Computer-mediated intercultural exchanges between ESP students – Session 2.5 16.15-17.00

Submitted by Hanaa Khamis on Sat, 2010-04-10 10:08
Presenters: Rachel Linder & Vida Zorko
The talk reported the results of a 4-week online intercultural exchange project. The presented gave practical guidelines and insights into how to best manage similar projects based on theirs’ and their students’ perceptions. The presenters highlighted the shift toward multiliteracies, collaboration, web 2.0 and English as a lingua franca, away from traditional telecollaboration methods of keypal tandem projects. The students communicated through a variety of synchronous and asynchronous tools and kept a central wikispace for discussion and collection of ideas. The presenters set up the learning environment in terms of structure and task design. They emphasized the importance of teacher presence, technical support and final feedback for the students to take the project seriously. The presenters collected data in the form of surveys, class feedback, focus group interviews, analysis of wiki content and shared teacher perspectives over the exchange.