Abstract:

This practical report presents a telecollaboration project between two tertiary institutions in New Zealand and Finland. In both countries, the students are intermediate learners of German, they use a Facebook (FB)-group to write about given topics which are part of their final assessment. To receive full marks for the assignment, the students need to upload five posts, comment on other students’ posts and write a reflective essay. The posts are a combination of video uploads, audio recordings, photos and writing which is in line with the multimodal meaning making theory (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001).

The study seeks to answer the question of ‘how do students perceive the collaboration using Facebook group and does the multimodal approach help the students to develop their digital literacies and their language competences and intercultural competence? The data collected for the study includes a mixed-methods approach with pre- and post-questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, Facebook logs and reflective diaries written by the students as part of the assessment task.

The preliminary findings indicate that collaboration in Facebook leads to genuine discussions and through them enhances students' digital literacies as well as language and intercultural competences.

Keywords:

Virtual exchange, telecollaboration, digital literacies, intercultural competence.