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Two middle school educators earned a Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching fellowship. A Fulbright Finland Foundation inter-country travel grant provided the grantees with a unique opportunity to connect and collaborate at the University of Helsinki. Within this research, they described their inquiry experiences. The research included examining authentic student-centered learning continuums and phenomenon-based learning in Finland and teachers' adaptability in relation to meeting the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse math classrooms in the Netherlands. This paper summarizes how cross-cultural dialogues, classroom observations, and informal interviews with educators, students, and thought leaders informed each grantee's discovery of how student-centered learning is structured, delivered, and valued in Finland and the Netherlands. This article (1) describes how communication empowers middle school mathematics students, (2) analyzes the learning-to-learn framework, and (3) provides insights into how to utilize language diversity in a mathematics classroom.

Intercultural Perspectives on Information Literacy and Metaliteracy (IPILM) is a discourseoriented learning environment that engages students from diverse cultural backgrounds to participate in collaborative knowledge construction. The objective is to evolve a thematic approach to course design that includes elements of open pedagogy, information literacy, and metaliteracy. IPILM invites participation from educators and learners from around the world and has witnessed an increase in participating countries. This paper describes the concept of IPILM and demonstrates the implementation of this approach in practice. The initiative was well received by students and is both feasible and sustainable as an intercultural learning endeavor. IPILM is an ongoing project and a work in progress that is an adaptable model which may be transferred to disparate fields of teaching and learning or adopted by international communities of instructors.

This paper reports on research conducted within the frame of an international online cooperation between Germany and Israel (CoGI). Diverse, multilingual student groups co-construct multilingual websites on educational initiatives. The aim is to raise prospective teachers' language awareness (LA) and cultural awareness (CA) for cooperation in international contexts. 75 students and five instructors from four different campuses in Germany and Israel took part in the project in 2019. Individual and cooperative learning was combined with online and face-to-face as well as student conference learning. A mixed-method approach was used to investigate the effects of the 10-week cooperation with respect to the emergence of LA and CA as well as perceived language proficiency. The results show a significant increase in participants' perceived English language proficiency and CA. The qualitative analyses give evidence of co-constructive group cooperation which revealed LA and CA in the process of negotiating shared understanding. The study highlights the importance of international online cooperation in teacher education.

Purpose: This study offers insight on the impact of virtual team projects (VTPs) of varying types (global vs domestic teams, technology vs non-tech projects) on competency and anxiety outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/methodology/approach: Paired-sample t-tests and ANOVA tests were performed on student survey responses pre- and post-engagement of different VTPs. Findings: The results demonstrated positive effects of VTPs on intercultural sensitivity (ISS), computer self-efficacy, perceived ease of use of online learning and COVID-19 anxiety. ISS ("interaction confidence") improved more for students in the global vs. domestic teams and technology-related outcomes (CSE, PEU and computer anxiety) and ISS ("respect for cultural differences") improved more for students that participated in tech projects, whereas COVID-19 anxiety lessened more for those that participated in non-tech projects. Originality/value: The study expands understanding of the Technology Acceptance Model and provides insight into the ISS literature showing that VTPs could be a worthwhile pedagogical approach for improving student competencies and anxiety during times of academic disruption, but that project type can influence these changes.

Despite the global trend of growing diversity in student enrolment, most teacher education programmes remain inward-looking, oriented to national core standards and resist academic calls for internationalisation. While we agree that internationalisation at home is possible under certain circumstances, we put forward the argument that dialogic contact between student teachers in different national contexts has the potential to foster teacher education students' intercultural competence and offer opportunities for professional development that go beyond those offered by traditional programmes. This paper reports on the creation of a virtual transnational 'third place' for teacher education students based in Hamburg and Sydney, built around the mutual analysis of their respective visual linguistic biographies. We will show that such a transnational space and reflexive activity enhances student teachers' awareness of what it means to be and become a multilingual subject in other parts of the world, thus promoting self-awareness and the ability to decentre. Additionally, we claim that these activities have the potential to enhance teacher education students' attitudes towards the implementation of multilingual pedagogies.

