Interacting with target-language speakers online has become an important way for many second language students around the world to improve their skills in their target language. These types of learning interactions can take place on a wide range of online platforms, whether paid or unpaid, one-on-one or in small groups. Although research on these types of activities, often called virtual exchanges (VE), has increased, relatively little research has compared students’ experiences across different platforms. The present study compared the experiences of first and second-year university students with native speakers in in-person interactions as well as through several online services that connect language learners. Results indicate that students claimed to learn more in the in-person interactions than in the online settings. They also claimed to feel less anxiety in the in-person interactions. However, they also felt that certain online services improved their language learning in ways that were similar to the in-person interactions. In addition, each online or in-person setting offered unique advantages and disadvantages in terms of practicality and learning.
{"title":"Virtual and in-person exchanges: Student perspectives on advantages and disadvantages","authors":"Rob A. Martinsen, Gregory L. Thompson","doi":"10.21827/jve.7.41147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21827/jve.7.41147","url":null,"abstract":"Interacting with target-language speakers online has become an important way for many second language students around the world to improve their skills in their target language. These types of learning interactions can take place on a wide range of online platforms, whether paid or unpaid, one-on-one or in small groups. Although research on these types of activities, often called virtual exchanges (VE), has increased, relatively little research has compared students’ experiences across different platforms. The present study compared the experiences of first and second-year university students with native speakers in in-person interactions as well as through several online services that connect language learners. Results indicate that students claimed to learn more in the in-person interactions than in the online settings. They also claimed to feel less anxiety in the in-person interactions. However, they also felt that certain online services improved their language learning in ways that were similar to the in-person interactions. In addition, each online or in-person setting offered unique advantages and disadvantages in terms of practicality and learning.","PeriodicalId":490598,"journal":{"name":"Journal of virtual exchange","volume":"141 41","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141655830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Caroline E. Martins, Samuel J. Martins, Mary E. Risner
As the popularity of virtual exchange (VE) has increased worldwide in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many higher education institutions are seeking the most efficient ways of building capacity for this practice. Using the context of VE implementations between the United States and Mexico as a case study, this research aimed to identify strategies for VE capacity-building that can be useful to institutions in a variety of contexts. The study included only instructors with experience implementing VE, the majority of whom had implemented VE multiple times, and used mixed methods data gathered via a questionnaire and focus groups. The findings identified specific examples of the types of resources that higher education institutions in the U.S. and Mexico may consider investing in, such as increased support for teaching with technology and different types of incentives for instructors’ continued VE engagement. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for strategies that universities worldwide can use to enhance the support they offer their VE instructors, including resource sharing with partner institutions and VE organizations.
{"title":"Beyond borders: Building capacity and enhancing institutional resources for U.S.-Mexico virtual exchange initiatives","authors":"Caroline E. Martins, Samuel J. Martins, Mary E. Risner","doi":"10.21827/jve.7.41464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21827/jve.7.41464","url":null,"abstract":"As the popularity of virtual exchange (VE) has increased worldwide in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many higher education institutions are seeking the most efficient ways of building capacity for this practice. Using the context of VE implementations between the United States and Mexico as a case study, this research aimed to identify strategies for VE capacity-building that can be useful to institutions in a variety of contexts. The study included only instructors with experience implementing VE, the majority of whom had implemented VE multiple times, and used mixed methods data gathered via a questionnaire and focus groups. The findings identified specific examples of the types of resources that higher education institutions in the U.S. and Mexico may consider investing in, such as increased support for teaching with technology and different types of incentives for instructors’ continued VE engagement. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for strategies that universities worldwide can use to enhance the support they offer their VE instructors, including resource sharing with partner institutions and VE organizations.","PeriodicalId":490598,"journal":{"name":"Journal of virtual exchange","volume":"137 13","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141656125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Virtual exchanges through the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP) allow instructors to design collaborations that engage students in global, international, and intercultural (GII) competencies, which are increasingly emphasised through the ongoing process of internationalisation of higher education. This article constitutes a practice report that describes two TAPP virtual exchanges designed by an instructor in Spain and one in the United States between master’s level translation students at a research university in Spain and 1) undergraduate students enrolled in a specialised technical writing course at a research university in the U.S. and 2) students in a graduate editing course at a regional university in the U.S. A content analysis of pre- and postlearning reports authored by the translation students demonstrates that students engaged in GII competencies such as openness, adaptability, and intercultural communication, which further reinforced the internationalisation of the curriculum.
