Student-teacher engagement in and reflection on virtual exchange task design

The rise in L2 Virtual Exchange (VE) in recent years encourages more in-service teachers to incorporate such projects into their classroom. The introduction of VE into pre-service teacher-training programmes is also gaining traction wherein student-teachers (STs) can experience VE themselves. This calls for a deeper understanding of task engagement with STs enabling them to reflect on the effectiveness of various task types when designing future VE activities. Reeve et al. (2021) finds that learners who give recommendations for modifying tasks are agentically engaged. One means of verifying task and agentic engagement with STs is via written reflections: Reflection being a critical element of teacher development (Farrell, 2022). Yet, little is known about the relationship between task type, agentic engagement, and reflective practice in pre-service teacher-training programmes. Our findings come from a VE involving Dutch and French STs in Autumn 2022. Our analysis revealed a synchronous comparison and analysis task as most engaging. STs reported task personalisation as a critical element of this engagement. Within VE task design, we recommend that STs design questions for their VE partner to encourage task personalisation. Further, we provide specific prompts for teacher-trainers to use to encourage deeper levels of reflection.