The International Virtual Exchange Conference (IVEC) is the largest and most prominent event on virtual exchange, providing a forum for an audience of deans, directors, faculty, instructional designers, administrators, and professionals from institutions around the world interested in technology, international education, and new pedagogies.
Virtual exchange (also known as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), Globally Networked Learning, or Telecollaboration) extends authentic opportunities for intercultural and transnational learning to students within the curriculum of college and university classrooms. Through co-developed and co-taught modules, virtual exchange supports the development of 21st-century workforce skills and provides opportunities for applied learning experiences.
IVEC 2020 is hosted online by Newcastle University and is supported by the State University of New York (SUNY) COIL Center, DePaul University, UNICollaboration, Drexel University, University of Washington Bothell, East Carolina University, Durban University of Technology, Universidad de Monterrey, and Federal University of Pernambuco. The supporting institutions each bring with them many years of experience developing, teaching, and researching virtual exchange.
Our workshop, called “Language Learning While Cooking: Live Virtual Exchange”, will take płace in the Digital Kitchen in Newcastle University (which was purpose built for such events), as well as in a partner institution in Spain at the same time. Both centres will be connected live online by video so they can interact with each other. Both centres have previously produced language learning recipes on the Linguacuisine app in different languages. Each centre will cook a recipe which was previously produced an uploaded to the app by the other centre, which will also involve the participants in learning new words in the foreign language. Thus, each centre can see how its own language learning recipe is being cooked by the other centre, and can offer help and assess language learning. Conversely, each centre can get expert help with its own learning of both cooking and language items from the centre which produced the recipe. In this way, the principles of information gap and information transfer are built into the virtual exchange tasks carried out by the 2 groups and these provide an authentic reason for the groups to interact with each other to help each other with the task. Each group will eat the food produced and offer feedback on the recipe and learning experience to the authors. Each group will also assess how many new words they have learnt, with the help of the expert group. We will then discuss how the principles of information gap and transfer have influenced the interaction and evaluate the virtual exchange experience for this specific task. The aim of the workshop is to introduce participants to the possibilities of using ‘language learning while cooking’ as a virtual exchange task based on information gap and transfer principles. Following the session, participants will be able to organise a similar event using the Linguacuisine app for virtual exchange in their own institutions.
Download the flyer to have a look at the Catalan and Vietnamese recipes that we’ll be cooking during the workshop.