Business communication skills through virtual exchange – a case study

Introduction: This study evaluated a Virtual Exchange (VE) project based on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) to connect students and faculty across five universities from the USA, Brazil, Honduras, and Algeria. Methods: A four-week program combined synchronous and asynchronous activities, allowing for flexible, self-selected participation. This paper presents a description of this VE project as well as its outcomes. Results: The project successfully fostered global awareness and collaborative dialogue, filling a gap in participants’ regular studies. Participants valued the global connections through the program. Discussion: The VE project demonstrated the potential of self-determined participation in promoting global connections and collaborative learning. The SDGs created a productive space for authentic dialogue framed within a sense of community. Limitations: This project is limited to the scope of exploring selected relevant SDGs and does not include data from the participants´ interactions for analysis and discussion. Conclusions: The VE proved valuable for international educational exchange, particularly benefiting students with limited access to traditional international programs. Future research should include quantitative analysis and explore adding practical action components linked to SDG implementation to enhance impact.

The paper examines challenges in the teaching of Communication Skills (CS) course in higher education institutions in Tanzania. Teaching of the course in Tanzania started in 1978 to date and aimed at helping students learn effectively using English language as medium of instruction. However, many students fail to communicate effectively using the language and exhibit deficiencies even after doing the course. The study was informed by relativist-interpretivist research paradigm which is consistent with the qualitative approach and case study method. It involved 55 participants including: students, lecturers, Heads of Departments and Academic Deans from one public and one private university in Tanzania as well as officials from the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training. The respondents were sampled purposively. The interviews, observations, focus group discussions and document reviews were used to generate data that were analysed mathematically. The key challenges revealed include: poor background of the students and lecturers, interference of other languages and lack of appropriate resources. In view of the findings, it is recommended that teaching of the CS course should start from the lower levels of education, among others. Keywords: Communication, Communication Skills and Communication Skills Course

Sustainability is a driver of innovation yet the integration of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into the innovation process is not yet the norm. In many cases, innovators are not even aware of the goals. To expose technology students and future innovators to the importance of SDGs as drivers of sustainable innovation, students from an American and German university worked together in teams on a sustainability and innovation virtual exchange project. Students chose a social impact area (field of technology)—energy, education, transportation, etc., analysed the current state and then identified the innovation that was required for a sustainable future in three different regions of the world twenty years from now. Students mapped the SDGs to their chosen social impact area, and then used this map as a framework for analysis, ideation and innovation. Working collaboratively, students investigated the political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal challenges to achieve a sustainable future in the three chosen regions. The virtual exchange project, lessons learned and results achieved will be presented so that other universities might consider engaging in similar initiatives.

The importance of global and intercultural competence across various fields has become increasingly evident. Since the COVID-19 health crisis, one approach that has gained acceptance in academia is Virtual Exchange, which facilitates interaction between students and academics from different geographical locations. The construct of Global Competence is understood to encompass three dimensions: Self-Awareness, Intercultural Competence, and Global Knowledge. Additionally, three types of motivation are identified: Mandatory, Rewarded, and Self-motivation. However, little is known about how students' motivation to participate in Virtual Exchange acts as a moderating factor in relation to the dimensions of Global Competence. This study aims to measure the moderating effect of students' motivation on Global Competence using the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) technique. The analysis modelled the relationship between Global Competence, its three dimensions, and the three types of motivation. Data were collected through a questionnaire administered to higher education students from various countries who had participated in virtual exchange projects. The study’s results indicate a significant moderating effect of students' motivation to participate in Virtual Exchange projects on Global Competence, specifically within the Intercultural Competence dimension. No significant effects were found for the Self-Awareness and Global Knowledge dimensions. The findings suggest that students who expect to be rewarded for participating in Virtual Exchange programs show better results in the development of Intercultural Competence. In contrast, lower results are anticipated for students whose participation is motivated by mandatory requirements or self-motivation.

