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Entering the World of Virtual Exchange: Learning from Teachers’ Experiences
Robert O’Dowd
University of León
Intercultural Communicative Competence –A Competitive Advantage for Global EmployabilityInternational Conference - Prague, 22-23 June 2017
• Why should you be interested in Virtual Exchanges?
• What are Virtual Exchanges and how do they work in university classrooms?
• What were the experiences of the ICCAGE teacherswho ran Virtual Exchanges for the first time?
Reasons why Virtual Exchange is important foruniversity education
Reason 1: Just because our students are “digital natives” doesn’t mean they can communicate
successfully online
• A German student writes this opening message to her new partner in Ireland:
• Hello, how are you? I study English and history and I want to become a teacher. This term
we do some cultural studies concerning Ireland and I very interested in it because I
actually do not know much about it.
• Now I would like to ask you some questions.
Do you live in Northern or in Southern Ireland? How many people live in your town? Are
you a Catholic or a Protestant? I have heard that regular churchgoing declines more and
more in your country-is it true?
• What are you doing in your free time? Do you often go to pubs? What do you think about
Germans? Irish people have the reputation of being very indirect and polite in their
speaking style. I have read that there was an enormous economic change in Ireland.
• How have you or your parents experienced the social and economic change in the past 20
years?
• That's all for now. I am looking forward to hearing from you!
The ‘Digital Native’ Controversy
Marc Prensky:
“…much of the controversy was due to a mis-interpretation of the term Digital Native by some people to mean that ‘everyone born after a certain date knows everything about technology.’ That, of course, is patently false...
…The Digital Natives / Digital Immigrants metaphor is NOT about what people know, or can do, with technology. Everyone has to learn in one way or another. It’s more about culture and attitudes.”
http://marcprensky.com/digital-native/
We might have been overestimating them…
“…much professional commentary, popular writing and PowerPoint presentations overestimates the impact of ICTs on the young, and that the ubiquitous presence of technology in their lives has not resulted in improved information retrieval, information seeking or evaluation skills” (p. 308).
Rowlands, I., Nicholas, D., Williams, P., Huntington, P., Fieldhouse, M., Gunter, B. and Tenopir, C. 2008. The Google generation: The information behaviour of the researcher of the future. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspectives, 60: 290–310.
We need to find ways in our classrooms to develop students’ digital competences
Reason 2: “We can’t get all our students to study abroad – but everyone does need
international learning experiences”
“In 2020, at least 20% of those graduating in the European Higher Education
Area should have had a study or training period abroad.”
[Communiqué of the Conference of European Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve, 28-29 April 2009]
• The current rate of mobility in Europe?
• The current rate of mobility in your country?
Sarah Richardson:
“…the espoused benefits from [physical] mobility do not derive from the act of crossing borders but instead from two other factors.
First, the encounters that students have.
And second, the influence on their psychological make-up on responding to these encounters”
(Cosmopolitan Learning for a Global Era, 2016, p.54).
European Commission Report: “European Higher Education in the world”:
“…internationalisation should ensure that the large majority of learners whoare not mobile… are nonetheless able to acquire the international skillsrequired in a globalised world (2013:6)”
…internationalisation at home
…intercultural competence
…global citizenship
The competences which learners need to acquire “if they are to participate effectively in a culture of democracy and live peacefully together with others in culturally diverse democraticsocieties” (CoE, 2016, p.5).
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/competences_en.asp
Reason 3: Just because you use online technologies in your classroom, doesn’t mean
you’re automatically innovating your approach to teaching and learning
….most European universities are still at a stage where the use of ICT “consists of treating the computer as a sophisticated typewriter and …only a minority take advantage of the potential of ICT to redesign curricula and the content of programmes (p.13)”
“Presenting a summary of recently learned content or checking students’ exercise books are frequently performed by, on average, 70% of teachers. However, only 38% report frequently using ICT in students’ projects or class work.” TALIS survey of secondary education: http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/teaching-with-technology_5jrxnhpp6p8v-en
We need pedagogical approaches which willsupport…
Innovative and student-centredlearning
TheDevelopment of students’ digital
competences
International learning
experiences oncampus
One way to achieve these objectives isTelecollaboration or Virtual Exchange…
The engagement of groups of students in online intercultural interaction and
collaboration…
…with students/ peers from other cultural contexts or geographical locations….
