Interculturally Wired, Locally Connected: Online Collaboration and Intercultural Learning in a Bi-national Blended Learning Project

"Going Green – Education for Sustainability" is a Moodle-based blended learning project for the English-as-a-foreign-language and content-and-language-integrated-learning classroom that was jointly developed by the U.S. Mission to Germany, Leuphana University Lüneburg, and the e-learning specialists LIFE e.V. In this project, German and U.S. students in secondary schools explore current sustainability challenges and environmental policies in their countries, and collaboratively develop and implement local action plans for sustainable development in their communities. The project's conceptual foundation is threefold and can be located at the interface between the theoretical strands of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), computer-assisted language learning (CALL), and task-based language learning and teaching (TBLT).
This paper aims to address the question as to which task types and corresponding ICT tools can be used effectively to promote intercultural exchange and foreign language learning. In this context, three exemplary task settings from the Going Green curriculum are introduced: (a) learning about U.S. culture by use of interactive and authentic online materials; (b) indirect intercultural exchange through sharing research results produced by learners themselves; (c) direct intercultural exchange through online collaboration beyond classroom borders. These task types vary with regard to their degree of online collaboration. They are introduced in their overall context of the bi-national blended learning project. Their potential for intercultural learning is presented by use of classroom materials from the ongoing project.