Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Humanities, Psychology and Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Telecollaboration in the Internationalization at Home Context: Towards Intercultural Competence
Rodrigo Schaefer
ABSTRACT:
Telecollaboration, understood as the use of online technologies in the area of language teaching and learning between students who are geographically distant, plays a significant role in fostering the intercultural contact in the context of Internationalization at Home (IaH). IaH refers to a more inclusive internationalization, accomplished by domestic activities instead of solely through international student mobility (O’Dowd, 2019; Schaefer, 2022). This study aims to discuss how telecollaboration has allowed Intercultural Competence, defined as “an awareness and a respect of difference” (KRAMSCH, 2005, p.553), in the IaH context at Insituto Federal Catarinense (IFC), a Brazilian institution that offers Technical and Vocational Education. This qualitative study included data from semi-structured interviews and experience reports. After the collection period, the data collected underwent a long process of interpretation and reflection (Dörnyei, 2007). The results pointed out that telecollaboration contributed to the participant’s Intercultural Competent on the IaH context, since it provided the participants, among other aspects, with a broader view of the world, of their own cultural horizons and of other people. Based on these outcomes, it seems possible to state that telecollaboration has promoted internationalization processes through the intercultural contact at IFC.
keywords: Interculturality; Internationalization of the Curriculum; language teaching and learning; Technical and Vocational Education; virtual exchanges