Facilitated Dialogue in Online Intercultural Exchange

This chapter presents a dialogic model of OIE and illustrates how it differs from the more established models in foreign language education. It then focuses on the role of facilitators in this form of dialogic exchange and look at how they discursively create an online environment where par- ticipants feel safe discussing issues that are seen to be divisive and that are often avoided in foreign language education. The chapter draws on data from the online interactions of a group of students from the Middle East and the United States involved in a seven-week dialogic exchange, with the support of two facilitators. The chapter closes with a discussion of how this model of OIE could be implemented sustainably in foreign language education.