The objective of this study was to determine if the addition of a reflective writing component in a fourth year (P-2) pharmacy communication skills course would significantly affect 2 measures of learning: (1) objective multiple choice examination questions and (2) a patient counseling Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) score. Using a nonequivalent group quasi-experimental retrospective comparison design, 98 randomly selected final examination scores from students taking a nonwriting intensive (NWI) communication skills course were compared with 112 randomly selected final examination scores from students that took a communication skills course in which students engaged in several reflective writing assignments. In addition, 91 randomly selected patient counseling OSCE scores from a NWI course were statistically compared with 112 scores from students that took the writing intensive (WI) course. There were statistically significant improvements in multiple choice examination scores in the group that took the reflective writing communication skills course. There was not a statistically significant difference in patient counseling OSCE scores after students completed the WI course. Studying the effects of using reflective writing assignments in communication skills courses may improve the retention and retrieval of information presented within the course.

This practice report explores the integration of Design Thinking (DT) into virtual exchange (VE) projects to enhance students’ engagement with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite increasing interest in VE and SDGs, there is a lack of research on effective DT practices in VE contexts. This paper fills this gap by identifying best practices: integrating intercultural dialogue principles, fostering multicultural collaboration, and assigning coaches to student teams. These strategies were implemented in a VE involving three institutions across the Middle East, North Africa, and the U.S. Results from both a quantitative survey and qualitative reflections indicate that the combination of DT, intercultural dialogue, and effective coaching not only facilitated students’ understanding and engagement with global issues related to SDGs but also enhanced their professional skills such as creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. This paper contributes best practices for educators aiming to leverage DT for SDGs in VE settings.

The development of technology has changed the way people communicate in academic contexts as well as working places, for example from print messages to screened messages, and from face-to-face classroom and office meetings to virtual classes and offices. This has prompted the shift from traditional teaching practices to student-centered in which students are guided by their teachers to develop skills for 21st Century careers through the Project-Based Learning model. However, in Tanzania colleges, the teaching of a Communication Skills Course perpetuates traditional teaching practices, which could reduce the chance for students to participate in global democratic activities. Consequently, the present study aimed at exploring how to enhance the 4 C’s (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity) among the college students of the Communication Skills Course in Tanzania through the Project-Based Learning model. Qualitative participatory action research with two cycles was adopted. Data from ten students, one teacher, and the curriculum were collected through observation, document analysis, and reflective journals. Data were analyzed thematically. Findings show that current teaching practices for Communication Skills Course in Tanzania colleges hardly enhance the development of the 4 C’s among students. It was also observed that the implementation of PBL resulted in enhancing the 4 C’s among college students in Tanzania colleges. However, large class sizes, poor technological infrastructure, and lack of facilities are among the challenges experienced during the implementation of PBL in enhancing the 4Cs. The study recommends the reformation of current teaching practices, to focus on developing skills needed to cope with students’ real-life contexts, instead of focusing on content knowledge. Also, the study calls for the adoption of PBL in Tanzania colleges in teaching Communication Skills to develop necessary skills for the 21st Century. To cope with any potential challenges, the study suggests that there should be collaborative efforts among education stakeholders.

Advances in technology have enabled students to interact more effectively in virtual exchange (VE) projects across institutions and countries. However, there are still challenges and barriers that need to be addressed (O’Dowd, 2023). This paper reports Japanese students’ perceptions of a video letter assignment in an asynchronous VE project as their first experience of communicating using English and ICT. This preliminary study focuses on the video letter exchange which was conducted as an additional task during the project. The comments of the reflection sheets revealed that they were able to overcome some difficulties and learn through the video letter exchange. It was found that the video letter assignment in the VE project provided an opportunity to learn English expressions and other cultures, to experience differences with partners’ cultures, and express their messages confidently.

