This collection of papers, consisting of 39 delegate contributions and three keynote articles from “New directions in telecollaborative research and practice: the second conference on telecollaboration in higher education” hosted by Trinity College Dublin in April 2016, offers a window on a rapidly evolving form of learning. Telecollaboration is used in many formats and contexts, but has as a defining feature the ability to unite learners from classrooms around the world in meaningful computer-mediated tasks and activities. This cross-disciplinary overview discusses telecollaboration in support of language and culture, teacher training, student mobility, and other disciplines and skills from a range of analytical perspectives. It will be of interest to anyone working in HE as an educator, researcher, educational designer, mobility officer, decision maker or administrator.

This book brings together contributions on learner autonomy from a myriad of contexts to advance our understanding of what autonomous language learning looks like with digital tools, and how this understanding is shaped by and can shape different socio-institutional, curricular, and instructional support. To this end, the individual contributions in the book highlight practice-oriented, empirically-based research on technology-mediated learner autonomy and its pedagogical implications. They address how technology can support learner autonomy as process by leveraging the affordances available in social media, virtual exchange, self-access, or learning in the wild (Hutchins, 1995). The rapid evolution and adoption of technology in all aspects of our lives has pushed issues related to learner and teacher autonomy centre stage in the language education landscape. This book tackles emergent challenges from different perspectives and diverse learning ecologies with a focus on social and educational (in)equality. Specifically, to this effect, the chapters consider digital affordances of virtual exchange, gaming, and apps in technology-mediated language learning and teaching ranging from instructed and semi-instructed to self-instructed contexts. The volume foregrounds the concepts of critical digital literacy and social justice in relation to language learner and teacher autonomy and illustrates how this approach may contribute to institutional objectives for equality, diversity and inclusion in higher education around the world and will be useful for researchers and teachers alike.

Exploring the impact of the digital environment on international students, carefully selected global contributors examine how digital experiences have been used to internationalize higher education. Using fascinating case studies and current research, this book considers the digital experiences of students as a result of their engagement with international education providers and stakeholders from a transnational and trans-disciplinary perspective. Looking specifically at the digital transitions and networks that international students experience during their time studying overseas, this book examines the ways in which the curriculum and higher education institutions’ engagement strategies have been shaped by the digital environment. Split into three sections, this book: looks at the broad experiences of international students, covering the digital transitions and networks that students experience during their time studying overseas explores the ways in which the curriculum has been shaped by the digital environment considers the ways in which higher education institutions and other service providers implement digital engagement strategies to communicate more effectively with international students. Digital Experiences of International Students is essential reading for practitioners, academics, researchers, administrators, policy-makers, and anyone with an interest in learning and teaching in a digital age.

As Languages for Specific Purposes have always been defined as student-oriented, the rationale behind this volume is to use the rather neglected niche of the other necessary agent of language instruction and thus focus on the LSP practitioner. This turn towards the instructor has been motivated by the fact that a great number of LSP practitioners enter their jobs without previous expertise. They lack LSP education, or they may not even have a background in applied linguistics. This motivation has proven valid as many of the volume’s contributors have faced this particular situation in their professional lives. For insights into the LSP field and guidelines on the best practices, they must rely on their colleagues who offer to share their experience through workshops, conferences, or papers, which is what this volume provides. The primary goal of this volume is to present considerations of what challenges LSP practitioners face and should be prepared for in their jobs and to provide practice-tested methodological guidelines on such demanding teaching techniques as blended and flipped learning or tandem learning. All papers have been written by LSP practitioners and researchers in higher education. Thus, this volume provides both guidance and self-reflection. In other words, it is written by experienced LSP practitioners for aspiring LSP practitioners about how they see themselves and what effort they make to meet the challenges of their jobs. As proof that LSP practice is a global challenge, papers have been collected from many European countries, the USA, Uruguay. Even though most papers are naturally concerned with English, being the lingua franca of today, the collection also features guidelines for teaching Spanish, French and Dutch for specific purposes. Moreover, the target disciplines these languages are taught for encompass business, engineering, sociology or medicine, thus supporting the assumption of the universal character of problems LSP practitioners deal with.

Journal of Virtual Exchange is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal aimed at practitioners and researchers in the field known variously as telecollaboration, virtual exchange, or online intercultural exchange. It is the official journal of UniCollaboration, the international academic organisation dedicated to supporting and promoting telecollaboration and virtual exchange in higher education.

