with skills to work in diverse teams. It also showed that as complexity grew along the sequence, the average students’ perception of their intercultural competence development tended to decrease. The majority of students’ very much liked participating in the different tasks. Originality/value Designing telecollaborative projects can be very challenging and understanding the learning potential of different pedagogical strategies for virtual collaborative environments can help teachers to take better-informed decisions.

Innovation dans un projet de télécollaboration orale en intercompréhension : bilan et perspectives du projet IOTT

Cet article dresse un bilan d'un projet télécollaboratif d'apprentissage appelé Intercompréhension orale et teletandem (IOTT) développé par l'université Lyon 2 et l'université du Salento. Il montre également le potentiel de la communication synchrone plurilingue assistée par ordinateur au niveau de l'apprentissage dans deux disciplines différentes : un programme d'intercompréhension et un cours de méthodologie d'enseignement des langues étrangères. Après avoir décrit le design pédagogique (les activités déroulées au niveau international et local), les auteures proposent une démarche méthodologique (Cros, 2004) qui permet d'autoévaluer le projet et ses résultats.L'observation des forces et faiblesses du scénario met en évidence les domaines à travers lesquels on peut le comprendre en profondeur, par le biais d'une analyse bottom-up, enrichie d'un focus théorique. Ce bilan a également pour but de valoriser l'innovation de IOTT par rapport aux scénarios et expériences d'enseignement/apprentissage d'intercompréhension et télétandem antérieurs. Le processus d'évaluation vise la transformation et le changement des valeurs et pratiques éducatives et il implique les étudiants de manière active. Leurs retours sont illustrés par les données collectées à partir de questionnaires, journaux réflexifs, enregistrements des sessions télétandem et interviews. L'évaluation de IOTT est finalement effectuée en direction de l'amélioration de son design pédagogique dans le but d'optimiser l'apprentissage dans le cadre de futurs projets télécollaboratifs pour l'éducation plurilingue.

ENHANCING LANGUAGE AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMPETENCE THROUGH TELECOLLABORATION

This paper presents an experiment which focused on determining if a telecollaborative project work would help enhance students’ foreign language skills and cross-cultural competence. Students from Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute and the Polytechnic University of Valencia worked together during the fall term in 2020, in which 56 Ukrainian and Spanish students were engaged in a telecollaborative programme – 32 were master degree students at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, whereas the remaining 24 were bachelor engineering students at Polytechnic University of Valencia. Our students were engaged in a project work which consisted in the creation of a blog on the topic ‘Sustainable Development Today’. The tools used in this project were mostly Google applications such as Classroom, Hangouts, Blogger, Drive, and Docs. In order to measure their progress, students took pre-tests before the project started and a post-test after its completion. These tests focused on assessing learners’ language competence in English and also their cross-cultural competence. The language test used was designed by Cambridge University Press, whereas the cross-cultural test had been created by the Organizational Behavior Group (Piasentin, 2012). The latter focused on learners’ willingness to engage, cognitive flexibility and openness, emotional regulation, tolerance of uncertainty, self-efficacy, and ethnocultural empathy. As expected, the students who participated in this virtual exchange programme enhanced their competence on both foreign language cross-cultural competences by taking an active part in the telecollaborative project work.

Marina Orsini-Jones and Fiona Lee. Intercultural Communicative Competence for Global Citizenship. Identifying cyberpragmatic rules of engagement in telecollaboration. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Pp. i-xix, 1-135. ISBN 978-1-137-58102-0 ISBN 978-1-137-58103-7 (eBook)