{"title":"Global, international, and intercultural competencies in a Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP) partnership","authors":"Ashleigh Petts, Raquel Lázaro-Gutiérrez","doi":"10.21827/jve.7.39697","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21827/jve.7.39697","url":null,"abstract":"Virtual exchanges through the Trans-Atlantic and Pacific Project (TAPP) allow instructors to design collaborations that engage students in global, international, and intercultural (GII) competencies, which are increasingly emphasised through the ongoing process of internationalisation of higher education. This article constitutes a practice report that describes two TAPP virtual exchanges designed by an instructor in Spain and one in the United States between master’s level translation students at a research university in Spain and 1) undergraduate students enrolled in a specialised technical writing course at a research university in the U.S. and 2) students in a graduate editing course at a regional university in the U.S. A content analysis of pre- and postlearning reports authored by the translation students demonstrates that students engaged in GII competencies such as openness, adaptability, and intercultural communication, which further reinforced the internationalisation of the curriculum.","PeriodicalId":490598,"journal":{"name":"Journal of virtual exchange","volume":" 32","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141679212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Collaboration between technical and professional (TP) writers in English as a second language is important for successful communication. This is evident in legal documents in both English and Spanish, where accuracy and clarity are paramount. However, achieving this is challenging because law students often lack effective writing tools, and translation students may lack the required encyclopedic knowledge. The present paper describes a co-designed exchange project between U.S. students in business and law and students of legal translation at a university in Spain. This paper aims to determine potential improvements in students’ encyclopedic and conceptual knowledge of this specialized language and their translation performance after the collaboration intervention. To evaluate these aspects, three textual items were targeted: terminological, nominal and, what we call, substitutional density. Our results indicate that peer collaboration helped Spanish students acquire encyclopedic knowledge in the field and avoid repetitive terms in their translations, leading to greater textual cohesion through the use of general language, synonyms and hypernyms. Other aspects of this peer collaboration as well as follow-up approaches to consolidate the observed effects are needed.
{"title":"Sharing knowledge without borders: Collaboration between U.S. business and law students and Spanish translation students","authors":"Belén López-Arroyo, Isabel Pizarro-Sánchez, Leticia Moreno-Pérez","doi":"10.21827/jve.7.39420","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21827/jve.7.39420","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Collaboration between technical and professional (TP) writers in English as a second language is important for successful communication. This is evident in legal documents in both English and Spanish, where accuracy and clarity are paramount. However, achieving this is challenging because law students often lack effective writing tools, and translation students may lack the required encyclopedic knowledge. The present paper describes a co-designed exchange project between U.S. students in business and law and students of legal translation at a university in Spain. This paper aims to determine potential improvements in students’ encyclopedic and conceptual knowledge of this specialized language and their translation performance after the collaboration intervention. To evaluate these aspects, three textual items were targeted: terminological, nominal and, what we call, substitutional density. Our results indicate that peer collaboration helped Spanish students acquire encyclopedic knowledge in the field and avoid repetitive terms in their translations, leading to greater textual cohesion through the use of general language, synonyms and hypernyms. Other aspects of this peer collaboration as well as follow-up approaches to consolidate the observed effects are needed.\u0000","PeriodicalId":490598,"journal":{"name":"Journal of virtual exchange","volume":"110 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141683462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Virtual exchange has widened internationalisation to more inclusive internationalisation at home initiatives. This study is set in a higher education context where 122 students from a public university in southwestern France took part in Sharing Perspectives Foundation’s flagship Climate Movements virtual exchange. In this context, L1 French learners of English, who majored in the hard sciences, interacted on a weekly basis with other students worldwide on the sensitive topic of climate change, marking the critical turn of virtual exchange projects (Helm, 2016; O’Dowd, 2016, 2018; Zečević & Milekić, 2022). The data (questionnaire responses, reflective journal entries and interview transcripts) were collected into textual corpora and read for repeated emergent themes through conventional content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). The perceptions of the participants strongly suggest that Climate Movements virtual exchange is pivotal to internationalisation at home initiatives carried out in English as a second language.
