Implementation of virtual exchange and student participation

This presentation compares the impact of virtual exchange (VE) programs on intercultural communication and program completion rates among students in two different VE programs. One VE program was offered as part of a course, and the other was offered as an extracurricular activity. Both VE programs were conducted as part of the Seed project “Enhance cultural understanding through virtual exchange”, which was launched in June 2020. The project was designed to facilitate person-to-person online communication between learners from different cultural, linguistic and geographical areas for an extended period of time. In term one, 2020-21, 30 American students and 19 Hong Kong students participated in exchange activities for 10 weeks through asynchronous video messaging on Flipgrid. Students on both sides participated in VE as a credit bearing activity in partial fulfillment of their course objectives. In term two, 2020-21, 120 American students, 187 Hong Kong students, and 120 English majors from India participated in virtual exchange for seven weeks. Learners from America participated in order to partially fulfill their course requirements, while students from Hong Kong and India joined as voluntary participants in an extracurricular activity. All participants had the opportunity to interact with each other synchronously through Zoom and asynchronously through Flipgrid. They also shared learning resources with each other on Padlet. Participants from HKBU took the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale survey both before and after their virtual exchange to measure their improvements. They were also invited to join focus group interviews to share their experiences. Initial findings indicate that learners of both programs, regardless of implementation method, developed higher intercultural communication skills upon completion of the program. However, students in course-based programs achieved a much higher level of program completion (94%) compared with students participating as an extracurricular activity (15%).