147 the jaltcalljournal ISSN 1832-4215 Vol. 13, No.2 Pages 147–164 ©2017 JALT CALL SIG Forum Personality and participation in a Japan- Taiwan online intercultural exchange Brent Kelsen National Taipei University brentntpu@gmail.com Simeon Flowers Tokai University flowers@tokai.ac.jp Tis article examines personality and partici- pation in an online intercultural exchange () between 57 university students in Japan (n = 28) and Taiwan (n = 29). Te two-month  used Facebook () as the medium of communication. During the online exchange, participants communicated linguistically using English as their common language and para-linguistically through photos, videos, and emoticons. Te revised version of the 60-item  personality inventory was used to assess personality traits and to compare those traits with participation as measured by a  participation rubric created for this study. From the data two themes emerged: 1) overall participation rates were high; 2) participa- tion positively correlated with the personality item Modesty and negatively with the items Sincerity and Organization. Tese results sug- gest that a degree of modest-insincerity may be natural for student engagement in online social interaction and that the asynchronous nature of the exchange suits students who favor less structured communication activi- ties. One of the implications of this research is that, with the required coaching and sup- port, students can develop the necessary skills to successfully partake in s. Keywords: Online Intercultural Exchange, , , Participation, Personality traits Introduction Online Intercultural Exchange () is a growing area of research among educators interested in supporting the development of language, intercultural communicative competence, and special subject knowledge.