By investigating the first thirty minutes of ten initial student group meetings (cf. Rampazzo & Aranha, 2019), this study explores the interactional resources that participants display during online talk-ininteraction. Multimodal Conversation Analysis is applied to the data consisting of "Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2" (GAT2) transcriptions of recorded Zoom video conferences. Virtual Exchange (VE), also referred to as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), is a method of intercultural online learning in which groups of learners collaborate with partners from another culture or geographical area in an authentic and immersive setting. Despite the collaborative and immersive nature of virtual exchanges, microanalytic studies regarding interaction in this field are still underrepresented (Dooly, 2017). This is also and particularly true for the concept of interactional competence (IC) (Kramsch, 1986) which has hardly been considered in VE research so far. IC is a competence model that comprises interlocutors' interactional resources such as turn-taking, repair, sequence-organization, multimodal resources and other. This paper depicts the interactional strategies that EFL students adopt in online video team meetings. Further, it argues that some L2 IC features, such as turn-taking and multilingual resources, come with particular dynamics and characteristics in a VE context and provides examples for these practices.

This article presents an analysis of a teaching concept we developed based on the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC) (Council of Europe, 2018), that not only provides opportunities to practice communicative skills but puts a major focus on democratic competences. Mathematics students and TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) students from the USA and Germany engaged in a virtual exchange project to reflect upon local and global issues that can be seen from more than one perspective. The topics they chose are all related to the domain of 'values' in the RFCDC. The students created short stories in which they address these issues and collaborated in the production of a multimodal, digital storybook. The aim of this article is to examine how education for democracy can be fostered through interdisciplinary intercultural citizenship projects. The unit of analysis is the teaching concept, with a focus on the results of the interdisciplinary collaborative process and its outcomes.

This paper discusses the conception of a joint intercultural students' research program of one German and two Kyrgyzstani teachers and students from the Otto-von-Guericke University of Magdeburg (Germany) and the American University of Central Asia (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan). The paper conceptualizes such a research training program and gives reference to qualitative methods teaching in the two corresponding universities. What follows is a description of the chosen research topic: "The 'Intersections' of Gender, Family, and Society in Kyrgyzstan" and the course program. With different academic cultures concerning research ethics in the Anglo-Saxon and continental European contexts, a challenge for such a program will be addressed. A short review of the research results of the different students' teams is provided, and the paper is finalized with a self-reflection upon such a joint intercultural undertaking.

Collaborative online learning (COL) has been associated with positive outcomes, such as critical thinking, shared problem-solving skills, and deep learning. Such outcomes require pedagogies that consider students' backgrounds, including the cultural context in which they operate. This study reflects upon the role of culture through the lens of the Community of Inquiry Framework (CoI) and the elements of social - and teaching presence. German and Thai students were selected due to cultural differences in values of power distance, collectivism, and femininity. 20 in-depth interviews on students' experiences with COL were conducted. Findings revealed differences in perceptions of and factors influencing social- and teaching presence across the two samples. German students were hesitant to initiate contact with non-familiar classmates through digital communication tools. The use of the camera overall supported social presence but also affected Thai students negatively, who were more concerned about the judgment, and emotions of classmates. Teaching presence differed as social media and messenger applications were more readily utilized for collaboration in Thai universities. While the presence of the lecturer in break-out rooms increased Thai students' voicing behavior, German students opened up as the lecturer was absent. The possible influence of educational-, national- and cybercultures is being discussed.

