This paper aims to give an overview of a cooperation project launched three years ago, under which students who study Swedish at two universities across the Baltic Sea have a chance to complete a part of relevant courses in their study programmes together in an online course. The primary goals of joint studying are: to encourage students from different nationalities to actively communicate with one another, using Swedish as the lingua franca (communicative and social competence), to motivate students to use a range of sources in Swedish to get information, and to give the participants a chance to gain new knowledge about their neighbouring country and the student life there (internationalisation competence). The common difficulties in carrying out joint studies at two different universities (Guth, Helm, & O'Dowd, 2012), e.g. timetabling and technical problems, are overcome by focusing on asynchronous dialogue and by choosing a technically workable platform with good technical support from one of the partner universities. The authors consider the cooperation a very positive experience, easy and inexpensive to implement, and highly recommend to their colleagues. Our experience confirms what previous studies (Guth et al., 2012) have already outlined: despite the belief that foreign languages should be learned face-to-face and preferably with native speakers, students seem to appreciate using information and communication technology for connecting up with other people using the target language as their lingua franca. We also feel that these exchanges are particularly suitable for the teaching of less commonly taught languages and offer all parties both change and satisfaction. [For full proceedings, see ED565044.]