Keywords: EPIC, virtual exchange, internalization at home
Language courses are limited in time and constricted by academic requirements. In accordance with the EPIC reform, teachers in Israeli higher education are required to balance the same number of teaching hours across 4 skills as opposed to a single skill in the past. To meet this challenge, teachers must explore and create innovative activities and classroom approaches in order to achieve the key can-dos for each skill. Virtual exchange (VE) activities effectively expose students to different cultures and provide authentic contexts for productive language use (O’Dowd, 2018). VE also provides an Internationalization at Home experience for the students who are unable to participate in physical study abroad programs (Robson, 2017).
This presentation focuses on the process, the highlights, and the challenges of a VE initiative involving approximately 250 students and 14 teachers from 8 countries. A virtual meeting place was created in which students and teachers met outside their classroom hours for ungraded, informal conversation in a friendly and non-threatening environment. Following positive feedback from the first pilot involving participants from 3 countries, a second expanded pilot was undertaken. We will share the outcomes of these two pilots and discuss the challenges in effectively managing a virtual exchange component within differing education contexts.
O’Dowd, R. (2018). From Telecollaboration to Virtual Exchange: State-of-the-Art and the Role of UNICollaboration in Moving Forward. Journal of Virtual Exchange, 1:1-28.
Robson, S. (2017). Internationalization at home: internationalizing the university experience of staff and students. Educação, 40 (3): 368