The technological revolution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has brought about new learning scenarios as well as new professional requirements, such as the development of intercultural and Foreign Language (FL) skills. In this regard, Virtual Exchange (VE) projects provide students with learning opportunities through online social interaction and collaboration (Dooly, 2017); allowing authentic intercultural experiences for students who do not have the opportunity of travelling (O’Dowd, 2016) and promoting 21st-century skills development (Jager, Kurek, & O’Rourke, 2016). However, interacting online in the FL with a person from a different culture can entail an affective challenge for students and might give rise to Foreign Language Anxiety (FLA). FLA is a dysphoric and situational anxiety suffered by one out of three FL students which inhibits communication and learning (Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986). Due to the impossibility of finding an available tool to investigate the presence and effects of FLA in VE environments, the Telecollaborative FLA Scale (T-FLAS) was designed. This article presents the development of the T-FLAS, a 21-item questionnaire with a five-point Likert scale, aiming to provide researchers and practitioners with a tool to explore FLA in VE.

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) has emerged as an increasingly important approach to internationalization at home, offering students opportunities for sustained intercultural interaction without physical mobility. However, less is known about how students in Asian contexts negotiate identity through such virtual exchange. This study aims to examine how university students in Japan (N = 41) with an average CEFR B1 level proficiency negotiated their identities during a COIL virtual exchange (VE) project with university students in China (N = 35). Drawing upon qualitative data from final written reflections, this study highlights how students in Japan described cultural differences in essentialist and critical ways. Findings suggest that VEs like COIL can serve as a catalyst for identity negotiation by prompting students to both reproduce and question cultural stereotypes. While some students expressed essentialist comparisons, others demonstrated a certain degree of emerging critical awareness by recognizing the diversity within cultural groups as well as their own shifting perspectives. These results highlight the importance of structured pedagogical scaffolding in VEs to facilitate learners seeing beyond simplistic cultural binaries toward more flexible, inclusive intercultural identities.

In recent decades, the convergence of technical and professional communication (TPC) with translation studies (TS) has underscored the necessity for collaboration across disciplinary borders. However, challenges remain, particularly in translating specialized texts deeply connected to local cultures. This paper investigates a virtual exchange (VE) project focused on translating multilingual menus, which pose unique challenges due to their embeddedness in local cultures. The study explores translators' strategies in dealing with culture-specific items (CSIs) and their collaboration with TPC writers representing the target audience. The methodology section outlines the case study's participants and dataset, while the results shed light on effective strategies and collaborative approaches in translating menus within a VE context. A key takeaway is that technical translation requires not only a deep understanding of the terminology and concepts of a specific field, but also a commitment to working with TPC writers and target audiences to transform source texts into usable and persuasive target texts – an approach that VE environments can uniquely support through authentic, cross-cultural collaboration.

This experience report presents an overview of the first experience of virtual exchange (O'DOWD, 2018, 2021) between students from the Federal University of Acre and the University of California, Davis, which occurred during the first semester of 2021. The project’s participants were experiencing emergency remote instruction and had to use their electronic devices to interact with their partners. The virtual exchange was a Teletandem partnership (TELLES, 2006, 2015; COSTA; SALOMÃO; ZAKIR, 2018; FERNANDES; TELLES, 2015). We describe how the partnership was established, the challenges, and the rewards for the interactants, the mediators and the professors involved in the project. Teletandem at UFAC is the first initiative of the project Intercultural Interchange Online Laboratory. The interactions took place from January to May, during which seven to eight interactions occurred, depending on the pedagogical scenario (FOUCHER, 2010). The data collected during the period followed a similar protocol established in Multec - Multimodal Teletandem Corpus (LOPES, 2019; ARANHA; LOPES, 2019). Considering the need for social distancing, interactants overcame their limitations with the lack of an institutional language laboratory by using their devices and internet connection to participate during the web conference meetings in order to develop interactional competence in English and Portuguese.

