This study applies social realist theory to the analysis of an ongoing online telecollaboration between Japanese undergraduate students in a classroom setting in Japan and Filipino teachers in an English conversation school in Cebu, the Philippines. The accepted goals of telecollaboration in an international context are the development of…

Students with cultural and linguistic competence are needed to navigate an increasingly globalized society. This study collected and analyzed cultural awareness data from students who communicated with people of other cultures through Virtual Reality (VR) environments. Students from a private university in Japan engaged in directed communication…

For three months, Japanese university learners (N=40) utilized the YoTeach! application by Pedagogic and Active Learning Mobile Solutions (PALMS) Project, PolyU as a part of their English discussion class. Researchers re-purposed the application, which originally was designed to be an online classroom backchannel, as an asynchronous, pre-task…

This article documents the changes undergone by a telecollaboration project between a Japanese university and a university in Romania. While the size of the project diminished with every passing year due to extrinsic and intrinsic causes, the quality of the exchanges improved. It became apparent that the main goals of the collaboration --…

Foreign Language (FL) classrooms should be places where, at a minimum, communication is taking place in the foreign language being taught and intercultural understanding is also being developed. However, in countries where the majority of students are from a single cultural background, it is often difficult to keep students on-task if they do not…

This paper explains details of a creative writing project aimed at increasing students' motivation to write in English and develop collaboration skills. Forty-eight first-year -- A2-B1 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) level -- English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners enrolled in a reading and writing course at a…

The aim of this study is to compare how two different Virtual Exchanges (VE) contribute to language learning in a Japanese university context. Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) using VE has been a focus in this study. There are huge advantages of using technology in language teaching such as increasing language use opportunities, feedback, and…

Japanese university students (N=253) conversed with human and Artificially intelligent (AI) chatbot partners then recorded their perceptions of these interactions via open-ended written feedback. This data was qualitatively analyzed to gain a better understanding of the merits and demerits of using chatbots for English study from the students'…

Globalization has led to an increased need for Japanese students to improve their communicative abilities in order to compete on the world stage. As a result, the Japanese government has reformed the English education system in Japan to focus on more practical communication. Due to a lack of time and resources available to do this successfully,…

The aim of this study was to discover what potential benefits of Virtual Reality (VR) use students perceived in comparison to smartphone use in an English-speaking activity. Two surveys were conducted over three interventions in order to ascertain these student perceptions. Ten students enrolled in an elective English class at a Japanese…

More and more Japanese students are studying abroad and the Japanese government has set a target of 180,000 students to study abroad each year by 2020 and is providing financial assistance to students to help achieve this goal. However, is financial assistance enough? Surveys conducted with students from a national education-focused university in…

Since 2000, I have been coordinating a web based virtual exchange project, Project Ibunka. Ibunka means different cultures in Japanese. It aims to provide opportunities of authentic interaction among EFL/ESL learners all over the world. The project has been giving English language learners from various countries opportunities to use English for…

There is no doubt that Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) and mobile mediated communication are linked as technology continues to transform the way we communicate with each other. Campbell (2019) analyzed how mobile communication evolved into portable devices to form a complete system of mobile media, reshaping the fabric of our social lives…

The aim of this research project was to examine the impact of chatbots as conversation partners. First and second year Japanese university students (n=120) from a private university in Southwest Japan were randomly assigned to either conduct a speaking task with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot or human partner. Preliminary analysis of the…

We developed a story creation platform that allows for collaborative content creation in a 3D environment by utilizing avatars, animations, objects, and backgrounds. Our story envisioning platform provides a shared virtual space that promotes collaborative interaction for story construction, involving a high degree of learner input and control. It…