This was a telecollaborative exchange which took place from 2005 to 2011 between the University of León, Spain and Barnard College, New York. The project combined stages of online intercultural exchange with stages of physical mobility between the two classes. After initial online interaction, a group of students from León would travel to New York and would take part in classes with the American group for one week. Following that, the American group came to Spain to participate in classes with the Spanish class for another week. The exchange would then return to online interaction between the two classes. The content of the online interaction and the project work carried out during the physical mobility was all stored on a wiki.
Category: Sample projects
The aim of this databank is to bring together in one location a series of exchange scenarios that have already been implemented in a wide range of contexts. We hope that these projects will provide ideas and inspiration for new and innovative methods of developing online intercultural exchanges.
Languagetwin
LanguageTwin is an educational video chat platform that allows foreign language students to converse one-on-one with native speakers who are also learning a foreign language, while providing educators a framework for structuring conversations and assessing the performance and progress of their students.
Soliya Connect Program
The objectives of the Soliya Connect Program telecollaboration project are for participants to develop a deeper understanding of the perspectives of others around the world on important socio-political issues, and also to develop critical thinking, intercultural communication and media literacy skills. Each iteration of the project connects over 200 students from over 30 different universities in the US, Europe and the predominantly Arab and/or Muslim worlds, who are placed into small groups of 8-10 students and guided through a 9-week, English language dialogue program by pairs of trained facilitators.
The project was not developed for learning English, but rather for students of Political Science, Conflict Resolution, Media Studies in 2003. As it has expanded, groups of students have participated as part of their English language courses. This is a form of ' outsourced' telecollaboration project whereby universities can enrol students for the Connect Program which is managed by the NGO Soliya.
Teacher Trainees in intercultural exchange
This exchange involved future Primary-School teachers at the University of León, Spain (B1 level in English) working with students of Spanish in Missouri, USA (B1 level of Spanish). The exchange was located on a NING platform.
What is a NING? Ning is an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks. Ning offers users the ability to create a community website with a customized appearance and feel, feature sets such as photos, videos, forums and blogs. Your NING can be password protected so, in this sense, it can be a perfect ' closed environment' for your online exchanges.
The exchange lasted for one term and it has been repeated with different groups of students at the two universities over the past three years.