Digital intercultural training tools play an important role in helping people to mediate cultural misunderstandings. In recent years, these tools were made to teach about specific cultures, but there has been little attention for the design of a tool to teach about differences across a wide range of cultures. In this work, we take the first steps…

Although the use of games and game elements other than pure entertainment has been studied in several academic fields, studies on completely gamified courses for foreign language learning in secondary schools are still scarce. This exploratory research paper contributes to a better understanding of the affordances of mobile gamification in Foreign…

This paper provides new evidence on the effect of computerized individualized practice and instruction on language skills, more specifically on spelling. An individually randomized experiment among 7th grade students in the Netherlands is developed to study the effect of an adaptive digital homework tool on spelling performance. Using an…

Although corrective feedback (CF) has received much interest in the second language acquisition literature, relatively little research has investigated the relationship between CF and learner affect in concrete practice situations. The present study investigates learners' affective states and practice behaviour in a novel context: oral grammar…

The purpose of this research was to evaluate a prototype of an automatic speech recognition (ASR)-based language learning system that provides feedback on different aspects of speaking performance (pronunciation, morphology and syntax) to students of Dutch as a second language. We carried out usability reviews, expert reviews and user tests to…

This article discusses insights gained from a case study on telecollaboration for intercultural communication in foreign language school contexts. Focus was on non-native English and German lingua franca conversations between pairs of students (aged 14-16, B1 level) from schools in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. Telecollaboration…

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in creating a dynamic and successful European economy. Time-poor managers in these organisations generally have fewer opportunities for training and development than their counterparts in larger organisations. As a result, different requirements are placed on training. The aim of…

Within the European TILA project a case study was carried out where pupils from schools in Finland and the Netherlands engaged in debating sessions using the 3D virtual world of OpenSim once a week for a period of 5 weeks. The case study had two main objectives: (1) to study the impact that the discussion tasks undertaken in a virtual environment…

PictoPal is the name of a technology-rich curriculum with a focus on emergent literacy of Dutch kindergarteners. A case study design was used to examine teacher technology integration within PictoPal along with their perceptions about teaching/learning, technology and technology-based innovations. Observations were undertaken on pupils' engagement…

In this study the effects of two different interactive learning tasks, in which simple games were included were described with respect to student motivation and deep strategy use. The research involved 235 students from four elementary schools in The Netherlands. One group of students (N = 128) constructed their own memory "drag and…

Within a European project on Networked Interaction in Foreign Language Acquisition and Research (NIFLAR), "Second Life" was used as a 3D virtual world in which language students can communicate synchronously with native speakers in the target language, while undertaking action together. For this context, a set of design principles for…

The literature on the re-use of learning materials has largely focused on the development of materials. This paper explores how re-use can be stimulated after learning materials have been developed and made available. We searched for and developed guidelines that support staff and/or management most frequently adopt in cases of (un)successful…

In the Netherlands, as in many other countries, the algebraic expertise of students graduating from secondary education is an issue. The use of digital tools for algebra education is expected to change epistemologies, activity structures and student achievement. Therefore, a study was set up to investigate in what way the use of ICT in upper…

Graduates need to be prepared for working in global organisations that increasingly rely on virtual, culturally diverse teams. This paper reports on a qualitative research study concerned with the perceptions of university business students who collaborated on a virtual and international project to learn about intercultural communication. The…

The present paper describes a series of case studies of collaborative learning supported by two web-based learning environments: Synergeia2 and FLE3. The case studies were conducted in Finland, Greece, Italy, and the Netherlands as a part of international project called Innovative Technologies for Collaborative Learning. The general aim of this…