I'm happy to welcome all of you here. It's just good to see you. I hope everybody's doing well. Let me just give a brief introduction to our speaker. Many of you know him already, but some of you may not. We are very excited to welcome Professor Robert O'Dowd to our series on remote and virtual language teaching. Professor O'Dowd is the AssociateProfessor for ESL and Applied Linguistics at The University of León in Spain. His research focus is within the area of language teaching and learning. And it's particularly virtual exchange, which means engaging groups of learners in extended periods of online intercultural interaction and collaboration with international peers. People in this, in this kind of introduction, often like to say he's published extensively. To me, that's something of an understatement. I think 'prolifically' is closer to the mark. 40 plus journal articles, edited volumes, including recent articles, very recent articles in Language Learning and Technology, Computer Assisted Language Learning, and the Journal of Studies in International Education. He also has the distinction, if I can say that, at least for us, of being the first speaker that the Princeton Center for Language Study ever invited. First outside speaker. And we were thrilled with his two-day workshop on the same topic, virtual exchange, done from a slightly different perspective, but we feel like he has new things to talk about now. I know some new studies have come out. I'm looking forward very much to hearing what he has to say, and I'd like all of us to welcome him. We can't clap our hands really, but I suppose we could give the little reaction here. We're so, so glad to have you here. And I'll turn it over to you. -Very good. Luis had a nice idea there. Yeah good. Yeah. Yeah. It's like in the when the street protests happened in Spain a few years ago, the end, you'd have people meeting, all of these groups of young people meeting into streets. What they would do and when they wanted to applaud somebody did but didn't want to interrupt them, they would do this, like do this little, little clap. Nice, nice. -Okay Good afternoon, everybody. Well can I say good afternoon over there as well? I suppose I can, can't I? Yeah. It's after your lunchtime probably by now. I am going to share my screen and give my talk with you. At the same time I am going to ask you from time to time, since this is a small group, I'm going to, I'm going to try and make it little bit interactive by maybe asking you questions that you can answer in the chat. Okay, if you have any, if you have anything that you want to add, okay? To try and make it a little bit interactive. Okay. So bear with me for 1 second. Can you, can you see that? Can you see that okay? Yeah. Okay. Good stuff. Okay. So as, as, as Jamie mentioned, but first of all, thank you very much for inviting me to be back again. I had a wonderful time in 2014 when I was I went over to visit Alberto and to talk and work with you then. I had a lovely couple of days on your beautiful campus. What I'm going to do is I'm going to talk to you a little bit today about virtual exchange. And I suppose try to give you some very basic practical advice because I realize that you, you, you teachers of foreign languages in Princeton. Just like us in over here in Europe, we are trying to adapt to the new situation that we are living in, that we just mentioned a few moments ago. And we're trying to make our classes as interactive and as human, and as enriching as possible even though they are online. So I'm going to talk a little bit about virtual exchange and what to keep in mind if, if you set up some, some sort of intercultural exchange, okay? So I'm going to start off by explaining very briefly what is, what it is, what is virtual exchange and what benefits it can have for foreign language learners. After that, I'm going to give what I call some critical success factors and very basic guidelines about what teachers should keep in mind in when they're running a virtual exchange in their classes. Okay? And then if I've gotten you interested and you want to learn more, I'm going to try and point you in the direction of some more learning resources and some online training in which you can get involved in. Okay? First of all, and I'm going to try now and ask you to participate in the chat. Have any of you ever before engaged your students in online collaborative projects with students in other countries? If you have, could you maybe write a couple of words into the chat saying who you worked with, what, what, who you engaged your students with. Luis is saying that he has, and Anna, and Diane, if I pronounced it properly, Anna, I worked with a high school in Italy. Okay. Sara as well. Sara, where did you get your students in collaboration with? Where were their partner classes? And Luis. Well Alberto of courses with my students and León. And at the moment we are working with students from Colombia. Very good. Okay. From Italy, from Brazil. Okay. Okay, so the, the Brazilian students are, sorry, so students are working with Brazilian, Portuguese. Okay, so there's lots of examples as many of you are familiar with it, it's already. That's good to know. Okay. All right. So those of you who are not familiar with this, just to give you a basic definition of what we are talking about. What is virtual exchange, okay? So, basically virtual exchange involved engaging groups of students in sustained online intercultural interaction and collaboration with partners from other cultural contexts, so geographical locations, as integrated part of coursework and under the guidance of educators or facilitators. Now, I suppose it by as many of you at the beginning of this what is virtual exchange or what is online intercultural exchange, you would definitely get the first two parts, right? This is getting your students in online collaboration with students in other countries. But what we are trying to do is to give a more comprehensive definition by adding two more parts. That this is an integrated part of coursework. Okay? In other words, it's not just happening as a little hobby or a little extra, okay? But it is integrated into your curriculum in some way. And it is under the guidance of educators, meaning that the teachers are playing a very active role in, in how they, the whole exchange develops. Okay? I'm