This study aimed to explore critical cultural awareness improvement of prospective teachers with a transnational virtual exchange project. Within the scope of this study, prospective teachers of English studying at English Language Teaching (ELT) department in Turkey attended a virtual exchange project that was organized with other prospective teachers of English from Germany and Israel. The prospective teachers weekly interacted with each other via online meetings, and they collaborated on assigned tasks to come up with a final product, which is an English teaching lesson plan. The research was designed as a qualitative study and the data were analyzed according to the the principles of directed qualitative content analysis. Directed qualitative content analysis is used when researchers start with a theory to code the qualitative data. In this study, Byram's (1997) framework was used as a theory to direct analysis of the data. The participants' weekly interactions were transcribed verbatim and were analyzed according to the principles of qualitative content analysis and Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) framework's critical cultural awareness dimension. The analysis of the data revealed that the prospective teachers' critical cultural awareness was significantly improved.

Mentored online intercultural interaction offers foreign language learners the opportunity to develop different competences, including intercultural, linguistic, and digital competence (O'Dowd, 2021). Such virtual exchange (VE) projects typically involve computer-mediated communication via, for example, Zoom. However, the use of high-immersion virtual reality (VR) for synchronous online collaboration in VE projects has received little attention. This study investigated the effect of VR on students' levels of presence and engagement, on students' communication and on students' views on using VR for intercultural encounters compared to traditional videoconferencing tools. Twenty-seven university students from the Netherlands and Germany utilised VR to carry out intercultural learning tasks using English as a lingua franca during a four-week implementation period. Participants responded to pre- and post-intervention questionnaires, completed reflection journals, audio- or video-recorded their VR meetings and participated in interviews. Results showed that the levels of presence and engagement and preferences of social VR compared to videoconferencing for intercultural encounters depended on students individually. A VR immersion experience and comfortability scale was created based on the data which showed mixed experiences. VR influenced participants' interactions, topics of conversation and communication strategies when they explored their spaces together. The results showed that students' attitudes towards VR and their subjective experience of VR seem to play an important role in the VE-VR setting. VR provided a safe space for many participants. Positive attitudes towards communicating in the VR environment are highly correlated with positive attitudes towards meeting students from other countries in VR. Implications for language education are provided.

While translation was once a key component of language teaching, throughout the twentieth century, it largely gave way to methods and approaches with a greater focus on communicative competence. However, efforts have been made in the past few decades to return translation and more generally multilingual language learning to classrooms. In the European and particularly the German context, translation was revived again at the start of the 21st century in the form of mediation, a communicative translational task used in many classrooms today. This article addresses the origins of mediation in Europe and the sometimes conflicting definitions found in official educational documents and in the academic literature, compares it to other translation practices often encountered in the world language classroom, and provides examples of mediation tasks. The question of assessing such tasks is also addressed. This article aims to inform instructors using communicative approaches in the United States about mediation and demonstrate its advantages so that they might add another type of task to their pedagogical toolbox and include translation in a communicative way.

While all higher education was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, study abroad programs were uniquely challenged by the associated restrictions and limitations. This case study integrates a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) pedagogy approach and virtual reality (VR) technologies into the curriculum redesign process to transform a business study abroad course into an online format. Using VR technology, U.S. students and their international partners in Germany, Brazil, and India created and shared cultural exchange virtual tours. The redesigned online study abroad course engaged students in active learning activities and cultivated students' intercultural competence development.

Through qualitative research, which involved qualitative interviews and focus group meetings with members of four student teams, we identified a number of barriers to the development of cohesiveness in teams of local and international exchange (IE) students, who were undertaking service-learning (SL) together. Lack of cohesiveness in such teams resulted in the psychological withdrawal of some of the IE students and appeared to reduce opportunities to derive developmental benefits. Barriers to cohesiveness identified by the students included language, conflicting priorities, and East-West cultural differences. We also identified how students took action to remove the barriers to cohesiveness. These actions included conducting internal team meetings in English and arranging for local students to provide interpretation in meetings with community stakeholders. Students reported that the major developmental benefits associated specifically with working cohesively in a cross-cultural team were improved English language skills, greater interpersonal adaptability, and appreciation of diversity. We offer practical suggestions about how educators can prepare local and IE students to work together effectively on SL projects and about further research. Studies of projects undertaken by inter-cultural SL teams at host universities in other jurisdictions would facilitate the generalizability of the findings.