{"title":"Climate Movements virtual exchange as an internationalisation at home initiative in France","authors":"Alexandra Reynolds","doi":"10.21827/jve.7.40476","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21827/jve.7.40476","url":null,"abstract":"Virtual exchange has widened internationalisation to more inclusive internationalisation at home initiatives. This study is set in a higher education context where 122 students from a public university in southwestern France took part in Sharing Perspectives Foundation’s flagship Climate Movements virtual exchange. In this context, L1 French learners of English, who majored in the hard sciences, interacted on a weekly basis with other students worldwide on the sensitive topic of climate change, marking the critical turn of virtual exchange projects (Helm, 2016; O’Dowd, 2016, 2018; Zečević & Milekić, 2022). The data (questionnaire responses, reflective journal entries and interview transcripts) were collected into textual corpora and read for repeated emergent themes through conventional content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). The perceptions of the participants strongly suggest that Climate Movements virtual exchange is pivotal to internationalisation at home initiatives carried out in English as a second language.","PeriodicalId":490598,"journal":{"name":"Journal of virtual exchange","volume":"10 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141703496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), uses technology to facilitate the engagement of students from different countries in collaborative coursework and sharing of cultural perspectives. The existing literature concerning COIL exchanges points to the need to further explore student satisfaction and engagement with such exchange projects, and whether course learning outcomes are being achieved. This practice paper describes a COIL exchange between students of health psychology at Mary Immaculate College, Ireland, and Sacred Heart University, in the United States. During this 10-week project students were required to engage in synchronous and asynchronous activities. Following the completion of the COIL project, students were given a questionnaire to assess their course satisfaction and whether learning outcomes were achieved. Findings indicate that students were satisfied with the exchange and learning outcomes were met. Overall, COIL may serve as another teaching approach to help students learn course specific material, understand multicultural viewpoints, and enhance their professional skill set.
{"title":"An introduction to local and global health behaviors using a Collaborative Online International Learning exchange","authors":"Niamh M. Higgins, Lisa B. Smith","doi":"10.21827/jve.6.38839","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21827/jve.6.38839","url":null,"abstract":"Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), uses technology to facilitate the engagement of students from different countries in collaborative coursework and sharing of cultural perspectives. The existing literature concerning COIL exchanges points to the need to further explore student satisfaction and engagement with such exchange projects, and whether course learning outcomes are being achieved. This practice paper describes a COIL exchange between students of health psychology at Mary Immaculate College, Ireland, and Sacred Heart University, in the United States. During this 10-week project students were required to engage in synchronous and asynchronous activities. Following the completion of the COIL project, students were given a questionnaire to assess their course satisfaction and whether learning outcomes were achieved. Findings indicate that students were satisfied with the exchange and learning outcomes were met. Overall, COIL may serve as another teaching approach to help students learn course specific material, understand multicultural viewpoints, and enhance their professional skill set.","PeriodicalId":490598,"journal":{"name":"Journal of virtual exchange","volume":"33 16","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135391152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sara Ganassin, Müge Satar, Thinh Ngoc Pham, Ashleigh Regan
This practice report describes the design and implementation of a collaborative and virtual exchange-embedded virtual summer school for postgraduate students in the context of European Higher Education. The two-week virtual summer school on multilingualism and intercultural learning brought together 40 students who collaborated to produce ten video-case studies based on their experiences as educators in a number of contexts. We share our experiences as organisers and participants and offer insights from the process of planning for, engaging with and evaluating the summer school. Our paper draws on quantitative and qualitative data, i.e., a pre and post summer school survey, a qualitative evaluation questionnaire and a student-participant account to evidence how the experience benefitted participants. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the model presented here: participants’ understanding of key concepts of interculturality and multilingualism increased, there was a statistically significant difference in perceived development of digital competences and presentation skills, and more than 90% of the participants were very satisfied with their training and international collaboration opportunities. In conclusion, we propose a set of learning points that may support others to design and deliver a collaborative model of summer school and the use of ‘skills passports’ in alternative to accreditation.
{"title":"Designing a collaborative and virtual exchange-embedded virtual summer school","authors":"Sara Ganassin, Müge Satar, Thinh Ngoc Pham, Ashleigh Regan","doi":"10.21827/jve.6.39812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21827/jve.6.39812","url":null,"abstract":"This practice report describes the design and implementation of a collaborative and virtual exchange-embedded virtual summer school for postgraduate students in the context of European Higher Education. The two-week virtual summer school on multilingualism and intercultural learning brought together 40 students who collaborated to produce ten video-case studies based on their experiences as educators in a number of contexts. We share our experiences as organisers and participants and offer insights from the process of planning for, engaging with and evaluating the summer school. Our paper draws on quantitative and qualitative data, i.e., a pre and post summer school survey, a qualitative evaluation questionnaire and a student-participant account to evidence how the experience benefitted participants. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the model presented here: participants’ understanding of key concepts of interculturality and multilingualism increased, there was a statistically significant difference in perceived development of digital competences and presentation skills, and more than 90% of the participants were very satisfied with their training and international collaboration opportunities. In conclusion, we propose a set of learning points that may support others to design and deliver a collaborative model of summer school and the use of ‘skills passports’ in alternative to accreditation.","PeriodicalId":490598,"journal":{"name":"Journal of virtual exchange","volume":"26 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135406283","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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