The INTENT aims to raise greater awareness among students, educators and decision makers of telecollaboration as a tool for virtual mobility in foreign language education at the Higher Education (university) level and also on achieving more effective integration of telecollaboration in Higher Education Institutions.

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. In other words, telecollaboration uses the internet to bring university classrooms around the world into contact together so they can learn from each other.

The INTENT project wants to raise greater awareness among students, educators and decision makers of telecollaboration as a tool for virtual mobility in FL education at university level. We also want to achieve more effective integration of telecollaboration in Higher Education Institutions.

The INTENT project has the following objectives:

1. Establish a clear overview of the levels of use of telecollaboration, explore attitudes to the activity among key stake holders across European HEI’s, and identify practical barriers to the take-up of telecollaboration.
2. Develop a set of tools, telecollaborative models and partner networks to overcome barriers and facilitate telecollaboration practice.
3. Develop a set of workable solutions to address the lack of academic recognition which telecollaboration receives at Higher Education level.
4. Publish an online training manual with models of telecollaborative exchange which enable a closer integration of virtual and physical mobility.
5. Publish documents and make presentations to inform the academic community.
6. Engage decision makers at institutional, regional and national levels in a collaborative dialogue as to how telecollaboration can be effectively employed as a tool for the achievement of the Bologna process. Publish a document based on this process of consultation and dialogue.

Are you interested in participating in this project?

This project is about finding out more about online intercultural exchanges that are being carried out around Europe and helping educators organise new exchanges. If you have organised an online exchange before or you are interested in trying out this activity in your classes for the first time, then we want to hear from you.

Contact Robert O'Dowd at robert.odowd@unileon.es and we'll let you know how you can take part in our survey and take part in the trials of our tools and resources.

To learn more about the project, visit http://www.intent-project.eu/