The technological revolution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has brought about new learning scenarios as well as new professional requirements, such as the development of intercultural and Foreign Language (FL) skills. In this regard, Virtual Exchange (VE) projects provide students with learning opportunities through online social interaction and collaboration (Dooly, 2017); allowing authentic intercultural experiences for students who do not have the opportunity of travelling (O’Dowd, 2016) and promoting 21st-century skills development (Jager, Kurek, & O’Rourke, 2016). However, interacting online in the FL with a person from a different culture can entail an affective challenge for students and might give rise to Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA). FLA is a dysphoric and situational anxiety suffered by one out of three FL students which inhibits communication and learning (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986). Due to the impossibility of finding an available tool to investigate the presence and effects of FLA in VE environments, the Telecollaborative FLA Scale (T-FLAS) was designed. This article presents the development of the T-FLAS, a 21-item questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale, aiming to provide researchers and practitioners with a tool to explore FLA in VE.

This paper reports a study about the perceptions of the academic community, employers and civil servants regarding graduates’ employability skills in East Africa. Specifically, it focuses on the mismatch between skills acquired in Higher Education (HE) and those in demand by employers, and explores factors influencing the situation. A mixed method approach was implemented including a survey and a set of focus groups. The questionnaire on employability skills was distributed among regional stakeholders attending the Open Day events organised by three East African HE Institutions. A Principal Components Analysis was applied for the categorisation of the most in-demand skills and the identification of four major workplace skill sets. To gain further insights into the stakeholders’ perceptions of the graduate employability skills gap, 11 focus groups were organised at the same universities. The general results showed that employability skills were mostly perceived as insufficiently developed during the students’ progress in their programs. The final results enabled a better understanding of the nuanced relationship between labour market valuation and graduates’ acquisition of each skill set. It also allowed us to identify problems and barriers, and suggest possible solutions to overcome the shortcomings experienced by the sub-Saharan HE system.

Videoconferences are a perfect scenario for autonomous Foreign Language (FL) and intercultural speaking practices. However, it is also a threatening context as learners communicate in an FL, often with a stranger and about personal information and experiences. That may lead to increase Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA) among participants, affecting students' learning experiences and even provoking drop-outs (Bailey, Onwuegbuzie, & Daley, 2003). This study aims to explore the relationship between FLA and Self-Disclosure (SD) as personality traits. The first indicators of the potential relationship between FLA and SD in online speaking practice were found by Fondo and Erdocia (2018) in which anxious learners showed a tendency to self-disclose as a means to manage their discomfort using the FL. Data was gathered in the first stage of a nine-week-synchronous oral Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) project between undergraduate business students from the United States,

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Resumen: La comunicación deviene en un ámbito esencial para la salud pública, dado que sus actuaciones, a menudo, son puros actos comunicativos cuando no intervenciones que necesitan apoyarse en ellos para modificar o asentar comportamientos y actitudes. En la presente investigación nos preguntamos hasta qué punto las publicaciones de salud pública insertan artículos en los que la comunicación es el eje protagónico de los mismos y, de hacerlo, cuál es su tipología y con qué enfoques metodológicos Se trata de una investigación exploratoria en la que la metodología empleada es el análisis de contenido; para llevarla a cabo se realizó una revisión automática y manual de los textos que se han sometido al estudio. La muestra la componen todos los a artículos de las revistas de salud pública revistas (18) de la plataforma SCIELO entre los años 2005 y 2015 (incluidos). Del total de artículos (19.886) se escogieron aquellos que la propia plataforma caracteriza como de 'comunicación', (n=124). Entre los resultados, destacamos que sólo el 0,62% de los artículos se centran en el ámbito de la comunicación. La mayoría (n=114) son artículos originales y generalmente son estudios empíricos y predominan las investigaciones cuantitativas; en 14 artículos no se especifica metodología alguna.Palabras clave: Salud pública, SCIELO, artículos, comunicación, tipología, metodología.Abstract: Communication becomes an essential area for public health, given that its actions are often pure communicative acts when not interventions that need to rely on them to modify or settle behaviors and attitudes. In the present investigation we ask to what extent public health publications insert articles in which communication is the protagonist axis and, if so, what is their typology and methodological approaches. It is an exploratory research in which the methodology used is content analysis; to carry it out, an automatic and manual review of the texts that have been submitted to the study was carried out. The sample includes all the articles published in public health journals (18) of SCIELO’s platform between 2005 and 2015 (both included). Of the total number of articles (19.886), those characterized as ‘communication’ by the own platform were selected (n=124). Among the results, we highlight that only 0.62% of the articles focus on the field of communication. The majority (n = 114) are original articles and are generally empirical studies and quantitative research predominates; in 14 articles no methodology is specified.Keywords: Public health, SCIELO, articles, communication, typology, methodology.