going to, to talk about that a little bit more detail in a couple of minutes. I imagine you've heard some names for this, okay. And if you're working in the area of foreign language education, which most of you seem to be doing, you have probably heard this called telecollaboration. Okay. For, for the for the majority of my publications, I would have referred to my work as telecollaboration, or online intercultural exchange. The top two. However, also e-tandem and teletandem are very common terms that you will have heard of before. Teletandem, for example, is a very important network in Brazil that is based in Brazil, the Teletandem Network, which links students in this way, okay, between Brazil and other countries in South America and the United States. However, if you are working in other areas, for example, in the United States, many teach, university teachers will refer to this as COIL. Collaborative online international learning. If you Google COIL, you will see there's a wealth of information of reports about COIL. And, but that is, like I said, you know, outside of the foreign language area. If you go to the world of economics and the faculties of economics and business studies in universities, you will probably hear them talking about global virtual teams. Okay? That is the moniker that is used there. So what you can see here is that this is all in, there's a risk of this becoming a bit confusing. And there's a risk of lots of educators and researchers all over the world doing the same thing, but under different names. And that I don't believe is very healthy, because it risks that we know, we can have, we miss out on literature, we think that we're doing different things when we're really doing essentially the same thing. So that's why there's a kind of a push nowadays to use virtual exchange as like an umbrella term to refer to all of this, okay? If you come to Europe the Erasmus+ program has its own Erasmus+ virtual exchange, a program, shall we say. And, you know, so I think it makes sense to do this and also the Stevens Initiative, another link that I'll show you guys later on, which is of, based in the United States. They also use the term virtual exchange. So I think it also, when it comes to applying for funding, it makes sense that we use the same terminology that, that, that the, that the organizations that offer funding use, you know? Okay. What are the basic elements, the basic components of exchange that we're talking about, okay? So, first of all, you have to consider partnerships. You know, who your students going to work with. Secondly, task. What do they do together when they are online. Okay? This is very important and it's actually one of the most difficult things for teachers who are new to this to learn how to do, is define effective tasks that will get students communicating effectively together, okay? Technology, what online tools will they use to communicate and collaborate together. Okay? And then again, something very important for teachers, mentoring and support. How can teachers help students to reflect and learn from their interactions? Okay? This is really important, okay? And this depends. This is where most of your energy as teachers is going to go, I think, if you get involved in this. And last two issues, integration. How will students receive credit for their work? Okay? And then finally, something which is more for the university managers, perhaps, recognition for teachers. So how will universities recognize teachers' increased workload? Because any of you that have gone to the trouble of done, doing a virtual exchange before will probably have realized statistics quite an awful lot of work, doesn't it Alberto? This takes up a lot of work, yeah. And takes up a lot of time. And, and also very often, teachers will need training in order to learn how to do this in the beginning, okay? So the idea is that, you know, the same way teachers get recognition in, in the university work for different responsibilities that they take on, if they take on an innovative practice such as this one, how can that can be recognized? Okay. Now, your thoughts, what advantages can virtual exchange offer students of foreign languages? Does anybody want to type in a couple of ideas or maybe those of you that have done exchanges before. What have been the benefits for your students? Just give me, you know, if everybody could find type in one, just to see what you come up with. And we'll have a look in the chat. What are the benefits of virtual exchange for your students. A truly authentic experience. Very, well-said Anna, very true, yeah. New vocabulary that they come across. Genuine interaction. So the idea of being authentic, being genuine, okay. Lowers the anxiety of speaking to natives. Very true. Luis, I'm going to come back to that in a second as well. Okay. Cultural understanding. Okay. All, all very accurate points. Okay. I've been doing this for, doing this for about 20 years now. And over the past ten years or so, I, I've been using more or less the same way of, of evaluating choice. And my students have been asking them to portfolios to reflect on their learning experiences. And recently I sat down and I, I put all of their, these portfolios from ten years of exchanges into NVivo. And I started doing kind of a qualitative content analysis of it to see, you know, what are the repeated learning outcomes from these exchanges, okay? And, and these are the, I have to move my toolbar here so I can see what I'm doing, these are the learning outcomes that I, that come up again and again and again from 345 Spanish students. Okay? From 13 virtual exchanges. First of all, increased confidence in using the second language appears. This is what Luis has just said, I think in the chat. Okay. For students in León, maybe less so for students in Princeton, but for students in León this is very often the first time that the ever used a foreign language outside of the classroom. Okay? So you're getting comments like this one. I've learned to overcome my fear of not being understood by the people from different countries. I tried to formulate my utterances as clearly as possible, and it worked. At first, I was scared but then not really. Our communication was great. Okay. So this is just an example of students realizing that they are able to use the language because very often