…as an integrated part of course work….
…and under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators.
Let’s look at some examples of Virtual Exchange in university education
http://www.cisi.unito.it/tandem/etandem/
• Two native speakers of different languages communicate together with the aim of learning the other’s language (e.g. Spanish-English)
• Partners provide feedback on content and foreign language performance
• Teacher’s role is limited –learners keep a diary and/or portfolio of their work
An example of an American-Spanish e-tandemHey Pablo!It was great to receive your letter. I was so happy to see that you responded to my questions. Thank you. Your responses were very informative and definitely showed me that family life in Spain was not all I'd expected it to be. (I was surprised, for example, that your family is not religious. I assumed that most families in Spain are, and I'm sure you have many assumptions about life in America as well). Your English is very good. There are only a few suggestions that I have to correct. Some of your sentences are too long, and would make more sense if you separated them into two or three sentences instead. For example, "My parents are not divorced in Spain there are very few cases of divorced" could be rewritten as "My parents are not divorced. In Spain there are very few cases of divorce." Your letter was great and made sense despite these things. Good work.
Las fiestas en the ciudad de Nueva York son muy locas y emocionantes. Voy a las discotecas con mis amigas los jueves, los viernes, o los sabados. Vamos a los bars tambien. Nosotros volvemosa nos salons de dormitorio a las cuatro de la manana. Queremos bailar a las discotecas. Necesita tener veintiuno anos por beber el alcohol pero la mayoria de estudiantes en las universidades tenen los "fake IDs" y ellos beben el alcohol. … No sabo mucho de Espana. Sabo que hay un museo de Guggenheim en Bilbao y sabo que hay muchos castillos bonitos. Que sabes de los Estados Unidos? Como es la fiesta en Espana? Elena
Teletandem: http://www.teletandembrasil.org/
Many exchanges try to develop both students’ intercultural and digital competences:
Discussing opinions on movies, short stories, cultural products
Making videos for their partners on aspects of thelanguage or culture…
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Creating blogs about their local culture for a foreignaudience
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Stage 1: Presentation of academic content via video lecturesStage 2: Facilitated online interaction between students in different universitiesStage 3: Online collaborative project between participating students
Porto (2014): British/Argentinian Action research project on the Malvinas/Falklands conflict
The first stage: Introductions and attitudes towards the war discussed online togetherThe second stage:
Cooperative work online - Interviews with war veterans are recorded and videos are shared online
The final stage: students became involved in civic action in their local communities -Students planned and taught lessons about the war in diverse educational settingsStudents created awareness-raising leaflets about the war, which they distributed in their city
Two students’ reactions…Student 1: These months sharing opinions have given us a very differentview of the United States,….from this we have taken note that there are notso many differences between our countries and that American films havedeceived us with respect to reality. The most important thing I've learned in this Exchange has been not to judge a society without first speaking withone of its citizens…
Student 2: I really enjoyed meeting new people and talk with them. I think it was a good experience. I also think that learning English with this online exchange is fun for people who don’t like English grammar and it is an alternative way of learning English.
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Your thoughts so far….
• What do you imagine are the challenges which teachersencounter when trying to run a Virtual Exchange?
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ICCAGE Project – Telecollaboration as a basic tool for developing international project work:The project will apply ICT and use telecollaboration and participatory strategies into the HE EU context. ICCAGE Telecollaborative Exchanges were:Integrated into courses with students from a wide range of subject areas - Tourism, Business Communication, Economics & Management, Marketing, Software DevelopmentsBased on Telecollaborative Modules developed as part of the project
Staff Training in Telecollaboration – University of León February 2016
Modules got students to collaborate online with theirinternational partners to…carry out surveys and collaborate on
video creation
…to use blogs and Google Docs to create collaborative essaysand advertisements…
… to set up a multinational company
Survey of ICCAGE Teachers:
Teachers were asked about their first experiences of running telecollaborative exchanges
• Why they decide to take up Virtual Exchange?
• What challenges they encountered?
• How they integrated the exchanges into their classes?
• The outcomes of their projects?
• The skills and attitudes necessary for telecollaboration?
Teachers were motivated by a desire to innovate their classes - for their students– and for themselves
“Because of the new experience it might bring to them; because I thought they could really benefit from contacting REAL people their age and learn/use the language FOR A PURPOSE and not only because it had been presented to them in an workbook/exercise.”
