VE, warts and all: ‘catastrophes’, ‘disasters’ and failing better.
This paper reports on a virtual exchange that took place in the context of EVE (Erasmus + Virtual Exchange), which had its first mention in 2016 by the European commissioner Navracsics: I want to set up Erasmus+ Virtual Exchanges to connect young people inside and outside EU and help build intercultural understanding”. As previously shown in numerous research studies, online virtual exchanges help and enhance the development of intercultural awareness and intercultural learning (Kinginger and Belz, 2005; Guth & Helm, 2010) when in a context of foreign languages. Conversely, another approach to virtual exchanges is a “service-provider approach”, where a non-profit organization provides academic content, online discussions and engagement in collaborative research (O´Dowd, 2018) all through the medium of English as a lingua franca with the aim to promote intercultural awareness and develop employability skills such as critical thinking, cross-cultural communication, team-work, collaboration, and media literacy.
Our study is based on the implementation of EVE with applied language students (n=80) taking a core module as part of their BA in Applied Languages, entitled “Language Technology”. In the continuum that moves from a more instrumental conception of languages to a recognition of the cultural and intercultural elements as part of language teaching, we decided to include as a compulsory component of this module the participation of our students in EVE provided by the non-profitable organization Sharing Perspectives Foundation.
The online exchanges lasted for 10 weeks and required 2 hours of weekly virtual contact outside the class time and a reflective assignment at the end of the semester. This constituted 60% of the overall module assessment.
The data gathered for this study emerged from a final survey distributed to all participants, the final reflective assignments and several focus groups. The methodology used to conduct the research is a mixed-method approach. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse quantitative data whilst a thematic analysis was applied to the reflective assignments and focus groups.
The results suggest several key issues that need to be addressed: initial perception of the students of the VE as a major challenge; development of intercultural awareness and soft skills not explicitly declared by the participants; (mis-)perceptions of external reward of the official badge; willingness of the participants to be actively involved in the topics during the sessions (e.g. helping a Syrian student find a scholarship, creating a Facebook group); and student voices concerning the use of English as lingua franca for this type of intercultural virtual exchanges. Our conclusions relate some solutions drawn from initial failures in the overall process and self-realisations that may occur during the final reflective period of the exercise.
Kinginger, C. & Belz, J. (2005). Sociocultural perspectives on pragmatic development in foreign language learning: Case studies from telecollaboration and study abroad. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2, 369-421.
Guth, S., & Helm, F. (eds) (2010). Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, Literacies and Intercultural Learning in the 21st Century. Bern: Peter Lang
O’Dowd, R. (2018) From telecollaboration to virtual exchange: state-of-the-art and the role of UNICollaboration in moving forward, Journal of Virtual Exchange, V.1, pp. 1-23.