Alberto would be able to tell us I'm sure much better than I would, but, you know, foreign language learning in Spain can, can still remain very traditional, very textbook-based very grammar-based. And this is very often the first instance, the opportunity these students have to have a real communicative, and, is an experience in their learning. Another thing that keeps coming up is kind of a more nuanced insider perspective on cultural information. In these exchanges, students aren't going to learn facts about the target culture. But what they are going to do is learn about human experiences from their partners. Or for example, students from Spain talking about her relationship or what she learned from her American partner. She said, my partner's family had to immigrate from Ireland and Germany. Her mother arrived to the USA during the Second World War, but her father's family had been in the USA since the 19th century. At the beginning it wasn't easy, as she knows, their family arrived to America by boat suffering famine, storms, and diseases, okay? Slightly dramatic. But I think it's just a nice example of, shall we say, the human, human stories that students learn from each other in these, in these projects. Okay? And also another thing that keeps coming up. And this is a very important and positive point, I think, is the, in a more critical stance on their home culture. Okay, students, because they are comparing their home culture with the target culture or they're telling the student, their partners about their home culture, they become more critical of what is happening in their own homes. So one student wrote, When I heard from my partner the treatment the immigrants received in Austria, and I compared it with immigration politics in Spain, I felt really disappointed. Spain does not seem to value the entrance of immigrants in its borders unless they have money to spend. Okay. So here we have, you know, somebody becoming a little bit more critical of their own home culture, which I think is an important aspect of a good, important learning outcome. Okay. Now, I'm going to move on and talk about a little bit these like I called them earlier, critical success factors, okay? And I want you all to have a look at, this, okay? What do you think of this message sent from a student in Germany to her new partner in Ireland? Okay, let's have a read of this and tell me how you would feel, for example, if you were a student in Ireland, have received this first message. Okay? Hello, how are you? I study English and history and I want to become a teacher. This term we do some cultural studies concerning Ireland, and I am very interested in it because I actually do not know much about it. Now I'd like to ask you some questions. Do you live in Northern Ireland or in southern Ireland? How many people live in your town? Are you a Catholic or Protestant? I've heard the regular churchgoing declines more and more in your country. Is it true? We go on. What are you doing in your free time? Do you offer, do you often go to pubs? What do you think about Germans? Irish people have the reputation of being very indirect and polite in their speaking style. I have read that there was enormous economic change in Ireland. How have you or your parents experienced the social and economic change in the past 20 years? Wait for it. That's all for now. Now, if you are a boy or girl sitting in, in Trinity College in Dublin, and you receive this. Would you feel? What would in, your first reactions be? I mean, tell me in the chat. What would your first reactions be? Overwhelming. Too many questions. I would feel like the government division of information. Overwhelmed, exactly. So, I mean, now, there's there's a very dangerous term that we sometimes use very jargon. But we won't go into that. Right? Does a term that we use very often and we shouldn't, I think, which is digital native. Okay. Because digital natives, this term gives the impression that just because this young generation that we are teaching are so comfortable consuming information over the Internet that they are also very good at producing and communicating online. And as this example shows us here, this is definitely not the case. All right? Here you have a student who's frightening, basically their partner. Okay. And let me show you another example. Let's move on to the next one. This comes from a recent exchange I did, involving my students in León with Israeli students and Swedish students. Okay, so there's a very interesting cultural mix, Israelis, Spaniards and Swedes. Okay? And a teacher in Sweden wrote to this one after the other two teachers, and she said that this, that one of her students had told her this. You all recognize WhatsApp, of course. Okay. There was an image on the side of the screen there. Okay. One evening, a member of, one of the  Spanish class closed out an interaction with one of my students on WhatsApp with a kiss emoji. Suddenly my student was stressed because she was faced with a difficult dilemma. Did you have to kiss her back? My students says she only sends kisses to close friends. But this was a group member and this WhatsApp chat was more professional. However, if she didn't send the kiss back, what other emoji could she send? Okay. And of course, what comes up here is the whole issue of even in WhatsApp, there is an appropriate rules for interaction, that, that depend on, on cultural norms. Okay? So for example, in Spain, the kiss emoji is used constantly in, in very informal, in very informal ways, that would be groups and things like that. Whereas in Sweden, it obviously isn't. Okay? It's reserved only for you, you know, maybe your boyfriend or your mother or your girlfriend or whatever. Okay. Why do I show you these two examples? Okay. When a point I'm trying to make is that students need guidance in their virtual exchanges. Teachers must support them in analyzing and engaging in their virtually interactions. That students in, in, in Germany, would, you know, would need help from her teacher in how, you know, how to create a first message, you know, in classroom, in your classroom, you'd want to discuss, okay, what are you going to put in your first message to them? What's important to say when we establish a relationship like this, okay? The students in Sweden and in Spain, they need to see examples like this in