The Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education (EVALUATE) project was a European policy experiment funded by Erasmus+ between 2017 and 2019. The EVALUATE consortium trained teacher trainers and organised virtual exchanges which involved over 1,000 student teachers at over 34 initial teacher education institutions in Europe and beyond. Following the successful capstone conference of the EVALUATE project in September 2019, a number of colleagues answered our call for submissions to the proceedings. The articles you find here provide a window into the multifaceted contributions not only to the conference, but to the field of telecollaboration and virtual exchange at large. We hope you enjoy finding out about the many different ways in which our colleagues engage with this innovative pedagogical approach that combines the deep impact of intercultural dialogue and exchange with the broad reach of digital technology.
Virtual exchange refers to education programmes in which constructive communication and interaction takes place between individuals or groups from different cultural backgrounds with the support of educators or facilitators. Evaluating and Upscaling Telecollaborative Teacher Education (EVALUATE, http://www.evaluateproject.eu/) was a European policy experimentation financed by Erasmus+ which studied the impact of a telecollaborative model of virtual exchange on student teachers. Between 2017-2018, the project consortium trained teacher trainers and organised virtual exchanges which involved over 1,000 student teachers at initial teacher education institutions. This entailed students interacting and collaborating with partner classes from other countries as an integral part of one of their courses. The research team then analysed the learning gains from these exchanges using qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. They also worked with representatives from European ministries of education to understand how virtual exchange could be upscaled in teacher education across Europe. This publication presents the findings of the EVALUATE experimentation and its implications for the education of future teachers. The study found that engaging student teachers in structured online intercultural collaboration as part of their formal learning can contribute to the development of their digital-pedagogical, intercultural, and foreign language competences. It can also lead to innovation and international learning in the education of future teachers.
Virtual exchanges provide language learners with a unique opportunity to develop their target language skills, support inter-cultural exchange, and afford teacher candidates space to hone their teaching craft. The research presented in this volume investigates the role of virtual exchanges as both a teaching tool to support second language acquisition and a space for second language development. Practitioners obtain guidance on the different types of exchanges that currently exist and on the outcome of those exchanges so that they can make informed decisions on whether to include this type of program in their language teaching and learning classrooms. To this end, this edited volume contains chapters that describe individual virtual exchanges along with results of research done on each exchange to show how the exchange supported specific second language teaching and learning goals.
This volume is an important output of the ASSESSnet, an EU-funded project that aimed at investigating assessment practices in Virtual Exchange (VE) projects in Foreign Language (FL) courses at tertiary level. It starts with the discussion of selected aspects of VE and assessment design, and a summary of ASSESSnet project results. The following chapters present real-life examples of planning and administering assessment in VE projects in diverse educational settings. The descriptions of case studies are often supplemented by concrete examples of task descriptions, assessment rubrics, self-assessment prompts, and examples of student outputs. This volume is produced for practitioners by practitioners and may be of interest to teachers, teacher educators, school authorities and policy makers interested in introducing VE or improving the quality of the existing projects.
With the evolving technologies available to educators and the increased importance of including technologies in the classroom, it is critical for instructors to understand how to successfully utilize these emerging technologies within their curriculum. To ensure they are prepared, further study on the best practices and challenges of implementation is required. Preparing Pre-Service Teachers to Integrate Technology in K-12 Classrooms: Standards and Best Practices focuses on preparing future teachers to integrate technology into their everyday teaching by providing a compilation of current research surrounding the inclusion and utilization of technology as an educational tool. Covering key topics such as digital assessment, flipped classrooms, technology integration, and artificial intelligence, this reference work is ideal for teacher educators, administrators, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.
The Internet has penetrated material reality to such an extent that it is now often impossible to disentangle the material from the virtual. In this postdigital scenario, the encounter with ›newness‹ becomes accessible at the touch of a button, 24/7. Learning becomes a lifewide experience which allows for the emergence of new culturalities. The contributors to this volume engage with cultural changes brought about by an intensified digitalization process in the context of formal education but also shed light on unexpected contexts in which informal learning experiences take place every day, strengthening diasporas, creating new connections and transforming ourselves and our societies.
Teachers, professors, and educational professionals have the opportunity to create new, challenging, significant, and interactive learning experiences for today’s students. Escape rooms are growing in popularity as they provide numerous benefits and opportunities for learning; however, the use of escape rooms in higher education is not always taken seriously. Learning With Escape Rooms in Higher Education Online Environments proves that it is possible to take escape rooms to higher education with great results for both teachers and students by presenting different escape room proposals that are explained in detail with the instructions and materials used so that any teacher could replicate it in their subject. Covering key topics such as online learning, student learning, and computer science, this reference work is ideal for principals, industry professionals, researchers, scholars, practitioners, academicians, instructors, and students.
Migration movements have been a constant in the societies of the past, as well as in postmodern society. However, in the past ten years, the increase in political, economic, and religious conflict amongst nations; the increase of the poverty index; and many and various natural disasters have duplicated the forced displacement of millions of people across the seven continents of the planet. This situation brings important challenges in terms of the vulnerability, inequity, and discrimination that certain peoples suffer. Professionals from the fields of the social sciences, education, psychology, and international law share the fact that education represents an opportunity for children and young migrants to become members with full rights in the societies they arrive in. Empirical studies show that that the implementation of the right to education for migrants presents some challenges and dilemmas to the governments of host countries and more specifically to the education centers, NGOs, universities, and the professionals working in them, hence the need for more research on these issues of immigration, refugees, social justice, and intercultural education. The Handbook of Research on Promoting Social Justice for Immigrants and Refugees Through Active Citizenship and Intercultural Education provides visibility to issues such as the increase in migration and displacement and the difficulties in political agreements, educational contexts, and in cultural issues, stigmatization, vulnerability, social exclusion, racism, and hatred amongst host communities. This book gives possible solutions to this current complex situation and helps foster and promote sensitivity, perspective, and critical thinking for a respectful and tolerant coexistence and promotion of equity and social justice. The chapters promote cultural diversity and inclusion in classrooms by offering knowledge, strategies, and research on organizational development for educational institutions and multicultural environments. This book is essential for administrators, policymakers, leaders, teachers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the promotion of social justice in education for immigrants and refugees.
This volume includes a collection of short papers presented at the second International Virtual Exchange Conference (IVEC) hosted virtually at Newcastle University in September 2020. The contributions address the conference theme, towards digital equity in internationalisation, and offer fresh insights into the current state and future of online intercultural communication and collaborative learning. Providing examples of interdisciplinary, multinational, and multimodal research and pedagogy in virtual exchange from around the world, this book will appeal to educators, administrators, researchers, and internationalisation leads in higher education interested in supporting and implementing virtual exchange.
This collection offers a comprehensive account of the development of intercultural communication strategies through Virtual English as a lingua franca, reflecting on the ways in which we make pragmatic meaning in today’s technology-informed globalized world. The volume places an emphasis on analyzing transmodal, trans-semiotic, and transcultural discourse practices in online spaces, providing a counterpoint to existing ELF research which has leaned towards unpacking formal features of ELF communication in face-to-face interactions. The chapters explore how these practices are characterized and then further sustained via non-verbal semiotic resources, drawing on data from a global range of empirical studies. The book prompts further reflection on readers’ own experiences in online settings and the challenges of VELF while also supplying educators in these contexts with the analytical resources to better bridge the gap between formal and informal learning. Highlighting the dynamic complexity of online intercultural communication in the twenty-first century, this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars in applied linguistics, language education, digital communication, and intercultural communication.
