Collaborative Online International Learning

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is a type of virtual engagement in which students from the University of Denver (DU) and a partner institution abroad are given the tools and space to engage in purposeful interaction in a joint course. Students from both classes may interact synchronously or asynchronously for a few weeks or an entire term through whichever technologies are most relevant and useful. Often diverse students work together on a project, class discussions or similar group work with discipline-based and intercultural learning outcomes.

Its main goal is to build connections and new relationships with people, knowledge systems and perspectives across numerous types of borders. This is a powerful opportunity to help students engage in cross-cultural learning and global learning on DU’s home campus through accessible technological platforms. Global learning thus prepares students to solve grand challenges, support sustainability and sustainable development goals, and to provide perspectives not only limited to local, regional or national informed understanding, but wider global perspectives.

COIL Pedagogy

COIL incorporates global learning through access to multiple perspectives using a co-constructed, collaborative syllabus, curriculum, or activity. Instructors and students from both institutions collectively provide a much larger knowledge and experience base for mutual learning. A core tenet of COIL is to rely on each other to co-create course expectations. Negotiating and co-developing the joint online format with another instructor can foster constructive and unique opportunities for student engagement. Remember that it is about learning from and about one another, both in content and cultural learning.

• Benefits of COIL

  Benefits to Faculty/Instructors

  Stronger Student Engagement

  Due to the unique course design which centers intentional cross-cultural interactions, students are often more engaged in the course content and projects. The cross-cultural collaboration encourages student ownership of learning process making the classroom experience better for everyone.

  Expanding Professional Network

  Collaboration in teaching with faculty peers across the globe has the potential of creating partnership in research, publication, international service opportunities, and grant funding. Global networks are increasingly important aspects of research collaboration and advancing pedagogy.

  Strengthen Technology Skills

  COIL provides faculty with a teaching space to further leverage technology and pedagogies often used during the pandemic to expand the effectiveness of teaching to include virtual and computer-mediated aspects of their curriculum. 

  Supports Global Learning

  Creating and delivering a COILed course helps DU's efforts to advance global and intercultural learning.

  Benefits to Students

  Global Self-Awareness and Personal+Social Responsibility

  Global self-awareness is an understanding of how your actions affect the world around you.  Communicating across-cultures, an experience that COIL makes available to all students, can develop students' self-awareness of their personal values, beliefs, and assumptions. In a study conducted by Ullom (2017), students who had participated in Structured Online Intercultural Learning, similar to COIL, showed increased recognition of being a part of an interdependent global community.

  Perspective Taking

  In COIL courses, students will work with students from another country to complete a project, and in the process, will be exposed to different ways of thinking about a problem and the differences in the systems that exist in another country. Vahed and Rodriguez (2020) conducted a study to examine students' experiences with global learning in their collaborative COIL course and found that 93.8% of the students who participated in a COIL project strongly agreed or agreed that the project introduced them to a new perspective on culture and diversity.

  Cultural Diversity

  In COIL courses, students have the opportunity to work with others from a different cultural backgrounds. COIL allows students to collaboratively work through global issues, while also encouraging them to examine the values and beliefs of their culture as they relate to the global issue (Peterka-Benton & Benton, 2019).  Through this process of negotiation in COIL courses, students learn that in different cultures, people have different communication preferences, and they must “reconsider their assumptions and approaches” (Peterka-Benton & Benton, 2019). 

  Understanding Global Systems

  In a COIL project between a university in the U.S. and a university in Mexico, students were able to learn about the education, international trade, and immigration systems of a neighboring country and identify the interconnectedness of the two countries. Although the COIL collaboration was primarily designed to be a language exchange, through structured discussion and reflection activities, students were able to get new perspectives on global systems through COIL (King de Ramirez, 2020).

  Other potential outcomes for the 21st-Century Skills 

  • Learning and innovation skills: critical thinking and problem solving, communications and collaboration, creativity and innovation.
  • Digital literacy skills: information and media literacy, information and communication technologies literacy.
  • Career and life skills: flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social interaction, productivity and accountability.

• Examples of COIL Courses at DU
  • Feminist, Gender and Queer Theory: University of Denver (DU) and University of Western Australia (UWA).
  • Communicating Across Difference: University of Denver (DU) and University of Western Australia (UWA).
  • An Introduction to Mathematical Modeling: University of Denver and Universidad del Desarrollo.
  • Critical Development Praxis SA Leadership: University of Denver (DU) and University of KwaZulu-Natal.
  • Contemporary Literature: University of Denver (DU) and University of Western Australia (UWA).
  • Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Fintech, and Beyond: University of Denver (DU) and Universidad del Desarrollo.