their classrooms so they can learn, you know, become aware that what is, you know, what they consider something that is universal, which is WhatsApp communication is not the same across cultures. Okay? These are the type of things that you, the teachers, have to be integrating into your classes. And you know, using us as part of the learning of the, of the whole learning process in these virtual exchanges. Students can't be relied to do all of this on their own. So that would be my first point. How do you do that? Well, through myself and my two colleagues from Israel and Sweden, we worked on this a little bit and we identify three different ways that virtual exchange can be into, teachers can support their students in virtual exchange, okay? The first method is awareness raising of online interaction strategies before the online interaction begins. So before the project, educators provides students with examples or models of good emails, bad emails, you know, you know, good ways of opening up interaction, good ways of avoiding misunderstandings, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. A second step is moderating online interactions of in real time. Okay, so when your students meet up by video conference, that you, the teacher would actually be involved in the video conference and maybe moderate it or act as a facilitator. Okay? And the third one, integrating students' online interactions into classwork after students' projects. So for example, bringing, bringing that German student's email into class, making it anonymous of course, and with the rest of the students working out, okay, how do you think your partner felt when he received this? Why hasn't your partner reply to you? If you are going to write this message again, how could you do it differently? This type of stuff, okay? So this is, you know, this is intercultural learning, this is foreign language learning because you're talking about, you know, pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics in many cases. So in many ways, the virtual exchange can become part of your curriculum, okay, when you do this. Especially this third step. The second option, moderating online that isn't, very common for pure practical reasons. Okay? Teachers don't have time to be, you know, arranging to meet our students on their, in their, in their online sessions on the weekends, for example, and things like that. And also of course, the whole chemistry between students might be different if there is a teacher in the middle of the meeting, okay? So the most common examples are number one and number three, okay? There will be the two different steps. Right? Anybody, if anybody is interested in the article, it's open source. You can find it online through Quarterly and download it there, for free. Now. Have a look at these here. This second point I want to highlight for you, What do you think of these common for virtual exchange tasks? Okay, these are your typical tasks that, that teaches gifted your students to do when their, when their online exchanges, when they start. Number, first of all, tell your partner about your favorite places to go out at night in your hometown. Explore and compare with your partner the stereotypes you have each other's countries. Post an image on the form that exemplifies your partners an aspect of your daily routine. Okay? This your typical start-off tasks. Okay. In these types of exchanges. Okay? But there is a danger about them. Okay, let's see, somebody's just writing something in the chat, which is great, your reaction. Nancy says, stereotypes sound a bit dangerous to me, but then again, I teach Arabic. Very good point, Nancy, okay. Yeah. Okay. Any other comments about these tasks? I know a teacher who used number two, and it was disastrous, okay, because of the whole issue of stereotypes. Okay? All right. And the, my issue with them, with all three of these tasks is that they obey, they're actually not very challenging at all. What you're asking students here to do is to present their culture, okay? And it will receive, your, their partners will receive their messages or their presentations. And they will say, oh, very nice, they look lovely. You know, it's, that's fascinating, and then move on. Okay, there's very little challenge there to actually compare to, to take a critical view of one's own culture or anything like that, or to engage. Yeah? And, and the outcomes of these type of tasks, I mean, these types of reaction from the students. Look at these these are more reactions I found in my, my analysis of the portfolios. Have a look at these. I will say that I like the exchange very much and that American students look like very nice people. There you go, congratulations. I talk to them about my city and about theirs. And it was nice to see that there are little differences, but not as much as I thought. Another student says. It has been such an exciting experience because we have learned English while we have known that different culture. To my mind, we aren't too different. Both of us like sports, music, and spending time with our friends. And the final one, in case you haven't got message yet. I realize that my partner and I aren't so different. In fact, we have similar hobbies and ways of, to spend our free time. Like I've said, the main differences I see between her country and mine the timetable and the weather. Now, guys, I would suggest to you that if these are the learning outcomes at the end of your virtual exchange, you haven't done your job right. Okay. So that's my own, a reflection of my own work in these cases, okay? Because what we have here is, I am sure some of you are familiar with Bennett's model of intercultural development. This is minimization of difference. This idea that deep down we're all the same. We just, you know, we all like football, we all like going for walks, we all like listening to Beyoncé or whatever. And so deep down we're all the same. So cultural difference isn't really that serious. And students very often, if they can, will be delighted to conclude that from their virtual exchange because it is a very easy outcome. Okay? I suppose it's a positive one, but it's rather superficial. Okay? So I think that if all you're asking students to do is to exchange descriptions of their hobbies and of their social life and things like that, and the conclusion