This paper discusses the potential of immersing foreign language learners in Social Virtual Reality (SVR) in an international seminar, designed by the authors, called SpEakWise VR, combining the tandem language learning paradigm with gamification in immersive virtual environments. SpEakWise VR builds on an existing telecollaboration (SpEakWise)…

This study focuses on the use of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) smart speakers and smartphone applications for improving the English language skills of L1 Japanese undergraduates. An empirical investigation was carried out with 82 Japanese students. Participants were required to study a variety of online English…

Immersion through Virtual Reality (VR) gives the subjective impression that the learner has a realistic experience (Dede, 2009). The pedagogical potential of VR provides the means of enabling constructivist places of contextualised learning. This paper aims to examine the potential the VR application "Mondly" may have to maximise…

One of the possible ways of assessing students' collaborative work in Virtual Exchange (VE) is by the use of Peer Assessment (PA) -- a formative assessment technique in which students review each other's work to provide descriptive feedback on the basis of a set of criteria. This article describes a VE procedure, in which students from three…

The aim of this study is to compare how two different Virtual Exchanges (VE) contribute to language learning in a Japanese university context. Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) using VE has been a focus in this study. There are huge advantages of using technology in language teaching such as increasing language use opportunities, feedback, and…

On its website, APVEA reminds us that "virtual exchanges are technology-enabled, sustained, people-to-people education programs". This chapter addresses the question of what we exchange when we engage in virtual exchange by exploring the meaning and value of virtual exchange as intercultural dialogue, and by considering the impact of the…

"Serious Games [SGs] are applications combining educational content with gameplay by integrating learning objectives into a game-like environment" (Thillainathan & Leimeister, 2014, p. 1). However, they have not been used much in language teacher education and training (Ulicsak, 2010). This paper describes the design of…

A core element of the proPIC project is the development and implementation of the so-called study weeks: a five day face-to-face stay abroad at one of the partner institutions in which all the participating students took part. In this chapter, the authors present and discuss the results and impact of these events which took place twice during the…

This paper will report on a pilot Virtual Reality (VR) project which repurposes an existing scenario-based VR asset for health sciences. The original scenario aims to prepare health care students for home visits by allowing them to experience a semi-linear conversation with a virtual Non-Player Character (NPC). This provides a safe,…

The 27th European Association of Computer-Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) conference was hosted by UCLouvain in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium), in collaboration with KU Leuven, from the 28th to the 31st of August 2019. The theme selected for the 2019 EuroCALL conference held in Louvain-la-Neuve was "CALL and complexity." As languages…

Assessing the skills of the students who take part in a Virtual Exchange (VE) project is a challenging and complicated task, especially if it aims to engage both the students and VE co-organisers in the feedback and evaluation process. The objective of this chapter is to outline the pedagogical design of a business communication skills course and…

This chapter is based on a workshop at IVEC 2020 which presented a model of Virtual Exchange (VE) facilitated by interactive, digital, and cultural artefacts created using a progressive web app developed by the EU-funded ENACT project team. The model offers an innovative approach to online intercultural exchange through the opportunity to create,…

This paper gives an overview of nine different Virtual School Garden Exchange (VSGE) projects. In VSGEs, learners from primary or secondary schools with school gardens exchange virtually on their garden experiences and related topics, using digital media like emails, photos, films, or videoconferences. In this manner, the global perspective of…

This chapter describes a small-scale pilot study in which participants in the experimental group learned how to write Japanese kanji characters within an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) graffiti simulator (the Kingspray Graffiti Simulator on the Oculus Rift VR system). In comparing the experimental group to the non-VR control group in the context…

The aim of this study was to discover what potential benefits of Virtual Reality (VR) use students perceived in comparison to smartphone use in an English-speaking activity. Two surveys were conducted over three interventions in order to ascertain these student perceptions. Ten students enrolled in an elective English class at a Japanese…