Learning episodes in an intercultural virtual exchange: The case of social high-immersion virtual reality

Computer-mediated communication tools facilitate international collaboration projects between foreign language learners and peers abroad (O’Dowd, 2018). Social Virtual Reality (VR) applications allow for synchronous interactions and task-based communication in which learners can experience telepresence and immersion and conversate in a foreign language. Based on previous pilot experiences (Jauregi-Ondarra, Gruber, & Canto, 2020, 2021), this Virtual Exchange (VE) project aims to investigate how the specific affordances of Social High-immersion VR (SHiVR) in conjunction with designed tasks influence interaction patterns, and learning episodes. The VE took place between two groups of university students in the Netherlands (N=15) and Cyprus (N=14) through SHiVR in March 2022. The main aims of the tasks were to raise student intercultural awareness, stimulate task-based communication processes using English as a lingua franca and digital pedagogical competences of language education students. Different sources of data were gathered and analysed. In this paper, we describe and present the pedagogical experience and the initial result

Academic writing for publication: Putting the ‘international’ into context

There is a growing body of research on the impact of English-medium publication and associated higher education regimes on knowledge construction. However, not much is known about how academics outside the Global North make decisions about how and where to publish. Through a comparative case study, this article sets out to explore how academics in Ethiopia and Oman engage in writing for publication. Taking an academic literacies lens, the analysis reveals that their decisions were shaped by institutional values at the local level, as well as global hierarchies around knowledge construction. However, issues around identity, languages and disciplinary cultures also influenced how academics chose to position themselves in relation to local and international journals. The findings point to the need for new partnerships between journals in the Global North and South to prevent ‘publication drain’, and for universities to explore ways to address inequalities perpetuated through journal ranking and language hierarchies