Telecollaboration successes and lessons learned: Connecting the US and Japan

Telecollaboration has been shown to improve perceived intercultural competence (e.g., Castro et al., 2018; Lázár, 2014) and language competence (e.g., Casañ-Pitarch et al., 2020) and is a way to motivate students to use their second language. In the current study, the researchers used telecollaboration to connect students at universities in the US (Japanese language learners, n = 12) and Japan (English language learners, n = 9) to complete a game development project. The purpose of the telecollaboration was to provide opportunities for both sides to communicate in their second language, improve their motivation for learning, and increase their intercultural competence. The students’ interactions and perceived learning outcomes were investigated. Their perceptions were collected at the end of the telecollaboration via an online questionnaire , and their contributions to a Discord server were collected and analyzed as a corpus. The results showed that the Japanese students tended to contribute less text than the US students. Based on the final questionnaire, some students gained motivation to learn their second language, and students may have improved their intercultural competence.