Full policy

Dear Participant,

Your teacher has included you in the International Virtual Exchange Project. In this project:

You will be interacting asynchronously (and possibly synchronously) in English. Students will come from the different countries that are participating in the IVE Project. Online communication then takes place using the online forums. Participation in the forums involves posting and replying to others using self-created text, audio, and/or video posts in addition to other information such as multimedia. Teachers will monitor your work.

To improve this project and to hopefully improve language education systems, we are conducting research. Things that we are researching include the effects of this project on different aspects of learning development. We ask that you give your permission to participate in the research. Of course your participation will be anonymized and it will not affect what your teacher will give you as a grade outcome in any way. Your data will only be used for the purposes of the research. If you agree but later decide to change, you are freely available to pull out of the research at any time whilst maintaining participation in the exchange.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Eric Hagley, Griffith University, Lead Coordinator, The International Virtual Exchange Project,eric@iveproject.org

Dr. Hülya Tuncer, Lecturer, Cukurova University, hulyatncr@gmail.com

Andrew Johnson, Future University Hakodate, andy@fun.ac.jp

I have read all the above information about the study, and I voluntarily give you (the three people listed above) permission to use my data (any of my oral and written comments, posts, feedback, survey submissions, and use of the site etc.) in your research and to publish the data whilst anonymizing my details. (You are able to click "No thanks, I decline Research Agreement". If you don't want to have your results included in any research) 

Full policy

As you participate in the exchange, we ask that you do so in the spirit of learning and also of caring.

We want everyone to have a positive experience communicating on the IVEProject. Remember, a big goal of this project is for you to have meaningful ‘conversations’ with your forum group members. We need your help to do this.

Things to do:

• Be kind and open minded. Respect the opinions of other people.
• Before starting a discussion, search other posts. If someone has already started a discussion about the same theme, reply to that discussion. For example, in the "Open Forum", if someone has already started a "Food" topic, please reply to that one and not start a new one.
• When starting a new discussion, give the discussion a title that clearly indicates what the discussion is about.
• In the discussions, focus on learning about your group members. That means asking questions.
• Try to reply to students who don't have a reply first.
• Read and check your post for errors before you submit it to the forum.
• Access the forums as much as you can. Aim to access them at least 3 times a week.
• When replying, show that you have read the person's post. Answer their questions, make comments, and ask questions about what they wrote.
• Include multimedia to your posts when applicable. Adding a photo or video can help communicate your message.
• Use your own language. You would not like to interact with a robot so please don't use AI or other online tools to interact with others. AI may be useful to improve your posts/replies, but make sure you attempt to use your own language first. This helps you improve your foreign language learning and skills too.

Things NOT to do:

• Do not post any information unless you are comfortable sharing it with other students.
• Do not share your personal home address or telephone number.
• Do not write really long posts. Try to keep posts under 100 words each.
• Do not copy / paste from the internet or use AI to create your posts / replies. The message you post should be your own.
• Try not to use translation software. The IVEProject is an opportunity for you to practice your English.
• Do not share any information from the site with anyone outside the site.
• Do not post any words/sentences or media with inappropriate content (e.g. using swear words, making jokes that can offend the others, posting a photo that may cause a cultural clash, and so on).