Impact of Virtual Exchange on teachers’ and student teachers’ digital collaboration skills

If there is a lesson that the COVID- 19 pandemic has taught us it is that teachers have to be digitally competent to engage their students in online collaborative learning. This highly valuable lesson is here to stay, as some studies have emphasised (Educause Horizon Report, 2021). However, teachers are not always prepared to engage their students in innovative practices that foster the development of collaborative skills and digital competences (Hauck & Satar, 2018; Vinagre, 2017). One such practice is Virtual Exchange (VE), which has been increasingly integrated in teacher education programs because VE provides teachers with the opportunity to use technological tools, and to experience and reflect on their own technopedagogical skills in authentic intercultural contexts (Hauck & Kurek, 2017). Large- scale studies of student teachers who take part in VE have found that this pedagogical practice can indeed improve their digital collaborative skills (see for example The EVALUATE Group, 2019).