Abstract
In our globally connected world, it is essential to acknowledge our intercultural identities and develop effective communicative skills to engage with individuals from diverse nationalities and cultures. To promote such skills in higher education, students shall interact in a culturally diverse, digitally mediated environment with peers from different locations and backgrounds. This paper reports on an action-research study on the development of intercultural awareness through the use of telecollaboration, specifically a Communicative Online International Learning (COIL) module. It assesses the effectiveness of the activities proposed on the intercultural sensitivity of 25 undergraduate EFL students at a Colombian public University. Data were collected using two surveys: one administered before the COIL intervention to establish the initial level of students’ intercultural awareness, and a second one conducted afterwards to analyze whether there was evidence of any changes in that area. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were carried out with a subset of the informant students to validate their understanding and definitions of culture and interculturality. Self-evaluation questionnaires were also performed periodically following the completion of each module task. Findings suggest that by the end of the COIL module, students improved their skills to identify and recognize both, some of their own and others’ cultural values and conceptualizations. This translates into having a better understanding of the differences between diverse cultural aspects; thus, a higher intercultural awareness could be achieved through this type of experience.
Presenters
Miye BolívarStudent, Master's in Interlinguistic and Intercultural Studies, Universidad del Valle, Valle del Cauca, Colombia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
COIL, Intercultural awareness, English as a foreign language, Higher education
