Global
by Daniel Nolan, Ph.D.
Universities around the world are increasingly leveraging virtual exchange opportunities to expand access to international learning. COIL, or Collaborative Online International Learning, is a kind of virtual exchange that focuses on student-to-student learning and collaborative project development between two or more faculty. To “COIL” a course means to work together with an international partner to co-create a learning activity in which your students then collaborate with your partner's students to pursue a shared learning goal.
These projects typically involve active and project-based learning; they are normally between three to eight weeks in duration; they take place within existing courses; and can involve synchronous or asynchronous activities, or both. COIL is an intentional way to help students deepen international, intercultural, and global learning, and prepare them to work in global teams. This approach to international learning can be integrated into a wide variety of fields of study.
What is perhaps most important about COIL's capacity for transformative impact is that these projects offer our students an equitable space to engage with their peers around the world. The efficiency, and adaptability, of online international exchange means that programs on both sides of the exchange can expand the reach of their international learning goals. It also means that faculty are called on to continue creatively developing new approaches to international learning in these digital exchanges, with recent exciting examples in marketing, agricultural science, language learning, entrepreneurship, general chemistry, sustainability education, global supply chain management, outdoor education, deaf studies, and arts education.
Prior to the pandemic, many faculty were still apprehensive about investing their time in these international collaborative learning projects, with concerns related to videoconferencing and time zones often standing in the way of project development. Those concerns were quickly wiped away as the world turned to virtual exchange during the pandemic.
In 2023, the International Virtual Exchange Conference met again in person to reflect on a world characterized by change, rapid expansion of the field, and new and old concerns. Expansion has also meant that critical voices have grown clearer, pointing out how many institutions, especially in the West, have failed to engage in equitable exchange even as they pursue intercultural learning goals. Those failures and lessons will need to remain in focus as we engage with many new partners eager to invite their students to collaborate in active learning projects with our students.
In addition to partner development work at the International Virtual Exchange Conference, the UMN COIL Initiative is developing new pathways for faculty to partner with their colleagues in the Aurora Alliance, which is a network of nine European universities collaborating on five focus areas: social entrepreneurship, health and wellness, digital society, and sustainability, and climate change.
Daniel Nolan is Director of the UMN COIL Initiative and Associate Professor of German Studies at the Duluth campus