Increasingly, Universities across the world are seeking ways to develop their curricula that fosters inclusion for diverse learners and enables students to gain the skills/knowledge expected of graduates in an interconnected world. An education practice that offers significant potential in this regard is Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)/Virtual Exchange. By bringing students from different countries together online to learn collaboratively, intercultural learning experiences that were previously only available to relatively small numbers of internationally mobile students can be deployed through COIL and virtual exchange projects to widen access to the sort of international learning opportunities that can help students develop key capacities for the modern interconnected world. This page provides some information on COIL and Virtual Exchange practice for those curious to know more!
Although ‘online’ international exchanges have been operating in Higher Education in various guises for decades, particularly in language courses, Collaborative Online International Learning as a term and clearly defined practice was more recently developed by the State University of New York (SUNY). The SUNY COIL Center provides a good overview of why SUNY believes in the practice, how they envisage COIL should work and the support they might provide educators who are interested in collaborating with them.
Over in Europe, practices that might be recognised as COIL are more commonly called Virtual Exchange. Maintaining a comprehensive website of information and resources; and providing a hub for relevant research, UniCollaboration are also key partners (in a group that also includes SUNY) in the International Virtual Exchange conference.
The Stevens Initiative is an organisation based in the United States that aims to promote and expand the practice of virtual exchange. They frequently publish useful reports about the current state of the virtual exchange which can be freely accessed on their website.
With the aim of bringing together educators who are interested in setting up COIL/Virtual Exchange practice, COILConnect provides a list of participating institutions and a set of resources that may facilitate this.
This is a pdf version of a presentation I delivered in February 2022 ‘Exploring Personal Experiences of COIL/VE‘ that outlines some of the contemporary COIL/Virtual Exchange research and the current focus for my own study.