Virtual exchange (VE) is an umbrella term used to refer to the engagement of groups of students in sustained online intercultural interaction and collaboration with international partners under the guidance of their teachers. In the computer-assisted language learning literature, telecollaboration and eTandem approaches to VE have been researched…

Virtual exchange is a well-known pedagogical approach in foreign language (FL) education which involves engaging classes in online intercultural collaboration projects with international partners as an integrated part of their educational programmes. This paper begins by reviewing e-tandem and telecollaborative approaches to virtual exchange which…

Virtual exchange is an umbrella term used to refer to the engagement of groups of learners in online language and intercultural interaction and collaboration with partners from other cultural contexts or geographical locations as an integrated part of course work, and under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators. The majority of…

This executive summary presents the main findings from the EVALUATE European Policy Experiment Project. The EVALUATE project was a European policy experimentation funded by the European Commission's Erasmus+ programme (EACEA/34/2015). The aim of policy experimentations is to assess the effectiveness and potential scalability of innovative policy…

Virtual exchange, or telecollaboration, is a well-known pedagogical approach in foreign language education that involves engaging classes in online intercultural collaboration projects with international partners as an integrated part of their educational programmes. This article focuses on the role of the teacher as pedagogical mentor in virtual…

Students of initial teacher education need to be prepared for the classrooms of tomorrow. Teachers require the necessary skills and competences to teach in culturally diverse contexts, to collaborate across disciplines, and to use technologies in innovative ways; but the Digital Economy and Society Index reports that only 20-25% of students in…

The importance of teachers' capacity to integrate and exploit computer mediated communication (CMC) in the foreign language classroom has been recognised by many of the leading publications in foreign language teacher education, including the European Profile for Language Teacher Education (2004) and the European portfolio for student teachers of…

In this paper I argue that online intercultural interaction and exchange remains a relatively peripheral "add-on" activity in most foreign language classrooms. In its current state, it is yet to be considered an integral part of curricular activity and it does not yet form a significant part of high stakes assessment procedures. Against this…

Telecollaboration, or "online intercultural exchange" (OIE), refers to the application of online communication tools to bring together classes of language learners in geographically distant locations with the aim to develop their foreign language skills and intercultural competence through collaborative tasks and project work. Many…

Foreign language telecollaboration refers to virtual intercultural interaction and exchange projects between classes of learners in geographically distant locations. While research findings on telecollaboration have confirmed its valuable contribution to students' foreign language, intercultural and electronic competences, a preliminary research…

This paper presents the results of a European-wide survey regarding the practice of foreign language telecollaboration or Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) in higher education. The survey was carried out as part of a European project, INTENT (Integrating Telecollaborative Networks into Foreign Language Higher Education) which was awarded funding…

This book provides an accessible introduction to some of the methods and theoretical approaches for investigating foreign language (FL) interaction and exchange in online environments. Research approaches which can be applied to Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) are outlined, followed by discussion of the way in which tools and techniques for…

We performed a two-phase, year-long research project that explored the impact of peer feedback on language development. We investigated specifically how and when post-secondary learners of English and Spanish provide corrective feedback on their partners' use of the target language in weekly asynchronous discussions by assigning them to one of two…

This paper reports the findings of three qualitative studies which were carried out in university level EFL classes in Germany. The three groups used various combinations of communication technologies such as email, web-based message boards, and video conferencing in order to engage in online exchanges with different partner classes in Ireland and…

It is by now well established that telecollaborative exchanges frequently end in "failed communication" and do not automatically bring about successful negotiation of meaning between the learners. Instead, the intended pedagogic and linguistic aims of online interaction are repeatedly missed, and projects may end in low levels of participation,…