Exploring Hofstede and writing advice for Erasmus students

This activity is aimed at getting students to become familiar with the work of Geert Hofstede and his cultural dimensions but also view them with a critical eye. Students compare the scores for their country/ies to those for the countries of their telecollaboration partners, and discuss their findings together.
Subsequently they individually write a text with advice and information for Erasmus students intending to come to their university, basing it in part on their exploration of Hofstede&#39 s cultural dimensions.

A First-year Exchange

This series of tasks is designed for an exchange between two or more classes of students studying English in their study programme. It gives them the opportunity to use English in a semi-authentic context and also to develop their electronic literacies and their academic skills by carrying out different online activities together such as creating a blog, interviewing each other online and carrying out a class presentation based on their online collaborations.


The tasks are relatively simple to organise and implement and are adaptable to a wide number of topics. This task sequence has been quite successful with first year students as it combines online interaction with basic academic skills development such as class presentations, interviewing and essay writing.

Creating Blogs for your partner class

Working in groups, students create blogs (using blogger or another free, easy-to-use tool) which present themselves and aspects of their local culture. Students from the different partner universities then post comments and questions on their partners&#39 blogs.


You can see previous examples of blogs which my students made for an exchange here: http://killingtorrente.blogspot.com.es/ http://places-of-wonder.blogspot.com.es/ http://ourrealspain.blogspot.com.es/


Usually, students create the blogs in their target language and receive feedback from their partners in this same language. This would mean that in a Spanish-American exchange, the Spanish students would create their blogs in English and the Americans would create their blogs in Spanish.