In an increasingly interconnected world, intercultural competency has become an essential skill for many. It is important for students to learn this skill, but are teachers equipped to instill such knowledge not just adequately, but also objectively and without prejudice? In light of the recent explosion in telecommunications-assisted teaching and learning, this is a timely review on the use of online technology as cognitive tools for enhancing teachers' intercultural competency skills. Though various online platforms for learning and sharing have been developed for and used by students over the years, less attention has been given to teachers' needs; only five well-documented projects pertaining to the upskilling of intercultural competence were found. We focus on these five projects and draw from them best practices, platforms and methods of potential and other insights, which would provide the best benefits in meeting the professional development needs of teachers.

This activity report describes a sample unit (Effective Data Presentation) from a communication course prepared as part of an Intellectual Output within the BADGE Project, which was carried out by 12 partner universities from 10 countries during 3 academic years (2019-2022). The article first describes the results of a survey which show that language and communication classes need to integrate more LSP competences so that students become better acquainted with both general and specific language. Moreover, the report analyses and explains the existing practical difficulties for language and subject teachers alike in maintaining a distinction between "knowledge of a subject" and "knowledge of the language of a subject." Secondly, the report presents a sample from a communication course prepared for engineers encompassing effective data presentation and its interpretation during LSP courses. Finally, the article reflects on the future challenges for LSP teachers and the reasons why academics should integrate professional knowledge and specialist language within the same course.

The article presents research findings on the professional growth of three in-service EFL teachers from Germany who took part in a teacher education programme centred on technology-mediated plurilingual education. The study investigated how the programme influenced the development of the teachers' pedagogical and digital skills in creating and executing plurilingual-inspired virtual exchanges. The programme took place over the course of an academic year (2021-2022) and was divided into three phases, including a four-week virtual exchange with other participants, self-study through an online course, and pedagogical assistance for executing virtual exchanges in teachers' schools. The research employed a case study approach, and data were collected through classroom observations and field notes, recordings of teacher reflective activities, as well as focus group and individual interviews with teachers. The findings indicate that the professional development programme prompted teachers to reconsider their language ideologies and question policies and approaches that emphasised monolingualism in their particular settings. These included practices like separating languages in bilingual programmes, prioritising the native-speaker model as the ultimate goal of second language acquisition, and school policies that ignored the educational requirements of students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Communication skills are highly sought after by employers, as industry reports repeatedly show. At the same time, those reports also reveal that many employers are dissatisfied with their newly hired graduates' communication skills. In addition, increasing globalisation has led to the call for 'global graduates' who can function well in culturally diverse contexts. Considering both aspects, it is important, to explore which factors help foster students' global communication skills. This paper investigates this issue, testing the impact of potential factors identified from previous literature. Data was collected from 2359 students in seven different institutions located in five different countries. A linear regression model was tested to identify those factors which most contribute to global communication skills development. Results show that motivation to improve communication skills and the experience of social and academic integration into the campus community made the most significant contribution to participants' higher levels of global communication skills development. Besides, students who were presented with relevant opportunities and support from their respective institution and those engaged with foreign languages also demonstrated higher levels of global communication skills development. The paper concludes that for students to acquire the communication skills needed for working successfully in diverse contexts, and hence to become 'global graduates', it is essential that they venture out of their comfort zones and engage with the diverse campus community. At the same time, this engagement requires universities' guidance and support to help maximise the learning gains from such intercultural encounters.

