A Spanish-Finnish Telecollaboration to Develop Intercultural Competence and Learner Autonomy

Abstract

Telecollaboration enables students from different geographical locations to interact in a more authentic environment, share their views with their partners, create profiles as well as build online communities enjoying common interests. With this in mind, a Spanish-Finnish task-based project was designed to examine how students perceived their cultural exchange via Facebook and the extent to which such online interactions assisted them in becoming autonomous learners. Nineteen Spanish and seventeen Finnish participants were provided with the opportunity to interact with each other outside the classroom with a view to exploring the target culture and, consequently, experiencing intercultural learning. The findings suggest that the learning experience was positive and that the participants felt motivated to examine each other's cultural traits and manage their own learning tasks. Sharing information and reciprocally exchanging views on comments are paramount in developing skills to become independent learners.