Intercultural Competence and Cultural Learning Through Telecollaboration

This paper presents the findings of a six-week telecollaborative project between sixteen American students enrolled in a second-semester German class at an American university and sixteen German students enrolled in an advanced English course at a high school in Germany. Students discussed various cultural topics with their partner in two e-mails per week. The study strove to reveal the American college students’ understanding of their own and of German culture, their interest in cultural learning, and possible changes therein through telecollaboration. Moreover, the study aimed at exploring if intercultural competence can be exhibited, and thus assessed, through an e-mail exchange. For that purpose, Byram's model of intercultural competence (1997) was used for the data analysis. One e-mail exchange was used as representative of the exchange. In addition, a pre- and post-survey were administered to answer the research questions. The results of the study revealed that students became more knowledgeable about the other culture, but not about their own. The students’ interest in cultural learning did not change significantly. The case-study findings were inconclusive about the possibility of using e-mails for assessing intercultural competence, but suggest that e-mails could serve as the basis for assessment of intercultural competence if the e-mail assignments were different.