As the volume of research on intercultural adaptation of international students (IAIS) increases significantly over the past decades, a systematic review of the diverse literature on a global scale and its development process becomes essential. This study conducted a thorough bibliometric analysis for the knowledge domain of IAIS research using relevant articles (N = 1,126) from 1990 to 2022 in Thompson Reuter's Web of Science (WoS) database-Core Collection. This work aims to analyze the advances and trends on the subject using a set of bibliometric analytical tools, including Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, and BibExcel. The research findings demonstrate that the number of published articles projects an ostensible upward trend in terms of temporal distribution, especially since 2007. The USA occupies a leading position in terms of the largest publication output and a greater influence therewith. The most productive journal, author(s), and institution(s) are "International Journal of Intercultural Relations," Brown L and Wang KT, and the University of Hong Kong and the University of Queensland, respectively. Collaboration in this field has become mainstream but still needs to be enhanced among researchers and at national and institutional levels. The frequency and co-occurrence analysis of keywords reveals that the main keywords for discussion include international students, adjustment, acculturation, adaptation, acculturative stress, identity, social support, stress, experiences, and depression, while cultural intelligence and intercultural sensitivity, culture shock and intercultural challenges, and integration and migration serve as the emerging themes. The study would aid academic researchers and policymakers in understanding the intricacies of IAIS and identifying areas that require further investigation.

In this paper the results of an online survey (n=210) regarding the usefulness of Facebook for informal L2 learning will be presented. Participants were individual Facebook users who study either German (n=118) or Japanese (n=92). By using a combination of open and closed questions, the mostly quantitative findings of the survey indicate that for most participants Facebook is a suitable tool for improving their L2 skills, because the network enables them to establish or to maintain social contacts with native speakers and to have authentic opportunities to express themselves in the L2. As particularly effective activities, participants mentioned reading and writing L2 posts on the networks' timeline, exchanging private messages, and commenting on friends' posts. As far as effects on L2 learning are concerned, most participants noted an improvement in their reading and writing skills, as well as an expansion of their vocabulary and cultural understanding. Some respondents, however, raised concerns about the formal correctness of the language they encounter on the network as well as insecurity regarding communication with strangers. The information participants provided on their informal use of Facebook led to the conclusion, that learners of L2 German and learners of L2 Japanese show similar tendencies in using the network for their L2 learning. In contrast to using social networks in educational settings, their informal use allows learners much more freedom to decide when, how often, with whom, on which topic, and in which way they wish to interact in their target language on the network.

This mixed method case study explored globalization and complex relationships through a virtual exchange project between students from Germany and Colombia in upper intermediate level English classes. We believed by providing a space for online conversation, written collaboration and discussion, students would enhance their plurilingual and pluricultural competence as well as their communicative competences through the medium of English as an international language (EIL). The aim was also to enable students to investigate cultural complexity and to develop cultural curiosity. Taking into account plurilingual and pluricultural competence (PPC) and the efficacy of virtual exchanges for language learning, we used a series of tasks for students to participate in a wide range of activities of varying complexity regarding German and Colombian culture for a six-week exchange. Students self-assessed their written and spoken online interactions as well as their perceived skills in mediating texts and communication based on the recently added descriptors in the Companion Volume to the CEFR. They also rated their plurilingual and pluricultural competences on a PPC scale at both the beginning and end of the project. Results demonstrate that there is value in implementing virtual exchange projects in which students reflect on and increase their awareness of these concepts also suggesting that pairing students with international students rather than L1 speakers of the language has a potentially positive effect on students' anxiety level and communicative competences.

The objective of the research is to investigate if certain demographics of students help explain four areas of potential improvements in predominantly short-term study abroad programs. These areas are motivation, experience enhancement, benefits from various learning activities, and students' concerns regarding their experience. Pre-trip and post-trip surveys were conducted using logistic regression model. Our results showed that participants of a longer-term program were more likely than those in the short-term program to be expanded in their cultural understanding and global outlook. In contrast to many studies, males were found to be more motivated than females by a desire to experience foreign culture. Students with a higher GPA were found to have a more enhanced academic experience than those with a lower GPA. Finally, participants from a monocultural background were found to have a more culturally enhanced experience than the multicultural ones. The results will help improve the quality of study abroad programs.

