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Foreign language teaching and learning for the 21st Century aim to provide the learners with opportunities to become not only linguistically competent, but also interculturally competent (Akyildiz, 2019). In higher education (HE), this shift has been accompanied by the implementation of a number of teaching and learning approaches aimed at empowering students through active learning and the implementation of student-centered methodologies. Virtual exchanges (VEs) have become a widely used and powerful alternative to improve foreign language communication skills in a meaningful way, as well as promoting cultural understanding and the development of digital literacy skills in HE (Orsini-Jones & Lee, 2018; Helm & O’Dowd, 2020; O’Dowd, 2021b). As defined by the Evidence-Validated Online Learning through Virtual Exchange (EVOLVE) project and mentioned in other articles in this special issue, VE is a practice consisting of:
sustained, technology-enabled, people-to-people education programmes or activities in which constructive communication and interaction takes place between individuals or groups who are geographically separated and/or from different cultural backgrounds, with the support of educators or facilitators. (EVOLVE, 2020.)
Within the context of “class-to-class” VEs involving foreign language students, project-based learning seems to be a suitable strategy for fostering intercultural communicative competence and intercultural citizenship (Dooly & O’Dowd, 2018). Project-based learning (PBL) is an active and dynamic approach to language teaching that makes it possible for foreign language students to gain transferable and applicable knowledge, skills and insights through collaboration. According to Barrett, “a project needs to be meaningful and engaging, and based on a set of core questions that have to be answered by the student” (2018, p.100). PBL perfectly fits within the framework of VE involving English as a foreign language (EFL) learners since students are able to work collaboratively in completing authentic tasks in a technology-mediated environment, as, through VE, they improve their EFL communication skills, develop digital literacy skills, and gain intercultural understanding (Belz & Müller-Hartmann, 2003).
Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has become a desirable goal in HE as the world becomes more and more globalized. Byram (2008) introduced the term ‘intercultural citizenship’, which combines language education with political education. Byram et al. (2017) also discussed and illustrated classroom practices connecting language education and intercultural citizenship. HE institutions should strive to provide global citizenship education so that their undergraduates can effectively and appropriately communicate with people who have different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. According to O’Dowd (2020):
Experts and practitioners have proposed different approaches and models to understand intercultural competence. Byram’s model of intercultural communicative competence (1997) is one of them, which includes five components (knowledge, attitudes, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, critical cultural awareness), and it has become particularly important in the field of foreign language education. According to Hoff (2020), it provided the basis for the development of the conceptual model that supports the Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) (Barrett et al., 2018a, 2018b, 2018c). The RFCDC can be considered as a reference and tool box for educators, not only in Europe, but in the rest of the world, because it: