A special edition of Internationalization in Action (3 MB PDF) was
released last week during the opening plenary of the State University
of New York (SUNY) Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)
Center’s 10th Anniversary Conference. About 400 people from150 institutions, including 50 international delegates from 20 countries, attended the conference.
The report discusses the benefits and challenges of initiating a new
COIL program, drawing on the experience of institutions that
participated in the ACE-SUNY COIL Center Internationalization Through Technology Awards Program, and identifies a number of approaches in the emerging field of globally networked learning in higher education.
The SUNY COIL Center has pioneered a pedagogical approach for using
technology to internationalize curriculum, and the COIL method has been
adopted by scores of U.S. and international institutions.
COIL is a teaching and learning paradigm that facilitates global and
intercultural exposure and is applicable to any discipline. In a COIL
course or module, faculty members in two or more countries collaborate
to design a syllabus and co-teach the course or module, and students in
each class must work together using online communication to complete
assignments.
Since 2003, ACE has promoted the use of technology to help students
acquire global competencies. The experience of traveling and studying
abroad can be transformative for this kind of learning, but less than 10
percent of four-year undergraduates in the U.S. have that opportunity.
Using online communication to connect faculty and students across
borders is proving to be an accessible, affordable and flexible option
at a growing number of institutions in the U.S. and around the world.
Heather H. Ward, senior program specialist in ACE’s Center for Internationalization and Global Engagement
and author of the report, participated in a panel discussion at the
conference, “COIL: Creating Access to Global Learning for All,” with
faculty from three institutions whose students tend to be
under-represented in education abroad. Through the development of COIL
courses over the last one to two years, a critical mass of students at
each of the three campuses has been exposed to global learning. For
example, 34 students participated in study abroad during the 2015-16
academic year at SUNY Broome, compared to 146 students who enrolled in
COIL courses.
Conference sessions were video-recorded and will be posted at the conference website.