This article identifies an innovative solution to improve global sport management learning. Building on continued calls to include both experiential and international sport business curricula in the sport management classroom, this article shows how institutions from different countries can collaborate virtually to provide students with practical international perspectives through an applied sport globalization project. Findings from 30 American and 13 German student reflections were analyzed to reveal the project-and course-related outcomes through this collaborative class project between Ohio University (United States) and the University of Bayreuth (Germany). Students not only identified both soft skills and an appreciation of international sport business endeavors but also noted challenges like the logistics of communicating with groupmates abroad and the challenges within the assignment itself as they considered sport consumption abroad. Beyond the learning outcomes within the course, this article also explores program-level outcomes for the involved institutions and their sport management programs.

Grundtvig programme are activities aimed at providing adults with ways to improve their knowledge and skills. This study examined the opinions of adults who participated in four workshops on history and culture organized throughout Europe between 2009 and 2014 under the Grundtvig Adult Education Programme and Lifelong Learning Programme of the EU. The aim of the study was to analyze the opinions of adults from different age groups, professions, and ethnicities about these informal workshops. In order to determine the study group, an easily accessible sampling method was used. The study group there was 43 workshop participants from different countries. In order to learn their opinions, they were asked to fill a form with 4 open-ended questions. Data were collected and analyzed from workshops organized in different years and in various countries. The content analysis method was used. Most of the participants stated that they learned about new cultures, and histories and developed their communication skills. They also stated that they learned most from the active learning, audiovisual and IT methods. Participants confessed that they had trouble in communicating with foreigners, managing time, and overcoming prejudices. They also stated that personal experience, motivation, audiovisual elements, study program, and themes facilitated learning. It was concluded that informal history education is possible for adults as shown by the answers of the workshop participants on subjects such as history education, national identity, historical prejudices, and intercultural learning.

Global competence is an increasingly important disposition for today's society. Prospective teachers will have to be able to teach effectively in multicultural classrooms as well as develop dispositions of global competence in their future students. This pilot study was aimed at investigating what aspects of global competence should be integrated into initial teacher education programmes. Twenty-four teacher educators from fifteen European countries were involved in a qualitative study to underscore the topics, the contexts, the actors and the methodologies that can support the integration of global competence into programmes for preservice teachers. The findings indicate that global competence is a multidimensional concept associated with aspects directly related with the teaching profession such as cooperation, inclusion, social engagement, multicultural dialogue. The results also identify the methods and the contexts for an educational pathway for preservice teachers where the idea of global competence can emerge more easily.

The development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) becomes increasingly important in the world language curriculum and a crucial goal to prepare students for real-life communicative situations outside of the classroom. This article discusses how a simulation exercise based on the contentious construction of the Tesla Gigafactory in Grünheide, Germany, facilitated the growth of students' ability to take perspectives other than their own -- a crucial step toward ICC. Using the controversies about the Tesla Gigafactory as a real-world case study, students participated in a role-play simulation, set up as a town hall meeting, where they had to develop arguments whether Tesla should be given the official construction permit or not. This project-based and student-led exercise was designed to develop critical awareness of the cultural intricacy of the Tesla case by considering authentic dilemmas and conflicting perspectives. The activity was implemented in a virtual study abroad, advanced-level German course. Comparing responses from a student feedback survey with Byram's ICC model (2021) suggests that the exercise helped students increase their factual knowledge, skills of interpreting, relating, discovering, and interacting, and develop differentiated understanding of other perspectives -- important 21st-century ICC skills for a global life and work environment.

