[3] Although it proliferated with the advance of the internet and Web 2.0 technologies in the 1990s, its roots can be traced to learning networks pioneered by Célestin Freinet in 1920s[4] and, according to Dooly,[5] even earlier in Jardine's[who?]
Outside the field of language education, this type of pedagogic practice is being used to internationalize the curriculum and offer students the possibility to engage with peers in other parts of the world in collaborative online projects.
This project stemmed from a perceived need to connect youth from the two countries during a time which was marked by tensions between the United States and the U.S.S.R. that had developed during the Cold War.
One of the first uses of the word telecollaboration was in Warschauer's 1996 volume[16] that compiled works on computer-mediated communication (CMC) following the Symposium on Local and Global Electronic Networking in Foreign Language Learning and Research held at the University of Hawaiʻi in 1995.
In this model of virtual exchange, students from universities across the globe are placed in diverse groups of 10–12 people, and they meet regularly for 2-hour sessions of dialogue through an over a period of 8 weeks.
The aim was to support university educators and mobility coordinators to find partner classes, and to organise and run online intercultural exchanges for their students.
In March 2018 the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange pilot project was officially launched by Commissioner Navracsics and it targeted young people (aged 18–30) in EU and Southern Mediterranean countries.
Several VE projects under Erasmus+ Key Action 3 (Support for policy reform, Priority 5, EACEA 41/2016) have focused since then in telecollaboration and virtual exchange practice and research.
The project investigated the impact of virtual exchange on teachers' pedaogogical competences and pedagogical approach in HE from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2020 and it was coordinated by the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
However, the DLVE / eTandem model has also been used for class-to-class telecollaboration projects where teachers establish specific objectives, tasks, and topics for discussion.
[42] The eTwinning project, which essentially is a network of schools and educators within the European Union and part of Eramus+, contrasts with its earlier counterparts in not setting specific guidelines apropos of language use, themes or structure.
[43] This model serves as a broad platform for schools within the EU to exchange information and share materials online, and provides a virtual space for countless pedagogical opportunities where teachers and students collectively learn, communicate and collaborate using a foreign language.
Each of the telecollaborative models discussed above has its strengths and weaknesses: Virtual exchange is a type of education program that uses technology to allow geographically separated people to interact and communicate.
This type of activity is most often situated in educational programs (but is also found in some youth organizations) in order to increase mutual understanding, global citizenship, digital literacies, and language learning.
O'Dowd and Ritter[50] categorized potential reasons for failed communication in telecollaborative projects, sub-dividing them into four levels which, as the researchers indicate, can also overlap and interrelate: O'Dowd and Ritter[50] focus initially on the individual level of possible obstacles to full functionality in virtual exchange projects, specifically the psychobiographical and educational backgrounds of the virtual exchange partners as potential sources for dysfunctional communications, and in particular, on the following two primary aspects: The concept of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) was established by Byram[51] who stated that there are five dimensions (or '5 savoirs') that make an individual interculturally competent: a combination of skills of interpreting, relating, discovery and interaction, of attitudes, knowledge and critical awareness.
[50] Successful pair and group formation is crucial to successful dual language virtual exchange and, to a lesser extent, lingua franca virtual exchange, however factors such as age, gender or foreign language proficiency can impact projects substantially, leading to the difficult choice between leaving pairings and groupings to chance, or assigning partners according to a rationale, however challenging foreseeing compatibilities and incompatibilities might be.
[50] O'Dowd and Ritter[50] include in their list of socio-institutional challenges the organization of the learners' general course of studies, and refer to Belz and Müller-Hartmann's[53] identification of four key areas which can influence the outcome of virtual exchanges / telecollaborations: These differences can greatly affect the outcome of a project, as they can generate differing expectations regarding the volume of work, the meeting of deadlines, and so forth.
O'Dowd and Ritter[50] also indicate the pairing of students whose main focus of academic interest may not be the same as a possible source of dysfunction, in addition to the impact of clashes of institutional policies and philosophies regulating all aspects of the learning and teaching processes.
It is becoming recognized as a sustainable approach[56] to global citizenship education and a form of 'internationalization at home'[57] A considerable amount of research points to the benefits of virtual exchange or telecollaboration partnering.
[66] O'Dowd and Lewis[67] report that initially, the majority of online exchanges occurred between Western classrooms based in North America and Europe, while the number of partnerships involving other continents and other languages remained small.
A trend that can be observed is that two models have generally guided the approaches adopted in virtual exchange or telecollaborative practice in foreign language learning.
These tools and environments enabled partners to conduct collaborative tasks reflecting hobbies and interests such as jointly developed music or film projects.
[68] The outcome of the INTENT project by the European Commission between 2011 and 2014 led to the creation of the UNICollaboration platform[73] which provides necessary resources for educators to set up structured virtual exchange partnerships in universities.
The European Telecollaboration for Intercultural Language Acquisition (TILA)[74] is an example of a platform of resources for teachers dedicated to integrating structured virtual exchange programs into secondary education.
TeCoLa was also a project funded by the European Commission within the Erasmus+ programme that harnesses telecollaboration technologies and gamification for intercultural and content integrated foreign language teaching (CLIL).
It addressed the emerging need in secondary foreign language education for developing intercultural communicative competence through the pedagogical integration of virtual exchanges and telecollaboration.
The project paid special attention to authentic communication practice in the foreign language, intercultural experience, collaborative knowledge discovery in CLIL contexts as well as learning diversity and pedagogical differentiation.
Other educators have found that COIL can be an important internationalization initiative in equity that grants access to global and digital learning to all students who may not perform physical mobility because of obstacles due to immigration issues or significant obligations.
[91] Connecting individuals, classrooms or groups of students to work together on tasks online involves attempting to arrive at shared understanding through "negotiation of meaning".
[93] The INTENT consortium of researchers, supported by funding from the European Union, promoted awareness of telecollaborative activities in higher education and the contribution made to internationalising the student experience, publishing a report[94] and a position paper.