Beyond Borders: Rethinking International Learning with COIL

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) offers a way to bring international and intercultural learning directly into a course: students from partner universities work together on a joint task that they can only complete together, without anyone having to travel. This makes global learning accessible to a much wider range of students and courses than a physical exchange ever could. 

The workshop offers a practice-oriented introduction to the concept of COIL and shows how teaching staff can integrate it, in full or in part, into their own courses. Together, we examine common assumptions and misconceptions, discuss what genuinely makes such collaborations succeed, and develop first ideas for implementation in one's own teaching. 

• Definition and core characteristics of COIL 

• Common assumptions and misconceptions about COIL, and where they hold up 

• Pedagogical conditions and elements that make a COIL work 

• Didactic design and structuring of a COIL 

• One's own role as a teacher in planning and facilitating a COIL