virtual exchanges

Online Intercultural Exchange

Over recent years I have been working on supporting virtual exchange between language learners across the world. The most established of these is the #warcler exchange between students of French at Warwick and students of English at the Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand. The Clavier project was included in a case study published in the INTENT report. The collaborative tasks are available from the uni-collaboration database, where you can connect with other educators in Higher Education who are wishing to collaborate to bring an international dimension to their teaching.

Students were encouraged to connect and interact. A wide range of technologies were supported and a shared portal reflected activity taking place is different social networks. Picture sharing, debates using shared fora, instant messaging conversations all played a part and the hashtags #warcler #clerwar reflected the language being used. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Lastfm, google+, anywhere...

I recently completed 3 years working on the EVOLVE project with Erasmus Plus. I am on the training team supporting academics across all disciplines to create their own virtual exchanges. I prepared a wikipedia page on Virtual Exchange which is now live. I have completed the Advanced + training course and now have been responsible for coordinating 2 Erasmus Plus Virtual Exchange courses as shown by the badge below. I have continued my virtual exchange work and I have embedded a showcase of my open badges below using the pages facility of Open Badge Passport.