Virtual Exchange: From Connecting Classrooms to Creating Meaningful Learning Experiences
Universitat de València – IULMA
Abstract
Virtual Exchange (VE) has evolved considerably from its early roots in telecollaboration, offering students opportunities to communicate and collaborate with peers in other cultural and linguistic contexts without leaving their classrooms. Yet simply connecting students online does not necessarily result in meaningful language learning or intercultural development. Successful VE requires careful pedagogical design, appropriate tasks, adequate preparation and support for both teachers and students.
Drawing on research conducted across several European and national VE projects, as well as studies involving university, secondary and primary education contexts, this seminar explores the potential of VE as a pedagogical practice in education. Particular attention will be given to findings from synchronous audiovisual exchanges, including research into negotiation of meaning, communication strategies, interactional processes and language use in English as a lingua franca and in tandem configurations. The findings will be used to illustrate some of the opportunities and challenges involved in designing and implementing VE for language and intercultural learning.
The seminar will then move beyond the student perspective to consider the teacher’s role in the successful implementation of VE. Evidence from the E-LIVE project highlights the importance of teacher preparation, coaching and support, particularly when VE is integrated into existing curricula and involves teachers and learners with different levels of experience and personal needs.
Finally, emerging possibilities offered by virtual reality and different levels of immersion will be considered, drawing on recent research comparing low- and high-immersion environments in VE. This will provide an opportunity to reflect on how technological developments may influence students’ perceptions, interactional processes and experiences of VE.
The seminar will conclude with some reflections on the potential and limitations of VE as both a research field and a pedagogical practice. Participants will be invited to consider not only whether VE can be incorporated into their teaching, but also under what conditions it can contribute to meaningful learning experiences.
Biography
Begoña Clavel Arroitia is a senior lecturer in the English and German Department at the Universitat de València and a member of the Institut Interuniversitari de Llengües Modernes Aplicades (IULMA). Before that, she was a secondary school teacher. She teaches English as a foreign language and second language acquisition at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels. She has conducted research on authenticity in language course books and on the negotiation of meaning (NoM) in classroom discourse. Recently, she has analysed NoM in telecollaboration exchanges in secondary schools and looked into lexical density, diversity and sophistication in a telecollaborative exchange at the tertiary level. She has taken part in several regional, national and European Projects. In the last decade, she has participated in the TILA and TeCoLa projects. From 2022 to 2024 she has participated in the European Erasmus+ E-LIVE project (https://sites.google.com/view/eliveproject).