The presenters have been Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) partners for over eight years, providing their Japanese and Taiwanese university students with opportunities to engage in meaningful intercultural dialog with each other. They have created asynchronous interactions (e.g., social media posts), out-of-class synchronous communication (e.g., interviews), out-of-class business-oriented projects (e.g., developing a new product and making a commercial to sell it), and synchronous class-to-class communication. After each interaction, the students reflected on their exchanges. The presenters have consistently found that discomfort in speaking with new interlocutors (i.e., “I’m shy.”) hinders Willingness to Communicate (WTC), and the presenters’ experiences have further reinforced the importance of creating a sense of closeness to decrease these barriers.

The presenters will briefly review the format of the interactions and potential communication barriers when students interact in COIL settings. They will reference these concepts as they discuss their written data (i.e., Japanese students’ weekly reflections, final reports, end-of-semester questionnaires) and verbal data (i.e., Taiwanese and Japanese students’ verbal feedback and discussions after the interactions). This interactive presentation will conclude by focusing on activities and procedures that helped decrease students’ anxiety and increase their WTC.