To what extent are differently 'Europeanising' school forms programmatically geared towards building transnational solidarities, as their ethoses might suggest? This study draws on an analysis of discursive constructions of solidarity in the curricula for social studies and humanities at secondary level of two forms of schooling promoting a European ethos: the supranationally organised "Schola Europaea" and state-organised schools with a European profile in Germany (Europaschulen). I argue that solidarity is anchored in universalising ideals of humanitarianism, intercultural harmony, and political participation centred around the individual and her skills rather than a sense of a 'thick' pan-European community. The 'transnational' scale of solidarity manifests as interpersonal relationships beyond national affiliations, based on affective, religious, and ethical commitments to vulnerable others or on rational political action to ensure human and civil rights. Meanings and scales of solidarity are decoupled from the Europeanising ethos of the schools and from the different organisational logics in which they are embedded; instead, they reflect the disciplinary logics of the school subjects and curricular contexts where they are most often mobilised: religion, ethics, and politics. The paper ends with a discussion of these findings within broader debates on transnational solidarities and Europeanisation in education.

One of the new scales in the CEFR Companion Volume is online interaction. The new descriptors cover goal-oriented online transactions, including written correspondence and the use of formulaic language. In Dutch business schools, students learn German for special purposes at B1/2 level: they are expected to master German in a professional context well enough to facilitate interactions and transactions. The question is how their not always flawless attempts at inviting a German colleague to a meeting are received by L1 language users. Is the level of B1/2 German sufficient to avoid bothersome situations? Is these learners' mastery at B1/2 level sufficient to maintain a good relationship with a German partner? This study investigated whether communicative clashes might occur because of flawed German language use. Ninety-eight German business professionals, all L1 speakers of German, were asked to rate pragma-linguistic infelicities and syntactic, lexical and morphological errors in 16 business e-mails written by Dutch learners of German, using a 7-point Likert scale. The results showed that pragma-linguistic infelicities were considered more bothersome than syntactic, lexical or morphological errors, which suggests that L2 German writing courses should raise more explicit awareness of pragma-linguistic forces in intercultural communication. This idea is in line with recommendations contained in the new Companion Volume. Furthermore, it was studied whether knowledge of the writer's foreign provenance and Dutch nationality affected the judgement of the German professionals. This was not the case.

Against the theoretical background of world society and learning challenges related to globalization processes the article deals with empirical findings from two qualitative-reconstructive studies on learning experiences of young people. The first is a study on young people in Germany engaged in child sponsorship programmes for children in the Global South and the second a study on learning experiences of young people in Bolivia, Germany and Rwanda who participated in North-South encounters. Beyond their specific thematic focuses, these studies reveal the challenges of abstract learning regarding complex issues in world society on a more general level. The findings indicate the limits of solely informal learning opportunities regarding global issues and consequently point to the relevance of formal learning. In the discourse on global learning in schools, geography education plays an important role and is often considered a key subject with regard to teaching the global dimension. The article addresses the challenges of geography education in enabling learning processes regarding global issues.

Given the rapid advances in information communication technology (ICT) and the ever-increasing likelihood that students will be collaborating on cross-cultural teams in their future careers, creating opportunities to engage in collaborative writing projects across borders and then observing the dynamics of international virtual online collaboration have high pedagogical value, though studies are scarce. This research examines the learning process that occurred when engineering and computer science students from France and Germany were connected with business and technical writing students from the US to work on co-authored documents. The researchers were specifically interested in how students addressed the situational constraints of the collaboration and how those constraints influenced students' choices of communication and collaboration tools. Two separate projects were assigned and each employed reading, writing, "talking," and critical thinking components. Analysis of post-project survey data and the correlation of students' ICT choices revealed students had to continually renegotiate their communication and collaboration. Allowing students to make rhetorical choices resulted in cultural learning through hands-on experience with these constraint variables: English language proficiency, cultural differences, project complexity, time difference, and technology. The results from this study will be useful to ESP pedagogy in projecting how to prepare students for international virtual collaboration.