The book titled Intercultural Communicative Competence for Global Citizenship. Identifying cyberpragmatic rules of engagement in telecollaboration brings novel approaches to Computer Mediated Communication, based on practical outcomes from a small-scale online international learning (OIL) project, i.e., CoCo, carried out during the academic year 2015–2016, between UK and France. It provides useful insights into the contribution of OIL projects to the internationalisation of the Higher Education (HE) curriculum as well as to the development of global citizenship competences, with a focus on intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in the digital era. The authors structured the book into seven chapters, concentrating on essential pragmatics concepts revisited within the cyberspace and describing the project methodology and findings. Chapter 1, Introduction provides an overview of the topics presented in the volume, with clear definitions and eloquent examples, i.e., Online International Learning (OIL), Intercultural communicative competence (ICC), Telecollaboration, Internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC), Threshold concept (TC), Global citizenship, and Cyberpragmatics. Chapter 2, Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) Revisited brings forth an account of the historical evolution of the concepts of Communicative Competence (CC) and Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), while at the same time examining the impact of the World Wide Web, coupled with the extensive use of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) on the re-conceptualisation of ICC and its reassessed characteristics. It emphasises the value of integrating telecollaboration into the Higher Education curriculum with a view to creating global citizenship competences for the digital age in Higher Education. Chapter 3, Cyberpragmatics advances a comprehensive definition of cyberpragmatics seen as a professional as well as an academic genre-specific online ‘savoir-être’. It explores the theoretical foundations of the term, coined by Yus (2011), and brings forth examples of cyberpragmatic findings from similar research. Moreover, it gives an overview of the politeness theory (Brown, & Levinson 1987) and politeness principle (Leech 1983, 2014). The authors explain the blurring line between oral and written language that may occur in the case of online communication and how this affects students. The chapter also provides a clear-cut definition of the threshold concept (TC) pedagogy, upholding that Intercultural Cyberpragmatic Communicative Competence (ICCC) may be subsumed to TC. The authors advocate curricular scaffolding in HE in order to assist students with reflecting on and practising ICCC. Last but not least, the chapter presents the research question that this study aims to address. Chapter 4, The ‘CoCo’ Telecollaborative Project: Internationalisation at Home to Foster Global Citizenship Competences presents the CoCo (Coventry Colmar) telecollaborative course, along with the tasks devised and/or adopted for it, e.g., the Cultura Quizzes. It demonstrates the successful integration of CoCo into the curriculum and assessment of the two participating institutions and how students managed to apply critical digital literacies for global citizenship through active learning. The authors make an overview of research instruments and materials, including the frameworks of analysis and their application. Useful figures and tables illustrating the telecollaborative project structure, the politeness frameworks and strategies applied are also included. The fifth chapter, ‘CoCo’ Research Questions and Answers, delves further into the research questions of this study, at the same time offering a rationale for the analysis decisions taken as part of the asynchronous discussion forums with reference to tasks devised for the CoCo telecollaborative project. It tackles the impact of linguistic politeness theory frameworks on how project participants manage to negotiate politeness online. As for the asynchronous interactions in the CoCo forum, politeness strategies and facework employed by the CoCo interactants are interpreted from a cyberpragmatic standpoint through the application of Brown and Levinson’s and Leech’s politeness frameworks of analysis. Chapter 6, Emerging Online Politeness Patterns, brings forth a thorough account of the results obtained from the analysis of interactants’ exchanges carried out on the asynchronous discussion forums, with respect to the tasks devised for the telecollaborative CoCo project. In particular, three online exchanges were used in order to highlight patterns of linguistic behaviour, i.e., type and frequency of politeness strategies or maxims. The final chapter, Conclusion, presents the summary of findings, limitations and further research suggestions as well as pedagogical implications for teachers and students alike. The politeness frameworks of analysis provided by Brown and Levinson (1978) and Leech (1983), applied to cybercommunication are outlined and explained. The results revealed particular problematical areas in the field of cyberpragmatics, underpinning the challenges that students may face in telecollaboration, leading to the conclusion that detailed and structured task scaffolding is necessary in such collaborative activities. All in all, the book is an extremely useful tool for all stakeholders in the tertiary education landscape. It is a must read for language teachers, teacher trainers, trainees and educators from all educational systems across the globe.

Translingual practices in a ‘Monolingual’ society: discourses, learners’ subjectivities and language choices

ABSTRACT This study explores how Japanese EFL students engaged in translingual practices during a telecollaborative project that connected two college classrooms in the US and Japan. The project aimed at encouraging the students’ creative uses of languages, promoting an appreciation for their multiple linguistic resources, and nurturing their sense of ownership of languages informed by translingual practices. Contrary to our expectations, students in Japan exhibited great efforts to write in monolingual English and/or Japanese, which prompted us to investigate the reasons behind their language choices. Based on data analyses drawing on poststructural theory of subjectivities, we argue that the students’ language practices were shaped by local discourses that value privileged English, single language uses, and embodiment of ‘Japaneseness.’ As a result, students in Japan maintained single language uses in order to represent themselves in a positive light. Accordingly, they did not appreciate the language plurality demonstrated by their partners in the US. This result led us to contend that creating a local community that recognizes and appreciates linguistic diversity is essential in order for students to enjoy using multiple linguistic resources creatively and freely, and to gain confidence to claim ownership of their languages.

