ABSTRACT
In the context of foreign language education, ‘telecollaboration’ refers to the application of online communication tools to bring together classes of language learners in geographically distant locations to develop their foreign language skills and intercultural competence through collaborative tasks and project work. The interaction has traditionally been text based and asynchronous (i.e. not in real time). However, recent advances in online connections and communication tools have meant that synchronous (i.e. in real time) oral communication as well as multimodal exchanges involving combinations of different media are becoming increasingly popular. Telecollaboration has come to be seen as one of the main pillars of the intercultural turn in foreign language education (Thorne 2006), as it allows educators to engage their learners in regular, (semi-)authentic communication with members of other cultures in distant locations and also gives learners the opportunity to reflect on and learn from the outcomes of this intercultural exchange within the supportive and informed context of their foreign language classroom. In the words of Kern et al. (2004), telecollaboration offers educators the opportunity to
… use the Internet not so much to teach the same thing in a different way, but rather to help students enter into a new realm of collaborative enquiry and construction of knowledge, viewing their expanding repertoire of identities and communication strategies as resources in the process.
