The current cross-cultural education still faces problems such as low awareness and ability in cross-cultural education, low cultural sensitivity, shallow awareness of cross-cultural differences and poor cross-cultural ability to cooperate with others. The significance of this study lies in enhancing awareness and abilities in cross-cultural…

In our globalized interconnected world, intercultural and interpersonal communication competencies are essential. Virtual reality (VR) narrative-based scenarios offer a unique opportunity to foster these competencies by simulating quality contact with people of different races, religions, and other identities. This activity had students meet and…

This exploratory study adopted immersive virtual reality (VR) technology to develop a task assessing college students' intercultural competence, specifically their ability to mediate an intercultural conflict. Participants were 22 students enrolled in the intercultural communication class in a U.S. university. They first completed a pre-conflict…

AI-based simulations for educational and assessment purposes are gaining global recognition. Informed by cultural comparison research, this study investigates cross-country variations in users' utilization and perceptions of a simulation-based assessment. Specifically, we conducted a comparative analysis between a sample of South African and…

In this study, we investigated whether intercultural communication can be learned as effectively through desktop-based social virtual reality (social VR) as it can through online study, and if social VR improves the motivation to gain cultural intelligence in distance learning. Two groups of international students attended a seminar called…

Although the notion of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has been widely promoted in language classrooms, few empirical studies report how social media, such as Instagram, could be used as a virtual learning platform to engage students in learning how to communicate interculturally. Framed within the global Englishes (GE) concept as the…

Adapting to internationalization at home and the expansion of online learning since COVID-19, higher education institutions (HEIs) have implemented online intercultural programs (OIPs) to develop intercultural competence (IC) in virtual settings. This systematic review examines the empirical studies of IC development in online modality from…

This mixed methods study examined the development of Intercultural Knowledge and Competence (IKC) among American undergraduate students in various disciplinary courses using the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Virtual Exchange (VE) model in institutions of higher education in the U.S. in 2022. There is a gap in the literature…

The research topicality is determined by the problem of lack of qualified specialists who have a high level of foreign language proficiency and the ability to carry out effective professional foreign language communication. The study involved the following methods: Rokich's Value Orientations Test, Nemov's methods for diagnosing the expectation of…

Game-based learning is gaining popularity in language education. For the present study, three games were developed with a central focus on intercultural interaction to be played internationally in dyads or small groups using Video-Communication (VC) tools or a Virtual World (VW). The interactions were carried out in Spanish as a Lingua Franca (LF)…

Purpose: Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) is important when different cultural speakers learn Mandarin as a Foreign Language (MFL). The use of virtual reality (VR) has been shown to be effective for improving ICC. Hence, this study investigates a production-based instructional strategy where students use VR to view and create VR…

The role of culture instruction in modern language classrooms has varied through the years, most recently presenting the option to learn virtually as opposed to on campus or abroad. The current study compares various learning environments of 49 participants (in-person, abroad, Zoom) to test the efficacy of targeted culture instruction through the…

This study investigates a virtual reality (VR) cross-cultural interactive learning environment that combines a 360-degree video camera for content creation, a viewing tool, and a video conference platform for real-time interaction. This environment aims to address the limitations of traditional 360-degree VR tools, particularly in enabling…

This paper explored students' experiences in an international virtual student mobility (VSM) program at a Japanese national university implemented in collaboration with partner universities in the Asia Pacific region and Europe. Through students' narratives, the study discerned how students perceive "mobility" and the concept of…

Purpose: This research paper aimed to investigate the affordances of using virtual reality (VR) in teaching culture among in-service teachers of teaching Persian to speakers of other languages (TPSOL) in Iran. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative case study, conducted at two Iranian universities, used purposeful sampling to select 34…