Tracing EFL writers’ digital literacy practices in asynchronous communication: A multiple-case study

This article reports on a multiple-case study, tracing three Chinese EFL writers’ digital literacy practices in a Sino-US telecollaboration project. The EFL writers communicated with their undergraduate American peers, exchanged comments on their essays and discussed sociocultural issues in an asynchronous forum. Data sources included the Chinese participants’ postings, learning diaries, and process-tracing interviews. Framed from an ecological, relation-sensitive perspective, within-case analyses and cross-case comparisons were conducted to examine the contextual and mediational relations of the writers’ digital literacy practices. It was found that the participants adaptively transferred practices from distant, recent, and immediate contexts in response to their emergent learning and communication needs. When reading and writing forum posts, they acted upon the affordances inherent in and arising from across a variety of mediational resources. The contextual and mediational relations were co-determined by an interplay of material, social, and individual factors. These findings show that an ecological perspective provides a useful lens through which to examine EFL writers’ digital literacies.

When future teachers meet real learners through telecollaboration: an experiential approach to learn how to teach languages online

The integration of technology in language teaching has been one important topic in language education and teacher training. Teacher education has been one of the aims of telecollaboration since the beginning of the 2000’s. While the first pioneers worked with small groups of students (Develotte, Mangenot, & Zourou, 2005; MüllerHartmann, 2006), more recent projects are widening the application of telecollaboration for teacher education (Baroni et al., 2019). In the present article we present an adaptation of the model of Le Français en (Première) Ligne (hereafter F1L) proposed by Develotte et al. (2005) in two telecollaborative projects aiming at developing trainees’ techno-semiopedagogical competences.

Design and implementation of a telecollaboration project for primary school students to trigger intercultural understanding

ABSTRACT Telecollaboration involving children around the world allows them to develop international understanding (IU). This paper reports on the design and implementation of a telecollaboration project between Japanese and Australian primary school students. The main purpose of the project, which integrates the contents of Social Studies and foreign language (FL) education, is to promote student interest in learning their own and a foreign language, as well as a foreign culture, using an educational social network site (SNS), in this case Edmodo. This study focused on Japanese students in particular. The exchange of cultural information online became a meaningful and authentic activity for communication in FL. Additionally, the evaluation showed that the Japanese students became more motivated to learn English and initiate IU. A curriculum-based telecollaboration project involving a long-term plan – instead of a one-off activity – is recommended in order to develop young students’ IU in FL education.

Técnicas de corrección de la pronunciación en Internet para el aprendizaje del Francés lengua extranjera

En la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras con los nuevos medios sociales de la web las competencias de producción oral y la corrección de la pronunciación han sido poco abordadas. Nos planteamos la utilidad y los potenciales de integración de los medios sociales de la web en un dispositivo de formación universitario para la enseñanza y aprendizaje del Francés lengua extranjera. Con el fin de desarrollar la producción oral y la corrección de la pronunciación entre los alumnos se han utilizado podcasts, blogs, redes sociales y proyectos de telecolaboración que favorecen las grabaciones audio e interacciones colaborativas entre los alumnos. Se describen las distintas técnicas de corrección de la pronunciación que han puesto en práctica los alumnos, tutores y docente en diferentes entornos y espacios web, habiendo obtenido como resultado 2 técnicas en la utilización de la escritura, 5 técnicas en la utilización de imágenes visuales, así como 4 técnicas en la utilización de la lengua hablada.

