Telecollaboration in the foundation year classroom: the ‘Global Student Collective’

The ‘Global Student Collective’ is a telecollaboration project on the International Foundation Year (IFY) programme at the University of Southampton. IFY students were connected with volunteers in Brazil, India, Hungary, and Italy online in order to find out more about their countries. The project required the students to exercise multiple transferable skills, including teamwork, time management, and intercultural awareness. They also developed vital oral, written, and digital skills. The researcher used an Exploratory Practice (EP) approach utilising existing pedagogical activities for data collection. This paper identifies the challenges the project presented and presents preliminary findings from the research data in order to assist practitioners interested in telecollaboration to design their own projects.