BackgroundThis study reflects on the development and teaching of communication skills courses in additional national languages to health care staff within two primary health care facilities in Cape Town, South Africa. These courses were aimed at addressing the language disparities that recent research has identified globally between patients and health care staff. Communication skills courses were offered to staff at two Metropolitan District Health Services clinics to strengthen patient access to health care services. This study reflects on the communicative proficiency in the additional languages that were offered to health care staff.MethodsA mixed-method approach was utilised during this case study with quantitative data-gathering through surveys and qualitative analysis of assessment results. The language profiles of the respective communities were assessed through data obtained from the South African National census, while staff language profiles were obtained at the health care centres. Quantitative measuring, by means of a patient survey at the centres, occurred on a randomly chosen day to ascertain the language profile of the patient population. Participating staff performed assessments at different phases of the training courses to determine their skill levels by the end of the course.ResultsThe performances of the participating staff during the Xhosa and Afrikaans language courses were assessed, and the development of the staff communicative competencies was measured. Health care staff learning the additional languages could develop Basic or Intermediate Xhosa and Afrikaans that enables communication with patients.ConclusionsIn multilingual countries such as South Africa, language has been recognised as a health care barrier preventing patients from receiving quality care. Equipping health care staff with communication skills in the additional languages, represents an attempt to bridge a vital barrier in the South African health care system. The study proves that offering communication skills courses in additional languages, begins to equip health care staff to be multilingual, that allows patients to communicate about their illnesses within their mother tongues.

Introduction: Effective communication skills (CS) have positive outcome on patient-care. This component of undergraduate medical curriculum is quite a neglected one and by adopting proper teaching strategies these skills can be improved. Objective: To assess the students' perception of the existing CS course at the College of Medicine Taibah University Saudi Arabia, and to evaluate their suggestions on how they want it to be. Methods: During the academic year 2011-2012, a paper-based questionnaire containing eight close-ended and three open-ended questions was administered to the 3 rd year medical students, after they had finished the CS course. The participants were informed about the survey and a verbal consent was attained. The quantitative responses were gathered by Likerttype questions and collected data was analyzed by Excel Microsoft Office 2007, while qualitative data obtained from open-ended questions generated themes which were organized in a tabulated form for further review. Results: Out of 115 students (63 females and 52 males), 109 responded (response rate of 94.7%). Qualitative responses of the survey showed that there were vague learning objectives of CS course, students demanded to eliminate didactic lectures and to add more interactive lectures, suggested more practical experience, requested to integrate CS course into other major courses with valid and reliable assessment tools. Forty three (37.3%) respondents were not clear about course objectives, 40 (34.7%) commented on the disorganization of the course, 16 (13.9%) thought that they had made any progress. Only 15 (13.0%) strongly agreed that they were benefitted from the course and 43 (37.3%) agreed about the prompt responsiveness of the instructor. Conclusion: There is a need to address students concerns regarding adoption of proper teaching strategies, experiential learning, and assessment procedures during the CS course. Clear learning objectives, personalized feedback and practical student-centered teaching strategies replacing didactic lectures might lead to improvement in our medical graduates' quality.

Virtual exchange (VE) between different English language teaching (ELT) contexts can afford opportunities to develop intercultural communicative competence (ICC) while also offering a window to reflect on different realities in terms of ELT. To this end, two ELT programmes integrated a VE project into their syllabi to provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to experience VE with reflection and development of ICC. The present account aims to describe and reflect on the GAZUFES (Gazi University and UFES University) VE project that involved pre-service teachers, tutors, and teacher trainers in a university in Brazil and another in Türkiye. GAZUFES was in turn part of the large-scale Erasmus+ KA3 Policy Experimentation European Virtual Innovation and Support Networks for Teachers (VALIANT) project. The exchange had some positive outcomes, but the sudden return to in-person classes at the end of the pandemic in the Brazilian university negatively affected the integration of GAZUFES into the Brazilian curriculum and the number of participants from Brazil. Despite the unequal number of students involved in the project, those who participated were very motivated and engaged in reflective and stimulating interactions.