Intercâmbios virtuais e a internacionalização em casa: reflexões e implicações para a Linguística Aplicada

Projetos telecolaborativos utilizando ferramentas digitais vêm ampliando, na atualidade, as possibilidades de internacionalização das universidades ao redor do mundo. Neste artigo, trazemos os resultados de uma pesquisa realizada no contexto do Programa Brazilian Virtual Exchange (BRaVE-UNESP) sobre as estratégias para uso de inglês como língua franca em atividades colaborativas de intercâmbio virtual adotadas por professores de diferentes áreas do conhecimento. Por meio de metodologia qualitativa, enfocamos as perspectivas dos professores em relação às dificuldades e estratégias usadas para lidar com a comunicação entre os alunos por meio da língua inglesa. Os resultados trazem reflexões e implicações para a Linguística Aplicada em relação à necessidade de se pensar diretrizes para um novo papel do professor de línguas como mediador de contextos de intercâmbios virtuais.

Using telecollaboration to promote intercultural competence in teacher training classrooms in Turkey and the USA

AbstractSince advances in computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools have made virtual exchanges readily available in educational practices, telecollaboration has been gaining traction as a means to provide practical experiences and cultural exposure to language learners and, more recently, teacher trainees. Drawing upon Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), this study examines 48 teacher trainees’ interculturality through a telecollaborative project between two teacher training classes from Turkey and the USA. This study relies on data generated by the participants throughout this telecollaborative project: weekly online discussion board posts within groups of six and post-project reflections. Although developing ICC is an arduous and prolonged task, the data analysis suggested that the participants’ experiences in this telecollaboration contributed to their emergent ICC through discussions on the topics of multicultural education and interactions with trainees from another educational context. Their intercultural learning is evidenced by their (1) awareness of heterogeneity in their own and interactants’ culture, (2) nascent critical cultural awareness, and (3) curiosity and willingness to learn more about the other culture. Thus, this study implies that telecollaboration offers an effective teacher training venue that affords teacher trainees with first-hand intercultural encounters to engage with otherness and prepare for their ethnolinguistically diverse classrooms.

The Intersection of Muralist Movements and Two L2 Classes

The Intersection of Muralist Movements and Two L2 Classes Mariadelaluz Matus-Mendoza The Philadelphia Mural Movement is internationally known; admittedly, it is one of its most sought attractions when visiting the city. Using this form of art as the backdrop, a telecollaborative task-based project between two universities located in two different countries, in two different continents, was designed in fall 2015. Universidad Católica (UC) in Santiago, Chile, and Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, share a similar art form on their city’s walls: murals. Both movements relate to cultural, social, and political trends in their respective city and country. Selecting this as the overarching theme, this telecollaboration, part of two traditional intermediate world language classes’ curricula, was created with two goals: 1) to develop the intercultural communicative competence of students of a second language (L2), and 2) to prepare Chilean students who will study abroad in Philadelphia the following academic term. This current essay includes three sections. The first sets up for the project represented here, briefly describing the mural movements, on the one hand, and placing this project within telecollaborative projects, on the other. The second concisely presents its design, and its evolution. Finally, the essay turns to outcomes drawing on a qualitative analysis of an individual written survey and group debriefing sessions. The muralist movements in these two cities started twenty-five years apart with similar beginnings in working class neighborhoods, the participation of graffiti artists, and their desire to portray their citizens’ socio-political concerns. In Philadelphia, the artist Jane Golden invited graffiti artists to create public art on working class neighborhoods in 1984 which was the birth of Mural Arts Philadelphia. In the Southern Cone, in San Miguel, a neighborhood in Santiago, Chile, two local residents David Villarroel and Roberto Hernández convened not only graffiti artists, as Golden did, but muralists to paint on their neighborhood walls in 2009 which gave origin to Museo a Cielo Abierto. Both movements collaborate with their communities to create art that empowers them portraying issues dealing with social justice, racism, poverty, workers’ rights, migration, etc. Community members participate on the projects giving suggestions on mural themes, being models for them, or painting under the artist’s guidance. These artistic manifestations have also economically revitalized these neighborhoods and become tourist attractions for locals and non-locals. For this telecollaboration, a well-known muralist in Philadelphia, Cesar Viveros, recorded a lecture on the mural movement in the city and his art as an introduction to the project’s theme. It was uploaded to Drexel’s learning management system (LMS) to be watched by participant students. This telecollaborative project was created under the umbrella of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) that consists of “online and hybrid courses . . . where faculty from two or more cultures work together to develop a shared syllabus for the purpose of implementing an internationalized classroom emphasizing experiential and collaborative student learning.” (Rubin 2016: 263) At Drexel University, this collaboration is denominated as a “global classroom.” As noted previously, the global classroom consists of two traditional intermediate world language classes, one at Drexel and one at UC, where students of Spanish in Philadelphia and students of English in Santiago work using Asynchronous (ACMC) and Synchronous Computer Mediated [End Page 15] Communication (SCMC) technologies to facilitate developing their intercultural communicative competence and to prepare Chileans for their study abroad experience in the United States. Before describing the global classroom, it is necessary to define intercultural communicative competence as the speaker’s ability to operate in cultural contexts that allows one to appreciate and adapt to the cultural differences of the other. The aim is that students of a world language see the other’s culture as a variation of their own, not as a divider. It is also worth noting that the intercultural communicative competence involves the acquisition of linguistic as well as cultural competences. The duration of the global classroom was modified to accommodate UC’s need to evaluate their students and determine who would study abroad in Philadelphia the following term; it lasted six weeks in 2015, five weeks in 2016, and finally was set to run for four weeks in 2017. Weekly topics are...

