Speakers
KEYWORDS
Virtual Exchange, International Online Collaboration, Intercultural competence
ABSTRACT
Agency is “the socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahern, 2001) so for Foreign Language (FL) learners, using the FL they are learning in truly sociocultural environments is ideal. Virtual Exchange (VE) - or international online exchange - allows this to happen in a truly international online environment. Little & Erickson (2015) challenge teachers to empower their learners and suggest “exploratory talk” is essential to foster collaboratively constructed knowledge. For students in classrooms with peers from only one culture, having access to international peers via VE improves the chances of intercultural learning occurring and thus development of learners' intercultural identity. As this forms, students become more confident to actively pursue “personal and collaborative learning agendas” (ibid.), which is the crux of learner autonomy, with a world view. Teachers embrace methods of FL learning that ensure all this can occur hence the growing popularity of VE. This presentation will showcase how the IVEProject develops students’ agency, autonomy and intercultural identity whilst offering teachers numerous tools to bolster students’ motivation and reports to easily assess participation data. The free-of-charge IVEProject has had some 25,000 students from Japan, under the tutelage of their teachers, interact with 35,000 students from 29 other countries since 2015,
| TITLE | Developing Agency, Autonomy and Identity: International Online Exchange |
|---|---|
| RELEVANT SIG | Intercultural Communication in Language Education |
| FORMAT | Practice-oriented Oral Face-to-face presentation (25 minutes, including Q&A) |