will be, well, the Spanish like tapas, while the Americans, we like hamburgers, okay. and obviously we want to go much further than that. So the challenge is, then, you know, how do you get them to do this? How do you get them to go a step further? And be my conclusion here, or my suggestion, is that students need asked, which forced them to go beyond mere exchange of information. Okay? We have got to get our students in these exchanges to collaborate and to try and do things together, okay? Because that forces them into this messy business of online intercultural collaboration, which is really messy as all of you know, whenever you've tried to co-author an article or collaborate on a European, on an international project or something like that. And that's where our students are going to learn what intercultural learning and intercultural communication is all about. And so, for example, in exchange between Sweden, Spain, and Israel, all of these groups are future foreign language teachers, okay? They're going to be foreign language teachers in second, in high schools in the different countries. So we get them to collaborate and to make, in their groups, to make a lesson plan together. And this, when this task starts, This is when everything starts going wrong. This is when they come into class, I've had students crying with anger and frustration in my class about this exchange. Because there is Israeli student said this, their Swedish student didn't do that, and this is when they, you know, the learning outcomes start, you know, really, you know, coming out. Look, look at these conclusions from this exchange, right? One person spoke about all the things that I've learned were how to be patient working in groups, how to adapt myself to tricky situations. Okay, this is the type of stuff now that they're learning. Compare that what we've just seen, okay? Intercultural skills. Most of all, adaptability and flexibility. Working with people from different countries and different timetables teaches you how to be patient and forces you to find a common place and time in order for your collaborative project to succeed. And finally, fact working with people from other countries, prepares us for the future problems that we may have. That is to say we learnt how to face problems of timing or agreement. I have also learned that we have to understand and respect other people's thoughts. Okay, empathy, we're talking about empathy there. So these are these famous transversal skills that, I don't know in Princeton, but in Europe we are being bombarded with this need to prepare students for these transversal or soft skills that they will need in these new businesses and new companies and, you know, new work environments, okay? And these are the skills that they're developing in their virtual exchange, right? But it comes at a cost, at a cost. Okay? And finally, my last key success factor I'd like to mention today, and I mentioned this at the very outset as well, both students and teachers deserve academic recognition for their work in virtual exchange. So, as part of the, in the project, a European project we did recently, the EVALUATE project, we asked 30 different teachers what they considered to be the key factors to the success or lack of success in their virtual exchanges. Okay. And what do you think was the most common response? Well, time, to save time, I'm going to, I'm not going to ask you, I'm going to just show you here. The most common response from the 30 teachers was this. Integrating virtual exchange into the course program and providing academic recognition were considered the key to success. One teacher said, I'd suggest that the student engagement levels, in telecollaborative exchanges are explicitly assessed within the course programs they follow. Another one said, I would highly encourage integrating the exchange into the classes and suggest they would weave it into their course, so it is a frequent topic of discussion. So again, like I keep saying, bring it into the course content. Now, we, teachers need a recognition of what we are doing. I believe teachers get motivated when they, what they do is valued. This can be valued by giving them recognition for their work. Okay. And I can tell you, for example, at the University of León at the moment, teachers that do two or more virtual exchanges in a year, academic year, have a, you know, a time reduction from their teaching. Okay? It's not too big, but it's, you know, it's half a, half a credit. So it's, it's, you know, it's, it's a recognition of their work. Other universities provide short, small amounts of funding so that teachers can travel and meet their virtually exchange teaching partner before the exchange begins. And so they can, you know, plan together and work together on that. There's different ways that teachers can be supported and motivated this way. All right. So, just to conclude. Some takeaways, right? Virtual exchange has great potential for language and intercultural learning, but it's not a question of just matching students and letting them get on with it, okay? There's a lot more to it than that. Teachers should provide not only opportunities for interaction, but also opportunities to reflect on and learn from the indirect interaction. And how do you do that? By talking about the exchange in your classes, by, you know, helping students to, to write their messages. Or to, you know, to try and model messages and, in class, for example. Consider tasks and exchange setups which do not make cultural comparison the primary focus, and which engage students in acts of collaboration with our partners. Okay? The, getting students to do collaborative work together, to make things together. And finally, if I can just move my toolbar here. And make sure that your actual exchange form parts of your course program and students receive recognition for their work. Let me say that if you want to learn more about virtual exchange and get more involved in it, There's a world now of organizations and communities that are supporting this. And Europe, we set up the Unicollaboration organization, but it's, I mean, it's not only limited to European members, where you can look for partners, there's, we provide training, we have a conference every two years. In Europe as well we've got the Erasmus+ virtual exchange portal, which has some