Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
12th INTERNATIONAL MARDIN ARTUKLU SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES CONFERENCE, Mardin, Türkiye, 17 - 19 Ağustos 2024, ss.314-324
Virtual exchanges provide an online space where participants can learn about other cultures,
traditions, and languages. The International Virtual Exchange Project (IVEProject) is one of
those virtual exchange examples, and it offers two eight-week annual exchanges where English
is used as a lingua franca. The project has been connecting thousands of students from various
countries and educational backgrounds through both asynchronous forums and synchronous
meetings on online platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Through these asynchronous
forums and weekly synchronous meetings, participating students find opportunities to interact
with peers from different parts of the world. Within this frame, this study aimed to examine the
impact of the IVEProject on the creative thinking skills of a pre-service EFL (English as a
Foreign Language) teacher who participated in four iterations of the IVEProject.
Autoethnographic approach through a dialogic framework was used to conduct the study.
Centered on deductive reasoning, autoethnographic anecdotes were presented for five themes:
creative thinkers are communicators, open-minded, risk-takers, knowledgeable, and flexible.
The findings of the study showed that the IVEProject plays an important role in enhancing a
future English language teacher’s creative thinking skills thanks to its variety of forums and
activities facilitating creative thinking skills directly or indirectly.