Paper short abstract:

This presentation reports on the development of intercultural understanding through an ongoing video-based virtual exchange between students at universities in Japan and China. Results suggest improvements in Chinese students’ attitudes, but a more ambivalent response from Japanese students.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation will report on the potential development of intercultural communicative competence in an ongoing video-based virtual exchange between students at universities in Japan and China. The rationale for this exchange was the consideration that if students had a chance to actually engage with students from another country and learn something of the other culture, attitudes towards and understanding of that country might improve. In the case of Japan and China, there are deep, centuries-long cultural ties which in the present day, due to events occurring over the last 120 years or so, have become somewhat fractious. Many people in both nations harbour deeply ingrained, negative sentiments towards people of the other nation, and it was envisioned that a collaboration such as this may serve as a means of promoting greater interaction and understanding.

Technological developments over recent years have suggested various possibilities for providing learners with more chances to engage more deeply, not only with a foreign language (English), but also with various transversal and “21st century” skills, such as digital literacy, global citizenship, creative thinking, intercultural communicative competencies, etc.

In these exchanges, students produced videos on various topics, such as sustainable development (focussing on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals), cuisine and cultural aspects of their countries and regions. Password-protected websites were created for the purpose of exchanging the videos between students, potentially offering them a rare opportunity to gain insights into the thoughts of students in another country. Feedback was subsequently provided via a rubric and then used to make improvements to the videos.

The outline of the project and results from pre- and post-project surveys and student reflective comments from a series of small-scale studies (each iteration of the project lasted for approximately 8-10 weeks) spanning several years will be presented. Results indicate that although the attitudes of Chinese students towards Japan have tended to improve over the course of a project, Japanese attitudes towards China are more ambivalent, often becoming more neutral.