very good resources there, and free training as well. And in the United States, I really recommend the Stevens Initiative. Okay? The Stevens Initiative and I'm sure they the name Stevens is familiar to many of you. He was the ambassador to Libya, I believe, who was, who was killed, but he was somebody who promoted intercultural dialogue constantly during his life. And so that's where this foundation has come out. And they have really, really good resources there that are really worth, worth exploring. Okay. So I'm going to stop there now. Thank you very much for, for listening and for participating in the chat. And if you have questions or even comments and thoughts, I'd like to hear them. I'd, I'd love to talk to you for a few minutes. Thank you. If I could, if somebody allows me Join allowed. Luis, go ahead. Thank you. Professor, before I even ask you a question, I'll make a comment. I just want to thank you so much for your work as you are a pioneer and a shining light, and I find myself going back to your writings over and over again. And when I ever think about developing something or writing about it, a couple of months later you come out with it. So I really didn't You should change your passwords on your computer then, Luis. I might, I might now, I, really, you are right on the edge of how the problems are coming out. You are looking at them and solving them and reflecting about this activity. And I really, really appreciate it when I started six years ago here at Princeton, with our telecollaboration. It was a shot in the dark. I had no idea what I was doing. I was still pretty much at the first step that you listed and we are little by little, going down the list that you, we are now giving tests to our students, we are jumping from the cultural comparison into to the collaborative work. Thank you. -though, great. And here you are. When I heard that you are going to be talking, I immediately said I, I need to ask you the question about the three principles that keep being repeated and repeated over and over again. Autonomy, reciprocity and, and authenticity. Although now authenticity seems to have been replaced by separation of languages. And I'm coming to you specifically from the network that you mentioned, the Teletandem Brasil. -Teletandem They have been really the ones that introduced me first to this way of integrating telecollaboration into our classroom. But they are also really, really attached to this idea of autonomy. But I think that there's a misunderstanding and your, your presentation today goes right to the center of it when you say that students need guidance, so that we don't fall into this minimization of difference. And, and also, I feel that the field needs a lot of input from second language acquisition. And there are things that somehow I'm missing. There are keywords, key concepts, modes of communication. And it might be an American way of looking at it because we are so focused on ACTFL and the ACTFL guidelines. But I, I really find it incredible that this, this concept of autonomy that seems to be imbued in the, in Teletandem has kind of moved from autonomy of using the language into an autonomy of the plan of study itself. So basically the autonomy means you just throw the student out there. And they are autonomous in deciding what is it that they want to learn, when is it that they want to learn, according to what they need to a certain moment. But since there is no pre activity, there is, they don't provide any post activities and the exchange online is the only moment in which they actually have to engage induced. Yeah, yeah. I mean. Yeah. A lot of times we end up by the students staying in their comfort zone and never moving beyond that. In 2008, I participated in the conference that Teletandem organized at University of Miami in Florida and I was so disappointed because I went there to solve my problems and I just realized that everybody was just reproducing them. And what people were coming up with was instruments and devices to minimize the silence because they had a lot of students go up online because that's all they did, put them together online and then silence ensued. So they gave them like eight or ten questions that I had to talk to each other about. So I, after that, I was so disappointed I started to, I, I devised instruments for the classrooms in which the students have to do something before they engage. They have a mission when they engage. And after the interaction, they have to do something that involves theirs, their colleagues in Brazil participating in it too. So I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that, to this, this autonomy in the concept of autonomy, that seems be so prevalent. It's a, it's an interesting point. And the Teletandem Network has its origins or is, I think it's probably its inspiration in the e-tandem network, which was another one which came out of Europe in the late 1990's, -Right. in Trinity College, your, David, David Little. Of some, some of you might be familiar with his work and they were, the researchers that were involved in e-tandem at the beginning, they were essentially, they were interested in this whole idea of autonomy. But weren't they engineers? Pardon? -Weren't they engineers? They were doing telecollaboration between engineering schools, not language schools. No, I mean the, the studies I'm familiar with and the people I know there, they would have been coming from language departments. But, but I think the, the danger is that maybe this idea of autonomy has been maybe misunderstood or oversimplified. Okay? Autonomy doesn't mean throwing your learners into the swimming pool and seeing if they can swim or not. It, it doesn't work like that. They have to be supported and helped to develop these strategy, the autonomous strategies of knowing how to set objectives, knowing how to reflect on learning. I mean, there's still a role for teacher and I'm sure the original, you know, promoters of the idea of autonomy, Leni Dam and Dieter Wolf in Germany. I mean, they wouldn't have suggested that. You know, it's simply a matter of seeing how the students get on, right? Which is what you seem to be saying is happening a lot. If that is happening, then it's wrong. It's not the right approach. You know? And virtual exchange is about giving students opportunities to, to obviously to engage