Key words: virtual exchange, curricular initiatives, global competences, intercultural communicative competence
In accordance with the new English for Professional International Education reform (EPIC), educators in Israeli higher education are required to teach the four language skills equally in their courses to facilitate students in reaching essential can-dos. To overcome this challenge, and serendipitously during this era of Covid and remote learning, teachers must create innovative means of achieving these goals. Telecollaboration or Virtual Exchange (VE) is such an innovative pedagogical approach that has become increasingly popular among (foreign language) educators. Hence, our German-Israeli VE project was created in which university students used English as a lingua franca in authentic contexts to improve their language proficiency and explore different cultures. The pilot VE last spring of 2021 consisted of three teachers and 74 students, and then expanded this last fall 2022 to five teachers and 286 students. Students in international dyads or triads independently set up five online meetings using a video conferencing tool outside of class to discuss various set topics. They completed a set of tasks which lead to producing presentations showcasing their work.
This presentation highlights the affordances of the exchange, such as creating a comfortable environment to informally practice English and students` intercultural communicative competence (Byram, 2021). We will discuss the theoretical framework for VE projects and discuss challenges that educators need to bear in mind if they want to use VE with their students.
Byram, M. (2021). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence: Revisited (2nd ed.). Multilingual Matters.