REVISITAR O CONCEITO DE COMUNIDADE PARA DISCUTIR SUA APLICAÇÃO A CONTEXTOS TELECOLABORATIVOS

RESUMO: O objetivo deste artigo é discutir o conceito de comunidade em contextos multimodais de projetos telecolaborativos, específicamente o teletandem (TELLES, 2006). Comunidades discursivas (CD) são agrupamentos de indivíduos que se unem para atingir seus propósitos comunicativos por meio de gêneros (SWALES, 1990). Embora o conceito tenha sido extensivamente discutido em contextos acadêmicos, parece não haver estudos que envolvam o tema e sua importância para a telecolaboração. Uma tentativa nesse sentido é o trabalho de Silva (2012) sobre a comunidade teletandem (CT), no qual a autora investiga os estudantes que participam do projeto Teletandem Brasil: Línguas Estrangeiras para Todos. Partimos dos critérios elaborados por Silva para a definição de CT e nossa análise deriva de nossa observação intensa e criteriosa da prática de teletandem no laboratório de teletandem da UNESP - São José do Rio Preto. Os resultados indicam que os membros de comunidades que eventualmente se agrupam em contextos telecolaborativos tendem a serem regulados por regras locais e externas, engendrarem organizações complexas e compartilharem gêneros para alcançarem seus objetivos.

L1 Use in Language Tests – Investigating Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Language Assessment

Abstract Objective: Assessment is a crucial part of language teaching, with great effect on learners’ motivation, willingness to study and learning success. Since language assessment is rooted in local policies and cultures of learning, it seems pertinent to look at how opinions on assessment can differ depending on the country of teacher training. The purpose of the paper is to compare Polish and Turkish teacher trainees’ on L1 use and translation in testing. Methodology: The methodology applied in the paper is a qualitative action research study, where the groups of teacher trainees from Poland and Turkey participating in a telecollaborative project were prompted for reflection on different aspects of cultural appropriacy of language assessment. The data were collected via private diaries and public discussion forums. The corpus of student reflections was subject to qualitative analysis for key concepts, recurrent themes, similarities and differences across the two countries involved in analysis. Findings: The effect of the local setting in which language instruction is to take place on assessment beliefs and strategies is stronger than that of teacher training. The language testing procedures of the Communicative Approach vary in the two countries under consideration (Poland and Turkey) due to a differing role and status of English in the country, cultural orientations of the society, preferred learning styles and habits, country openness to the Western culture and values as well as societal expectations towards the language teacher. Despite much standardization in language teacher education, significant variation in the shape of language teaching methodology can be attributed to the effect of cultural differences. Value Added: Telecollaboration in teacher training is promoted as an instructional technique enabling expansion of teacher trainees’ intercultural competence, intercultural communication skills, awareness of the effect of cultural differences on preferred ways of learning and teaching. The cultural appropriacy of language assessment can be achieved through filtering testing methods and techniques to adapt them to the cultural, political and social reality of target users. Recommendations: The telecollaborative exchange as described in the present paper proves to be an effective vehicle to achieve the purpose of increasing internalization of teacher education and creating better skilled professionals. Since language teaching has become a largely multicultural and multilingual experience, it is necessary to increase teacher trainees’ awareness of cultural appropriacy of its different aspects, including assessment, throughout the teacher training programme.

