Teacher training perspectives for virtual exchange: Initial actions from the E-LIVE European project

Résumé En

Virtual Exchange (VE) is a lingua-culture learning-teaching practice that fosters meaningful exchanges between learners in geographically distant locations and from diverse lingua-cultural backgrounds through internet-based tools and innovative online pedagogies (O’Dowd, 2018). E-LIVE (Engaging Languages in Intercultural Virtual Exchange) is a three-year project (2021-2024) funded by the Erasmus+ Cooperation partnerships in school education (KA220-SCH). The project targets primary and secondary school education and teacher training institutions. The project consortium gathers a team of specialists in CALL from the Netherlands, France and Spain and school teachers experienced in virtual exchange and collaborates with 32 associate partner schools and teacher training institutions. In line with the Digital Education Action Plan (DG EAC, 2021), the key project objectives are to:-innovate and enrich language teacher training programmes in higher education to develop digital literacy skills and organization, pedagogical and intrercultural competences of (trainee) teachers by mainstreaming virtual exchange projects within teacher training programmes;-enrich and make foreign language teaching programmes at primary and secondary level schools more meaningful by offering learners opportunities to engage in virtual exchanges with peers from other cultures;-exploit the possibilities that online interactive tools (virtual and augmented reality) offer with a view to enriching and diversifying teaching for intercultural language learning.This presentation will begin with a brief overview of the E-LIVE project and will then focus two of the project’s initial actions. Firstly, we will report on the results of a questionnaire and a series of focus groups conducted to better understand the teaching beliefs, experiences, conditions, and training needs (related to VE pedagogy, digital literacy skills and intercultural mediation) of a heterogeneous group of 25 language teachers from five European countries collaborating with the E-LIVE project as associate schools. Our analysis will underline implications for the manner in which the E-LIVE project can put into place an inclusive teacher training approach within the project to prepare and accompany teachers in designing and implementing virtual exchange projects. Secondly, we will report on a virtual exchange conducted between French, Dutch and Colombian teacher training institutions for which the macro task was for participants (n=48) to co-design a virtual exchange task for secondary language education (Dutch, English French, German, Spanish languages). The exchange was organized around three tasks that utilized the affordances of both synchronous and asynchronous tools (Flipgrid, Moodle, BBB videoconferencing, Genial.ly, Padlet) to introduce virtual exchange and virtual exchange task design to the trainee teachers. We will describe the pedagogical design and challenges encountered, showcase some of the tasks designed by the participants and report on the feedback from trainee teachers regarding the exchange.