“To improve their digital literacy, to raise their intercultural awareness, to give them something new…”
“Because telecollaboration promises to offer an alternative to Language Teaching routines (both for me as well as the students)”
“Sobre todo, por experiencia personal, tras años aprendiendo en contextos formales inglés, siendo las clases basadas casi exclusivamente en gramática o en hablar con los compañeros….”
The importance of integrating telecollaboration into classswork
“The complete course was built on the telecollaboration project. Students were expected to do both in-class work and home assignments related to the project.”
“There was a lot of work to be done outside the class but we were able to dedicate a lot of classroom time to the project which helped the motivation of my students.”
“I integrated project-related activities into the class, devoting part of the class to project-related activities. In addition to this, if possible/relevant, I allowed students to work independently outside of class…”
Teachers encountered the common problems of telecollaborative exchanges – language proficiency, differences in timetabling and
evaluation systems, cultures of learning….
“As for the language, the low proficiency level of some students limited their participation, and the weaker students handed over to stronger ones the effective contacts with colleagues.”
“Different timing of the lessons in the two groups; different time of holidays during the term.”
“The problems were: (and thus the involvement and motivation differed a lot) different value (number of credits) of the project tasks in the students´ evaluation.”
“Bien, los problemas se debieron principalmente a los estilos de aprendizaje de lengua extranjeras que caracterizan a mis alumnos portugueses, centrados casi exclusivamente en métodos estructuralistas, donde se limitan a estar sentados, hacer gramática, y como mucho usar la lengua extranjera con el profesor o compañeros.
The telecollaborative exchange brought benefits both for teachers and forstudents
“It was a very positive experience both for me and my students. I was able to introduce some innovation in my class and students are now more enthusiastic about going themselves in an ERASMUS mobility exchange, as they demystified the ideas they had about what it was like to go and live in another country.
“I think it was very good for my students to find out whether they are able to write something about their culture and lifestyle in English.
“It was a very positive experience and I thinks it gave my students the possibility to learn a lot more.”
Teachers were asked about the skills and attitudes necessary for telecollaboration
What do you think they mentioned?
Teachers need good commununication and collaboration skills
“Ability to adapt to new communication situations and environments and to work as part of a team.”
“As our students do not have much experience with intercultural exchange, the teachers need to be able to give them a lot of examples, so that they would be able to imagine what it might include.”
Teachers need to provide models of good online communication for their students
Teachers need organisational skills and digital competence
“…good planning and negotiating skills, ICT skills, good time management”
The most mentioned trait: Teachers need attitudes of openness and flexibility
“Open-mindedness, ability to adapt to new communication situations and environments”“…most of all flexibility” “….the readiness to solve problems and/or improvise.”“abertura de mente, adaptabilidad, y encima de todo, ganas de aprender…”
Read more about the ICCAGE modules and the case studies reporting on their use here: http://iccageproject.wixsite.com/presentation
Join us this afternoon in our Telecollaboration workshops and learn how to…
• Set up telecollaborative partnerships
• Create tasks for your exchanges
• Establish assessment procedures of your exchanges
Are you a teacher-trainer? Want to engage your classes of student-teachers in Virtual Exchange projects?
EVALUATE: Exploring the impact of telecollaboration on student-teachers
Erasmus+ Key Action 3 (EACEA No 34/2015)
Project Homepage: http://www.evaluateproject.eu/
Join the Community and Get Involved!UNICollaboration.org
An academic organisation to support researchers and practitionersthrough publications, training and research initiatives
Thank you for listening!
• Contact:
– Publications: http://unileon.academia.edu/RobertODowd
– See this presentation again:
http://www.slideshare.net/dfmro
– Join UNICollaboration:
www.unicollaboration.org
• ICCAGE & EVALUATE are funded by Erasmus+ Key Actions 2 & 3. The views reflected in this presentation are the authors’ alone and the commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
“Below a superficial level of familiarity with theinnacurately named ‘new’ technologies… our childrenhave accumulated a series of weaknesses in regard to digital competences. …
It’s time to stop investing millions in computers, tabletsetc and instead invest our resources in training teachershow to integrate technologies across the curriculum…”Susana Lluna y Javier Pedreirahttp://tecnologia.elpais.com/tecnologia/2017/04/05/actualidad/1491420652_610290.html?id_externo_rsoc=TW_CC
