Undertaking a Virtual Exchange (VE) project for the first time is supported by introductory online training and mentoring offered through the European Commission's Erasmus+ programme, and can be a source of teacher Professional Development (PD). This study based on Exploratory Practice (EP) describes aspects of the planning and implementation of…

As physical mobility finds itself impeded by the COVID-19 crisis, the world witnesses the potential of technology for connecting students who are physically distanced inside and cross-borders. In such scenarios, telecollaboration and virtual exchange have gained increased attention as powerful pedagogical strategies to allow for the continuity of…

This study reports on how the affordances of the WebEx platform were used as multimodality resources during the negotiation of meaning by participants engaged in an English/Spanish eTandem video-conferencing exchange. The exchange involved five dyads of university students with an intermediate level of language proficiency. A total of seven tasks…

This pilot study focuses on a tool called L2L that allows second language (L2) learners to visualise and analyse their Zoom interactions with native speakers. L2L uses the Zoom transcript to automatically generate conversation metrics and its playback feature with timestamps allows students to replay any chosen portion of the conversation for…

Living in the 21st century means living in an era that is increasingly globalising where cross-cultural communication is essential; thus, students should be given opportunities to cultivate their Intercultural Communicative Competences (ICC). This paper reports on Phase 3 of ClerKing, a Franco-Jamaican telecollaborative project, which involved…

This study analyzed eTandem video-conferencing exchanges between five pairs of university students of English as a foreign language (EFL) and Spanish as a foreign language (SFL). The exchanges, which involved discussion of seven tasks, took place on a weekly basis. Drawing on an interactionist perspective (Ellis et al., 2001a; Loewen, 2005), the…

This study investigates the interaction of native speaker--non-native speaker (NS-NNS) dyads engaged in conversational interaction as part of a video-based synchronous computer mediated communication (VidSCMC) eTandem language program. Previous work has indicated certain advantages of NNS-NS conversational interaction for language learning (e.g.,…

In the context of learning a second language, the passing on of cultural information as a means to further the development of intercultural competences is primarily viewed as being unidirectional--the "native-speaking culture" passing on information to the language learning student. However, in EFL (English as a foreign language)…

Telecollaboration allows for students to develop foreign/second language competences linguistically, culturally, and interculturally. The use of platforms, such as WhatsApp and Zoom, is now more frequently exploited in foreign language education to ensure that a wider cross section of students, including Jamaicans, can develop global competences.…

This article contributes to the literature on the value of Virtual Exchanges (VEs) in the field of technology-mediated language learning. Specifically, we report on a pilot program for high school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in Slovakia and English as a Second Language (ESL) learners in Michigan, USA who engaged in a 10-week,…

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…

In this microanalytical study, designed as part of an interdisciplinary and intercultural virtual exchange project for undergraduate students, the authors investigate the correlation between task design on the one hand and participant interaction during task performance on the other. The task created for this study consisted of 12 low-frequency…

E+VE-SFI (Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange -- Spain, France, Ireland) is a higher-education VE between students from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Université Clermont Auvergne (UCA), and the University of Limerick (UL). Its primary aim is to develop the speaking skills of undergraduates enrolled in foreign language programmes. Running over a…

The goal of this short-form article is to provide an overview of the opportunities and benefits for faculty and students who are considering the implementation of Virtual Exchange (VE) learning experiences to globalize the curriculum and their classrooms. The essay describes the benefits of students developing global competence, improving…

This paper presents the outcomes of a short intercultural exchange project involving pre-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher training establishments in Sweden and Israel. The project comprised three online meetings recorded in "Zoom" in which student teachers gave feedback on each other's project assignments involving…