From ‘CoCo’ to ‘FloCoCo’: the evolving role of virtual exchange (practice report)

‘CoCo’ (Coventry-Colmar) is an online international learning exchange project involving students of French and International Relations at Coventry University (CU) and Networks and Telecommunications Engineering students at the Université de HauteAlsace (UHA) in Colmar, France, running since 2014. In 2018, the exchange gained a new member through merging with an existing exchange between Coventry University and the Centro Florida Universitària (FU), in Valencia, Spain, becoming ‘FloCoCo’. Where CoCo allowed for language and intercultural exchange between paired groups of UHA and CU students, FloCoCo now brings together FU, UHA and CU students, who complete a series of culture-based tasks, developing skills relating to intercultural communication and ‘global citizenship’ that are valued by today’s graduate employers. Like its predecessor, FloCoCo aims at enhancing participants’ intercultural awareness, communicative competence and digital fluency, providing an opportunity for ‘virtual’ international mobility and international intercultural online exchange. The following practice report discusses the most recent two iterations of FloCoCo in the context of the history of the exchange, drawing upon theories of (digital) discourse competence and online spaces to facilitate the best possible experience for participants in Virtual Exchanges (VEs). 1. Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse, France; regine.barbier@uha.fr 2. Coventry University, Coventry, England; ac7390@coventry.ac.uk; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0547-0688 How to cite this chapter: Barbier, R., & Benjamin, E. (2019). From ‘CoCo’ to ‘FloCoCo’: the evolving role of virtual exchange (practice report). In A. Turula, M. Kurek & T. Lewis (Eds), Telecollaboration and virtual exchange across disciplines: in service of social inclusion and global citizenship (pp. 23-29). Research-publishing.net. https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2019.35.936