20th Pan SIG conference-PanSIG2021 online conference, themed "Local and Global Perspectives: Plurilingualism and Multilingualism", Nagano, Japan, 15 - 16 May 2021, pp.31-32
The International Virtual Exchange Project (IVEProject) (https://iveproject.org/) offers two eight-week exchanges each year
affording EFL students the opportunity to interact with peers from other countries. In 2020 over 6000 tertiary-level students from
twelve countries joined. This presentation will focus on a supplemental activity, the Student-Generated Survey (SGS), from
creation and implementation to classroom application. The SGS aims to increase student engagement by allowing them to
submit questions to all participants. Approximately fifteen questions are selected to create the SGS which are made available to
participants. The large number of responses (over 1500 in the spring exchange), separated by countries, offers students a unique
opportunity to discuss and reflect upon the similarities and differences of their international peers. This presentation will outline
qualitative and quantitative data regarding student perceptions of the activity. Students reported that results from this activity
helped them understand they had more similarities with their international counterparts than they expected. It was also found that student use of the SGS results differed by country. The IVEProject is maintained with financial assistance from a Japanese
government Kaken grant and is therefore free-of-charge.