A Telecollaboration Project on Giving Online Peer Feedback: Implementing a Multilateral Virtual Exchange During a Pandemic

Abstract

Telecollaboration, also called virtual exchange or online intercultural exchange, is a form of collaborative learning whereby language learners in different locations engage in computer-mediated communication to complete tasks online. There is ample evidence that telecollaboration promotes the acquisition of language skills, intercultural competence, and digital literacies. Challenges faced implementing virtual exchanges include differences in time zones, learning objectives, academic calendars, and cultural attitudes. The present article describes a case of a multilateral telecollaboration project based on the facilitated dialogue model involving four institutions—two in Europe and two in the United States—that was designed to prepare students for the experience of giving online peer feedback on collaborative writing assignments. Our initial goal was to explore the challenges students would face and the benefits they would receive from a complex telecollaboration project involving multiple institutions and two task sequences: 1) input and reflection on giving and receiving peer feedback, 2) completion of the collaborative writing task to be peer reviewed. However, new challenges and opportunities emerged after the switch to emergency e-learning and remote teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic. Relying upon multiple data sources—including correspondence, observations, class discussions, surveys, reflective writing, and information stored in virtual learning environments—our methods of data collection involved convenience sampling, while data analysis was predominantly descriptive. Our results demonstrate that even during a global pandemic, students and instructors face similar logistical challenges and reap similar benefits as has been reported in the literature. Yet our experience also reveals the resiliency of telecollaboration in the face of extreme disruption as well as the potential to exploit virtual exchange to develop learning strategies—such as methods for giving and receiving peer feedback—and meta-awareness of how language is used in the real-world—such as the implications of English as a lingua franca.

Telecollaboration as an ELF environment in the global age

“…Telecollaboration was pp. 55-74 frequently used and its effects were explored by many researchers during the COVID-19 lockdown (Huertas-Abril, 2020;Di Gennaro & Villarroel Ojeda, 2021;Ennis et al, 2021;Toscu, 2021;Casañ Pitarch et al, 2022). One of them is Huertas-Abril (2020), who considered telecollaboration in emergency remote language learning and teaching.…”

“…The results showed increased communicative competence (see also Toscu, 2021) in international online environments, the development of intercultural and digital skills (see also Di Gennaro & Villarroel Ojeda, 2021) and positive effects of telecollaborative project work on foreign language learning. Besides these global outcomes of telecollaboration that were explored, there is also a study by Ennis et al (2021), where the authors explored the possibilities for giving and receiving peer feedback and meta-awareness of how language is used in the real world, in their case how English as a lingua franca is used, and intercultural communicative competence in general.…”

Didactic Possibilities of Mobile Applications to Form Intercultural Competence of Students

“…At the personal level, as M.J. Ennis et al prove, multicultural education help form professionally significant qualities of students as a system of professionally significant affective and subjective-volitional characteristics, the presence and degree of formation of which ensure the successful implementation of the professional activities of a teacher in a multicultural educational environment (Ennis et al, 2021). At the level of society, as shown in the work of H. Trisasanti et al, multicultural education helps overcome interethnic conflicts and, as a result, better efficiency in the cooperation of citizens who proclaim certain values of a particular culture (Trisasanti et al, 2021).…”

Assessing virtual exchange in foreign language courses at tertiary level

“…Regardless of the form and mode of PA, it is prerogative that students receive appropriate training and guidelines that would help them provide feedback to each other on different aspects of learning in a constructive and non-threatening manner (for an example of a project preparing students for giving and receiving online peer feedback see Ennis et al, 2021). On the basis of their study, Ware and O'Dowd (2008) underline the role of teacher's scaffolding: "Instructors must not only make clear their expectations that students provide feedback, but they must also provide examples of when and how to provide feedback" (p. 56).…”