Online Exchanges and Inquiry-based Learning: Implications for Nurturing Learners’ Intercultural Communication Skills

With the advance of the Internet technologies, online international exchanges are becoming an essential element of teaching and learning communication and collaboration. Some virtual exchanges focus especially on developing learners’ intercultural communicative competence. One of the main challenges for learners engaged in this form of virtual exchanges is that not all participants may be familiar with specific aspects of their own lingua-culture. This conceptual study attempts to develop an inquiry-based model of online intercultural exchange by incorporating the 5E Learning Cycle Model which includes learning stages, such as engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation. We argue that the combination of online intercultural learning and inquiry-based learning could help facilitate sharing of a more authentic lingua-cultural knowledge between online partners. Also, the inclusion of the elements of inquiry-based learning in online international collaborative projects might have a positive impact on promoting informed intercultural exchange.