Speaker
Description
Teachers of English as a Foreign Language can often struggle bringing an immediacy for use of English in their classrooms. The European Commission co-financed INTENT project defined Virtual Exchanges (VE) as technology-enabled, sustained, people to people education programs. VE entails the engagement of students in online intercultural exchange, interaction and collaboration with peers from geographically distant locations, under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators. VE thus gives EFL students opportunities to communicate with other speakers of English from around the world bringing a true immediacy to the EFL learning environment as students, particularly in regional universities, would have few opportunities to interact with users of the language they study otherwise.
The International Virtual Exchange Project (IVEProject) is one VE that has over 20 years of successful VE experience. Some 60,000 students and over 800 teachers from 32 countries have participated to date. Extensive research on VE and the IVEProject proves its usefulness. This workshop will firstly showcase the IVEProject and then have participants join online to carry out interactions as though they were students. After understanding the role of the student, participants will then be able to access the system as teachers. Discussion of how it can be used in class will follow.
Author Bio
Eric Hagley taught for 24 years in Japan, as associate professor at Muroran Institute of Technology and research fellow at Hosei University. He is now researching doing his PhD at Griffith University, Australia. He is the lead coordinator of the IVEProject and chair of APVEA. He has written and presented on VE extensively and was vice-president of PacCALL.
Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4795-8043