Investigating pre-service teachers from Brazil and the US in a virtual exchange project: Benefits and challenges of student-selected and required technologies

This research shares the collaborative practices through information and communication technologies (ICT) of a comprehensive cross-cultural "internationalization at home" Virtual Exchange (VE) of students preparing to be teachers enrolled in second language acquisition-related courses at Pennsylvania State University (US) and in the State University of Maringá (Brazil). This qualitative case study generated data from pre-service language teacher interactions in 2022 during projects with digital platforms such as VoiceThread, Canvas, Zoom, Google Meet; Google classroom; and WhatsApp. A survey focusing on preservice teachers' ICT utilization was analyzed as well as the professors' perspectives on the tasks. Investigating this experience provided an understanding of student perspectives (challenges & benefits) on ICT that instructors required as well as technologies students chose to utilize to collaborate on projects. Findings indicated that while the benefits stood out, facing and learning how to deal with the challenges was important for preservice teachers to develop certain attitudes in their professional lives, such as agency, leadership, and autonomy. Instructors also found they need to attend to important considerations for Internet availability, adequate time for collaboration in synchronous and asynchronous formats, targeted scaffolding to learn new technologies, and to continue the preferred and motivating option for preservice teachers to choose technologies.