The contemporary international situation is characterized by the humanitarian crisis and a great wave of refugees. The border crossing point of a host country separates the refugees` former life full of suffering and pain and the expectations of a new peaceful life. Here a language mediator is considered like a person who can show the refugee the way to a new life. The issue of the language mediation to refugees at border points is the subject matter of this paper. The main purpose of the research is to study the practical experience of different countries in the provision of the language mediation assistance to refugees. The research papers concerning various aspects of the refugees' migration, the UN documents and the various materials on the topic and the practical experience of Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany and the Russian Federation are examined. The government departments in the countries under study that are responsible for the work and assistance to refugees are stated. The professional activity of a language mediator is viewed from various angles. In the framework of the research a survey on the language mediation activity, the refugee obstacles at border crossing points and the opinions of the language mediators from Austria, Germany and Russia was held. The findings of the survey were generalized and the recommendations to improve the translators/interpreters activity were made. The research is implemented within the framework of the RUDN university participation in the Russia-wide 5-100 project.

This article explores the intersection of international collaboration and community-engaged learning in the context of a curriculum development project focused on sustainability in German-speaking cultures. By closing the loop in international exchange between partners abroad and local community organizations, students in German Studies programs can streamline their engagement with sustainability and benefit from active use of their intercultural skill sets. However, significant difficulties arise when trying to simultaneously teach skills traditionally emphasized in German Studies programs, develop successful projects with local community practitioners, and collaborate effectively with international partners. This article discusses an upper-division course, taught primarily in German, in which students develop group projects by working with peers at a partner institution in Germany. The article provides reflection on three key areas of focus: bolstering students' intercultural abilities to engage with partners abroad, training students to leverage their intercultural skills through virtual exchange, and articulating how cultural context is relevant for ongoing local sustainable development projects. Strengthening these skills allows German Studies students to demonstrate the value of interculturally sensitive collaborators while using their cultural knowledge to benefit local sustainable development work.

The present study investigated the effects of group set-up in a semester-long telecollaborative discussion forum project in second-semester German. In order to explore whether group set-up affects learning in discussion forums, small groups of non-native speakers (NNS) of German were partnered either with native speakers (NS), other NNS with the same L1, or other NNS with different L1s. The study compared participation and negotiation of meaning routines between the three groups, and assessed overall writing development of the second-semester German learners as a result of forum participation. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics as well as an analysis of the negotiation of meaning episodes (Varonis & Gass, 1985) to reveal whether any of the three groups offers a more productive language learning environment. Results indicate that the NS--NNS groups participated the most in the forum and produced the highest amount of negotiation of meaning routines. Students reached higher writing proficiency than comparable second-semester students who did not complete a discussion forum task.

Purpose: Distance universities are of great importance for establishing sustainability literacy, as they operate as multipliers for thousands of students. However, despite several advantages of e-learning environments compared to traditional class-teaching, there are still challenges regarding suitable e-learning tools and didactical models. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of several e-learning tools on students' knowledge and skills growth and to compare two learning paths, synchronous vs asynchronous, exploring how each affects the level of students' knowledge achievement and skills acquisition. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis is based on an online course "Participatory processes in environmental politics". International MSc and PhD students who enrolled in the course were from FernUniversität in Hagen (Germany) and Aberta University (Portugal). The course was designed as the flipped classroom, applying different e-learning tools and activities, some synchronous and others asynchronous. A pre- and post-evaluation questionnaire was applied to evaluate students' knowledge and skills. Descriptive statistical analyses were carried out on this data. Findings: Results showed that in the synchronous group, knowledge about theoretical approaches to citizen participation and sustainable environmental governance improved to a greater extent, whereas the asynchronous group showed greater improvement in nearly all skills related to intercultural communication and e-learning. Also, in the synchronous path, students enhanced their knowledge on "research application" to a greater extent. Originality/value: Evaluating the effectiveness of different e-learning tools on students' sustainability knowledge and information and communication technologies skills is a fundamental issue. The study discusses these issues, contributing to enhancing the use of adequate and grounded e-learning models on sustainable development in higher education.