in these experiences. But we, as teachers are still, you know, experts that we have, that we will have to, help them to learn from their experiences. And we could also create the tasks which are then the environments where they will, they are going to work together. All right, so it's more than simply coming up with a list of questions as you say. Yeah. Yeah. But I think like in everything else, in every area of activity, you are going to, once you have something that is very common, and virtual exchange now has become very common, right? You are going to keep, you have people that do it on a, shall we say a superficial level, and others that will look in more detail into what's going and happening. I think that happens in all, in all our areas of practice here. So don't, you, you aim high, Luis, is what my advice to you. -Oh, thank you. I was, if I could just ask another question, could you give other examples besides the, the creation of the last lesson plan of what would it be a collaborative work that the students could engage online? I've, I've gained a lot of inspiration from law schools and how students have to engage to solve a problem. And they give them different situations in different types of, of, of problems to solve. But I was wondering if you could give us from your experience some other examples. Yeah. There, there, I mean, I don't like the word fashion, but a very popular approach nowadays is to try and, and, you know, take a global citizen, global citizenship approach to these type of exchanges. Which means actually engaging students in the community, getting them to participate in their local communities. So for example, you can have students identifying problems in their local community, whether it be related to, I dunno two, tourism or to whatever it is, and then trying to get in their collaborative projects to look for solutions, you know, maybe finding solutions in the partner countries and things like that. -Oh, okay. This is, you know, there's some very interesting stuff being done about that, okay, nowadays, okay? Thanks so much. -Okay, Jamie, yes? First of all, thank you so much. This is very intriguing, fascinating to me. But, but for a particular reason I'm thinking about this. I, I tend to teach just the first semester and the second semester of German. Which means that students are not very capable of expressing themselves as they would like to be able to express themselves. They feel, you know, constrained in the range of things they can say and, and the sense of sophistication they can, they can display as they're talking with people. I don't think, they feel fine in their, in the classroom, but I, I wonder, you know, as I was reading the examples that you gave, the English was not always perfect, but it was very good and very clear in what they were trying to get across. And so that makes me wonder, and, you know, at what point, if there is a point, would you say, here's where you can start expecting students to feel engaged and feel comfortable being engaged. I, I ask this because I think Princeton students in particular are going to feel very hesitant to put ideas or ask questions to certain other students if they feel that they sound stupid or they can't express themselves as fully -Yeah and completely as they'd like to. That maybe just a bias on my part. I'm not sure. Yeah. Well, first of all, my experience from doing exchanges with Alberto's students was that they, they, the Princeton students were, had a magnificent level, but maybe Alberto, they were advanced groups? Yeah, it was a 300-level class, so it was like a -Right. sixth, seventh semester. -Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, okay. I start doing these, I do with these exchanges with all my students, I don't care what. So as soon as they come in, I could have a first-year university class, they would be B1 level. What does B1 translate to in, into America, in Princeton language? That would probably be our third semester. -Oh, yeah. -Intermediate Low. Yeah. And what, of course you could also, depending on your learning, the goals that you, that you are bringing to these virtual exchanges, I know for example, that Gilberte Furstenberg from MIT, she might, she, she introduced a model called Cultura, right? And in the Cultura model of virtual exchange, this is between France and America, so between the MIT students and students in France, and in interactions actually happened in a mix of the languages where the French students would write in French, in, in these forums, and the American, the American students would answer in English. So because they were the lower levels. And so her idea, her argument was that, you know, this isn't about language learning per se. This was all about intercultural learning so that their students were able to deal with much more complex cultural issues and learn about complex cultural issues both by expressing themselves in their mother language. And she said, and then, so the online interaction, students would write in their mother language each, each of them, but then in the local classes. When Gilberte would have her classes in, in MIT, there, they would work in French or whatever, you know, so there they would have their language practice. Okay, so, you know, there is no set rules to these things. You know, you need, the principle is very vague. Okay, the idea of bringing students into contact together. And, but so you have to adapt it to your own goals, I think, you know, and, you know, don't expect it to say this is the way to do it, all right? And this is not the way to do it. Or at least that, that will be, I think something you should keep in mind when you listen to these, you know, Teletandem. You know there is not one set way of doing these things, right. Okay? -Thank you. I have a quick question, if you don't mind. Little, very quick question. Is the, is it exchange one on one? One student Yeah. Again, this again, there's, there's no simple answer to this. It depends. As a general rule when, when I set these up when I have exchanges with Alberto, we normally have groups of maybe two or three Spaniards and two or three Americans working together. So you'd have Working Group 1 and you'd put three from each class, or, you know, two and three. Why, why do you do this? Because if you only have one-on-one relationships, -It's not... so