This volume provides a comprehensive treatment of telecollaboration as a learning mode in translator education, surveying the state-of-the-art, exploring its distinctive challenges and affordances and outlining future directions in both theoretical and practical terms. The book begins with an overview of telecollaboration and its rise in prominence in today’s globalised world, one in which developments in technology have significantly impacted practices in professional translation and translator education. The volume highlights basic design types and assessment modes and their use in achieving competence-based learning outcomes, drawing on examples from seven telecollaboration projects. In incorporating real-life research, Marczak draws readers’ attention to not only the practical workings of different types of projects and their attendant challenges but also the opportunities for educators to diversify and optimize their instructional practices and for budding translators to build competence and better secure their future employability in the language service provision industry. This volume will be a valuable resource for students and researchers in translation studies, particularly those with an interest in translator education and translation technology, as well as stakeholders in the professional translation industry.

This book explores how identities emerge and are negotiated by young people in online facilitated dialogue, a form of virtual exchange. It offers a framework for this type of exploration based on the assumption that both the situated context and the technologies mediating online interactions influence, but do not necessarily determine, the interactions taking place and the participants’ identity orientations. Identity is viewed not as fixed and static, but rather multiple and fluid as interactants position themselves in relation to one another. This framework is then applied to the analysis of one specific virtual exchange context, and the interactions over several weeks of a group of participants from a wide range of backgrounds.

The Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education (EVALUATE) project was a European policy experiment funded by Erasmus+ between 2017 and 2019. The EVALUATE consortium trained teacher trainers and organised virtual exchanges which involved over 1,000 student teachers at over 34 initial teacher education institutions in Europe and beyond. Following the successful capstone conference of the EVALUATE project in September 2019, a number of colleagues answered our call for submissions to the proceedings. The articles you find here provide a window into the multifaceted contributions not only to the conference, but to the field of telecollaboration and virtual exchange at large. We hope you enjoy finding out about the many different ways in which our colleagues engage with this innovative pedagogical approach that combines the deep impact of intercultural dialogue and exchange with the broad reach of digital technology.

Our evolving understanding of the role of English as a lingua franca and our growing sensitivity to the unique needs of students and teachers who communicate across languages and cultures has led to significant changes in language teaching, pedagogy, and curriculum design. The Handbook of Plurilingual and Intercultural Language Learning is a field-defining book, which examines the various ways learners learn and acquire language in a truly global context. Featuring contributions from a diverse range of scholars reflecting different cultural, linguistic, regional, and ideological perspectives, this innovative volume presents the most recent developments in the field while revealing the nuances and complexities of teaching and learning foreign languages. This Handbook explains the conceptual basis of intercultural and plurilingual learning, describes core pedagogical concepts, discusses different learning and teaching approaches, and provides the historical background for various methods and theories. The authors discuss how policy and pedagogy can adapt to the shifting demographics of local student populations, address new trends and evolving themes, and explore contemporary topics such as translanguaging, intercomprehension, technology-enhanced learning, language policy, and more. The Handbook of Plurilingual and Intercultural Language Learning is essential reading for students, educators, and researchers in applied linguistics, language teaching and learning, plurilingualism/multilingualism, TESOL, cognitive linguistics, language policy, language acquisition, and intercultural communication.

This book provides a comprehensive critical account of tandem learning, charting it evolution from its origins in European educational settings to modern programs offering new perspectives on the approach’s role within higher education. Taking stock of the ways in which increased globalization has produced new linguistic and sociocultural realities, the volume begins by looking back at the development of tandem learning over the last several decades, growing out of a need to create more opportunities for L2 learners to communicate in their target language. The book then examines the different learning objectives and learning outcomes of tandem learning arrangements, moving toward a discussion of tandem learning’s potential role in shaping language policy and the unique challenges involved in implementing tandem programs at higher education institutions. The final section of the book brings the previous discussions together to consider new tools and technology and the ways in which they can better equip language educators to implement tandem learning in their own practice. Highlighting tandem learning’s potential to promote multilingual and multicultural learning on a global scale, this volume will be of particular interest to students and researchers in intercultural communication, language education, multilingualism, and applied linguistics.