VIRTUAL STUDY ABROAD: EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES IN PANDEMIC

Abstract. In light of growing opportunities for prolonged intercultural communication both inside and outside one’s home country and prospects of study/work in different cultural environments, language programs are placing increased emphasis on competencies that prepare students for global citizenship. World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages stress the importance of integrating cultural knowledge into the curriculum with a focus not merely on accumulating a variety of culture-specific facts, but rather on understanding values and beliefs as a matrix for all cultural practices and products, as well as on the ability to communicate with cultural competence. With study abroad remaining one of the most preferable approaches to students’ intercultural competence growth among post- secondary institutions, it is important to use all the available resources including the local Russian language community, to equip students for their future ventures, especially in the current times of pandemic, when face-to-face contacts are limited. While universities and colleges oftentimes fail to provide help in gaining the necessary intercultural skills for students in order to make the most of their time abroad, the solution for the problem will be the strengthening of a global- education curriculum and incorporating cutting-edge technologies and approaches into study abroad preparation program. The article examines the ways technology might be engaged in the process of preparing first and second year students for a short-term study abroad immersion experience. The preparatory stage allows students to immerse in the target culture and create interpersonal connections with peers for a more engaging and productive experience in Russian- speaking countries. Particularly, the article describes a pilot project consisting of online interactive open source courses that aim to help students with their daily interactions in a predominantly Russian- speaking country. The second part of the project aims at creating social connections that would facilitate the process of second language socialization (Duff, 2007) for the students. Practical ideas implemented the preparatory project might be applied in any world language classroom regardless of the course level or focus, while successful task examples aim to inspire educators to further embrace technology use in their practices.

Keywords: study abroad, educational technologies, language socialization