there won't disappears, because he gets sick, or he stops coming to class. Is the partners then at a loss is, is, but if one drops out from a working group, then the, the working group can still continue, you know, and, and also they, they, the interactions can be more, you know, I have my students this week their, their very nervous the the students I had in class today, because they're go, meeting their Irish, we're working with Irish people, this, Irish students this year. In their first Zoom videoconference. And there's going to be like six of them in the video, in the Zoom meeting. Three Irish, three Spanish. So we spent a class today coming up on an agenda. You know, what are they going to talk, what are you going to talk about? You know, who's going to lead to the conversation? Are you going to talk in Spanish or in English? You know, things like that. Excellent, thank you so much. The other question is that in the potential scenario that you embed the virtual exchange within the syllabus, which seems, you know, I don't want to say easier, but it's, as being more guided, it has maybe a clearer trajectory. So would you divide that virtual exchange into topics? So that might reflect the syllabus? You know what I mean? Yeah. Yes, I mean the idea is that you try to develop a virtual exchange that reflects your curriculum, but also it has to reflect to some extent the curriculum of your partner. Okay? So you have to try and find themes that are going to fit your curriculum, you know? And, but also at the same time be of interest to the, the partners, you know. So you have to keep that in mind when you're looking, looking for your partner class. -Exactly. Thank you so In UNIcollaboration, in the, in the partners, in the partner finding tool, you know, you, when you, when you'll, looking, you write a message looking for partner, you say, I've got a group of students at Princeton college and we want to look for a partnership in Spain or Japan or wherever. And the topics we are interested in working on our x, y, and z, and there you mention what you are doing in your curriculum. Okay. -Thank you. Robert. I have a question. I would like to hear you speak a little about these, You mentioned three learning outcomes, increased confidence in L2 use, nuance in cyber perspective, and more critical stance on their home culture. I, I was thinking, I agree with this that, a more polished L2 grammar is not there, right? And I feel that when I started doing telecollaboration I was focused, focusing more on error correction and these type of practices, and I'm, What do you think about that or what made you exclude that from, from this list? I, It's not that I, I excluded it, I mean, it's that those examples, those three main learning outcomes are the ones that I identified in the portfolios. Okay? So this isn't, you know, grammar learning is not something that students report that they learn from these exchanges. And, to be honest, I mean, maybe this is a, a personal thing, but, you know, I don't think that's the main reason why we are do, that I am doing these virtual exchanges. I'm, if I want to work on grammar, I can do that in ,shall we say the traditional way in my classes with my students. Well, I'm telling you this because we are working now with a university, from Colombia, And I mean, they, they are focusing on error correction aside from culture, and I was a little, if I had to select the terms in which we are working, I wouldn't really ask their students to correct each other. No. And I've, I've had bad experiences, bad experiences about that. But I think you maybe Princeton students are different, but I've seen American students correcting, when we've done e-tandem or Teletandem approaches, you know I've seen them correcting my students' English incorrectly. You know? And, and, and also, you know, you will find that your students are probably not very good at explaining grammar, their own, their own grammar. I, I hope, hope it was not my, my students. Probably they were my students. No, no, they weren't. You, your students. I remember I would always, I still have lovely examples of messages from your students in Princeton because they were so insightful and, you know, they're, you know, really, really good contributions. But, you know, I don't think students that, it's not their job to be experts in their, in their native grammar. They can tell you what sounds right and what sounds wrong, but they're not going to be able to explain to their partners why it is right or why it is wrong. That's why again, you as a teacher can bring these messages into class and analyze them, with them, you know. And if that's the goal, in some cultures, like the Brazilian, it's extremely rude, to, to they, they avoid giving negative feedback as much as they can. So they're just not going to do it. -Exactly, no? If that's how you're expecting, you're not gonna get that. Yeah, yeah. Very good point as well. It might be culturally, you know, inappropriate. Yeah. Very true. If there are no other questions, I'm just looking at the clock here. It's almost 2:30. Professor O'Dowd, we are so grateful that you've taken the time to share this with us. I'm honored that I was invited to come, to come back to Princeton. Absolutely. And, and I don't want it to be the last time. We, we want to bring you back personally when, when this is possible again. I think this is, the topic is new to some, not new to others. But I'm really grateful for those of you who have chimed in because you have been doing this. Makes me think about, you know, what's possible. And I have to admit that, that teaching through Zoom over the course of the pandemic has opened up my thinking about what might be possible, what might work. -Yeah, yeah. So even though the pandemic, there's some pedagogical advantages. Let's hope. -Hard to believe. Thank you, thank you very much everybody. You were very nice to, to participate and to, and to, to tell us, to tell me your experiences. Well I wish you all the very best of luck in the coming semester. And we'll see you on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for today and thank you for everything else. Thank you, Luis. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you, Robert. -Bye-bye, Alberto! Lovely to see you. Take care. Bye-bye, Jamie. Okay. Thank you guys, bye-bye, see you. -Bye-bye.