Title: Virtual exchanges in University Education in Finland: Student and teacher well-being

Name of presenter: Nicole Ivarsson-Keng

Affiliation and academic title: University Lecturer in English, Aalto University

 

Email address: Nicole.Ivarsson-Keng@aalto.fi

 

Keywords: virtual exchange; student engagement; communication skills; cross-disciplinary collaboration; telecollaboration

 

Abstract:

Over the past three decades, approaches and terminologies to virtual exchange initiatives have evolved in different contexts and different areas of education. Studies have pointed out several factors which benefit students’ learning experience and different approaches which enable successful collaboration in Higher Education settings (e.g. O’Dowd & Lewis, 2016; Preshouse et. al, 2018). It has been shown that the telecollaboration of language learning develops intercultural competence (Belz, 2003) and other aspects of intercultural communicative competence, in addition to developing linguistic competence (Furstenberg et. al, 2001). Although virtual exchange initiatives are gradually gaining ground as a cross-disciplinary form of online learning (O’Dowd, 2018), their integration in the university level of language education is not widely applied in Finland. Before COVID-19 pandemic, virtual collaborative projects tend to focus on language skills and intercultural communication competence development. During and after pandemic, similar projects showed new findings of student engagement and positive influence of student wellbeing.  The cross-disciplinary collaboration creates an international and experiential learning opportunity for students to develop key academic and communication skills (Ivarsson-Keng & Crossan, 2023). This talk will demonstrate a number of projects conducted between a Finnish university and universities in different countries. During this talk, I will provide examples of tasks design, in which students produced written and spoken form of work, and examples of participation interaction and video clips to demonstrate the skills being practiced. An overall evaluation of the effectiveness based on participants’ journal reflections and the questionnaire survey results showed that the pedagogical impact, the level of cultural awareness and student engagement were obtained positively in these projects. Issues and challenges in different projects will also be discussed. This talk aims to share the best practice on an innovative and sustainable approach to teaching and learning via different forms of virtual collaborations.

 

References:

Belz, J. (2003) Linguistic perspectives on the development of intercultural competence in telecollaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 7(2), 68-99. http://www.lltjournal.org/item/2423

Furstenberg, G., Levet, S., English, K. & Maillet, K. (2001) Giving a virtual voice to the silent language of culture: the culture project.  Language Learning & Technology, 5(1), 55-102. http://www.lltjournal.org/item/2342