Every year, around 120 students of French at the University of Manchester (UoM) prepare to go on their compulsory Year Abroad (YA). They are free to choose between different options: studying in France and the French-speaking world, working in diverse sectors throughout the French-speaking world, or becoming a language assistant. This wealth of…

This article describes the extra support required for outgoing students on their Year Abroad (YA) journey. It highlights the increasing need for and relevance of peer mentoring of YA students in preparing them to deal with different structures and organisations where external support might be insufficient or even non-existent. It also outlines…

This case study explores the Sharing Perspectives Foundation's (SPF) blended mobility course: "Europe on the Edge," which included a 10-week Virtual Exchange (VE) followed by a 1-week physical mobility held in Brussels. Engaging 131 students from 30 different nationalities and partnering with 10 European universities, this 2015…

This case study reports a Virtual Exchange (VE) between students at Cracow University of Economics (Poland) enrolled in business courses and students from the High Institute of Technological Studies of Béja (Tunisia) enrolled in an entrepreneurship course. The main aim of the project was to enhance students' awareness of similarities and…

This study reports on the results of students' perceptions of Digital Storytelling (DS) in online classes enhanced with synchronous Zoom meetings. Two main problems were identified with remote English as a Foreign Language (EFL) courses conducted primarily as asynchronous classes in spring 2020. Firstly, seven of the 64 participating students…

The Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) has participated in the Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange (E+VE) programme since the beginning of 2019. The international relations office, the body responsible for managing the programme at IUG, noticed that there was a positive change in participants' knowledge and perceptions about VE and its role in enhancing their…

This chapter presents a case study of an online task-enhanced Virtual Exchange (VE) project that involved 19 English students at Hacettepe University, Turkey, and 19 students of English at Sfax University, Tunisia. The objective behind the VE was to provide students with opportunities for intercultural and interactional development through the…

This paper describes the initial findings of an exploratory research project investigating the use of the cooperative digital puzzle game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes as a means to facilitate Second Language Acquisition (SLA). A qualitative case study approach was taken to closely examine the linguistic interaction between three L2 learners of…

Virtual Exchange (VE) in second language education refers to a technology-enabled, interactive, intercultural experience that is designed to increase learners' intercultural communicative competence and performance. In this paper the findings of a bilingual (English/Turkish), synchronous video communication project among 31 US and Turkish college…

This chapter showcases the implementation of an E+VE (Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange) project in a 'broadening module' (elective content-specific modules offered across the university curricula) at the University of Limerick (UL), entitled 'Communication Across Cultures'. The pedagogical approach follows a blended learning model where face-to-face…

This paper explains details of a creative writing project aimed at increasing students' motivation to write in English and develop collaboration skills. Forty-eight first-year -- A2-B1 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) level -- English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners enrolled in a reading and writing course at a…

Concordance-based Data-Driven Learning (DDL) aims to help second language learners infer language usage rules from language usage regularities. A number of DDL pedagogical treatments have focussed on phraseological units such as collocations, widely recognised as a central component of second language learning. This study evaluates DDL effects…

This case study outlines an example of cooperative online learning for teaching business communication skills at a Hungarian and a Belgian university. During this eight week long Erasmus+ Virtual Exchange (E+VE) project, students collaborated online in virtual teams on a weekly basis to complete the following main missions: (1) giving constructive…

This case study centres on the notion that changing traditional student identities by turning them into 'student-teachers' can have very positive consequences on their involvement with the learning process. Technology plays a crucial role and is totally embedded in this approach. In this project, students are asked to research a grammar topic and…

The present study aims to reveal English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' online learning behaviour in a cross-platform web application for EFL vocabulary learning courses at a national university in Japan. Students were divided into two groups: those who were provided with the new, cross-platform application for vocabulary learning, and…