Welcome!

This website offers various resources for foreign language educators interested in engaging their learners in on-line intercultural exchanges. These resources include links to sites for finding international partners, examples of good practice, a bibliography on telecollaboration and some worksheets which I have used with my students to prepare them for intercultural exchanges. Fellow practitioners are encouraged to send in further links or materials based on their own telecollaborative projects.  

The collection of resources here are an outcome of a doctoral thesis on the development of intercultural communicative competence through telecollaboration. Those interested in finding out more about the thesis or in contributing to these resources, should contact Robert O'Dowd at: dfmrod@unileon.es

What is Telecollaboration?

Telecollaboration is defined by Belz in the following way:

 “internationally-dispersed learners in parallel language classes use Internet communication tools such as e-mail, synchronous chat, threaded discussion, and MOOs ... in order to support social interaction, dialogue, debate, and intercultural exchange (2003a: 1)."

A very brief introduction to telecollaboration can be read here.

This website is run for purely educational purposes by Robert O'Dowd