Exploring New Ways of eTandem and Telecollaboration Through the WebRTC Protocol: Students’ Engagement and Perceptions

The present research investigates students’ degree of engagement and per-ceptions in a telecollaboration project which incorporates the use of the WebRTC (Web Real-time Communication) protocol and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication to develop a virtual exchange in a second language envi-ronment. WebRTC is an open source technology that simplifies the tele-communication process thanks to its inherent characteristics such as P2P connectivity, no plugins installation, scalability and accessibility. The study involved 32 participants from two different universities who partici-pated in a teletandem exchange over a period of 4 months. Task design con-sisted of information exchange and information gap activities that were giv-en to students in order to foster the interaction. A mixed methods approach was used and students’ engagement was measured through the use of a log, a pre-existing knowledge survey and an engagement scale. An additional sur-vey analysing students’ perceptions was also given to students at the end of the project. Inferential statistics showed significant results in terms of emo-tional, behavioral and cognitive engagement. Furthermore, WebRTC earned a high acceptance among students participating in the virtual exchange and advantages and pitfalls of using this technology were observed throughout the project.

Analysis of Telecollaborative Exchanges among Secondary Education Students: Communication Strategies and Negotiation of Meaning

This study presents the analysis of a corpus of 12 telecollaborative interac-tions, recorded on video, between British and Spanish secondary education students during a telecollaborative project funded by the European Commission. The main aim is to analyse negotiation of meaning in these telecollaboration exchanges which are perceived in the liter-ature as a sign of meaningful interaction. It is essential to study instances of telecollaboration in order to identify the possible affordances in the acquisition of communicative and inter-cultural competences. Smith’s (2005) Model of Computer-Mediated Negotiated Interaction based on Varonis and Gass (1985) is employed to analyse the video interactions between Spanish and English students to find how learners deal with linguistic mistakes or any other type of communication problem during synchronous peer interaction. The results show that students employ a wide variety of strategies to negotiate meaning, while avoiding overt correction unless it is absolutely necessary to avoid communication breaking down. Skil-ful use of corrective techniques and resolving communication problems was also observed. These strategies led to fluid interactions and efficient task completion. Students were seen to readily take the initiative when tackling negotiation of meaning and correction and were pro-vided scaffolding, a task that is normally carried out by teachers in more traditional settings.

DEVELOPMENT OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE IN AN ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENT

Over the last decade, the issue of the development of intercultural communicative competences (ICC) through modern digital tools has become topical. The aim of this paper is to point to the potential of digital technologies for the development of ICC. The paper offers an overview of research studies which confirm the efficiency of various digital tools in the development of intercultural interaction. The research results suggest the importance of Internet tools such as e-mail, digital stories, podcasts, television, and discussion forums in telecollaboration projects aimed at developing intercultural communication. In the conclusion we assert that the development of digital technologies and the emergence of new generation Internet tools provide exceptional opportunities for the development of an intercultural environment and communicative competence. In addition to numerous advantages, there are also possible problems which can arise in communication in an electronic environment, which can be avoided with dialogue and greater tolerance for different cultures.

Crossing Borders in Business and Economics Classrooms

The emerging changes in global societies challenge businesses as teams work across borders. Consequently, higher education promotes student interaction from diverse cultural backgrounds using technological tools without restricting time, cost, motivation or mobility. In this regard, telecollaboration engages students in a learning process that develops 21st century skills with peers from diverse language, socio-cultural, and educational backgrounds. This article presents a telecollaboration project designed and implemented by Queens College, City University of New York, and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, an online university in Barcelona, in which 196 Economics and Business undergraduate students from the United States and Mexico enhanced intercultural communication. The aim of this study was to identify the effectiveness of telecollaboration as a tool for advancing diversity and transversal skills. The results showed a positive effect but detected the need to raise awareness on the importance of intercultural skills as part of 21st century skills sought by employers.