A unique COIL opportunity for academic colleagues
Whilst Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) training is available through commercial providers, Oxford International sees COIL as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility.
So, we are proud to share our COIL training at no commercial cost to colleagues across Higher Education.
Our fully flexible COIL training framework assumes no prior knowledge of intercultural communication or diversity management. We focus first on internationalising the academic self, providing a range of resources and toolkits to enable academics and institutions to feel empowered to introduce COIL to their students. The train-the-trainers model, developed by Oxford International, addresses key challenges that academic practitioners have identified when responding to institutional requests to internationalise their teaching, learning and assessment.
Our goal is to make sure that our training offers resources to understand key tenets of team formation and effectiveness, cultural dimensions and their impact on communication. It’s through this that we want to support pedagogical designs to create sound and inclusive approaches to intercultural learning.
One of the key challenges for Higher Education institutions, and individual academics, internationalising their disciplines is to understand what Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) can deliver, and how it can be practically embedded in curricula and syllabi.
This understanding is often expressed by educational professionals asking themselves:
- What theoretical models and concepts underpin the acquisition of intercultural competences with COIL?
- What professional development opportunities, resources and toolkits can be summoned to create more capacity and capability in internationalising curricula?
- What ethical considerations are needed to ensure COIL approaches are inclusive, diverse and partake in current efforts to decolonise or de-Westernise the curriculum?
To hear the session, unmute the audio controls on the video.
Module duration: 1½ to 2 hours
This broad introductory session outlines the Oxford International Education Group (OIEG) approach to helping Higher Education Institutions, and academic staff, to internationalise their curricula using Collaborative International Online Education (COIL).
After reviewing the fundamentals of Inter-Cultural Competence acquisition, we move to review rationales for embedding this into the staff and student experience. We then proceed to detail OIEG’s COIL using examples of COIL design and implementation. The session concludes on the conditions for successfully embedding COIL and proposes a plan for further professional development.
Key themes:
- What is Inter-Cultural Competence?
- Rationales and benefits.
- Definition, requisites, and models for COIL.
- Quick start, lessons learnt and pitfalls to avoid.
- Processes for building capacity and capabilities.
Module duration: 3 to 3½ hours
We build on the premise that to internationalise the student experience, one must first help academics internationalise their own academic selves, providing a theoretical and conceptual grounding for developing a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project within a given academic discipline.
We introduce several frameworks, conceptual tools and resources from various academic traditions, so that academics feel comfortable introducing them to their students. By developing capability, academics can better convey the dynamics of team formation and effective working. Academics should also understand how intercultural dimensions contribute to the successes - or failures - of intercultural communication and operations, and where individuals may stand in their own journey towards becoming more Inter-Culturally Competent. Participants will have the opportunity to explore their own cultural make-up and Inter-Cultural sensitivity.
Key themes:
- Internationalising the academic self.
- Conceptual frameworks and toolkits.
- Team formation and effectiveness.
- Cultural values and dimensions.
- Cultural profiling and attitudinal shifts.
Module duration: 1½ hours
After introducing conceptual frameworks and toolkits, this module focuses on curriculum and pedagogical design to internationalise a course or programme through Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL).We will review the constructive alignment approach and its main tenets, drawing from concrete examples and past COIL projects. This highly interactive module covers tips and best practice principles to internationalise learning outcomes, choosing from a range of online tools, and how to prepare to assess outcomes. This will help academics understand sound principles, and avoid common pitfalls, when drafting the COIL programme plan and descriptor with their academic colleagues.
Key themes:
- Constructive alignment for Teaching Learning and Assessment.
- Internationalising learning outcomes.
- Choosing online activities, outputs and tools.
- Determining international outputs and outcomes.
Module duration: 1 hour
Drawing extensively on practical experience from the trainer and other practitioners, this interactive module helps academics prepare their students to engage with their counterparts online, synchronously and asynchronously.
We outline important considerations before, during and after interactions so that they help establish and achieve the common project goals through appropriate and effective peer-to-peer engagement. The main focus of this module is to help prepare students to engage independently with their 'cultural' others by developing some effective cross-cultural netiquette. The section looks at cross-cultural communication challenges and how they can be enhanced with linguistic and digital literacy inequalities.
Key themes:
- Common challenges in cross-cultural collaborative work.
- Remedial or mitigating strategies to pre-empt obstacles.
- Promoting effective and appropriate peer-to-peer engagement in mindful ways.
Module duration: 30 minutes to 1 hour
This module looks at past iterations of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), encouraging academics to critically review and analyse plans, implementation and outcomes to help sharpen their own COIL design skills.
We examine a selection of COIL project descriptors critically to unveil the cohesion and coherence aspects of the projects. The ultimate aim of this module is to foster tactics that will help optimize the alignment between internationalised learning outcomes, activities and expected outputs and learning outcome assessments. The module also looks at how to find suitable partners and engage them to ensure coherence of purpose.
Key themes:
- Ensuring feasible COIL project delivery through constructive alignment.
- Designing COIL projects that can be managed effectively within capacity and then grow in complexity organically.
- COIL Partner identification and engagement strategies.
Module duration: 1 hour
Our final module focuses on specific projects to help academics from partner institutions review and refine their Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project development, implementation and validation plans.
This module is tailored to the needs of the COIL project designers, ultimately guiding them to a sound project management framework. The session aims at helping academics in both partner institutions to refine their ideas, and navigate through the COIL project stages. Particular emphasis is given to evaluation procedures and collaborative post-evaluation debriefings.
Key themes:
- Reflecting on the development of specific projects, from project ideation and designs to the implementation during the academic term, through to the validation and recognition of the learning experiences.
- Completing COIL template forms to envision the project from start to finish.
- Putting the COIL project in perspective within the broader institutional internationalisation strategy, and reflecting on post-COIL Intercultural competence development opportunities.
- COIL as an opportunity for research.
A sociolinguist by training, Dr JB Adrey taught French language and area studies at the University of Portsmouth for 11 years before joining Coventry University in 2005. Three years later, he founded Coventry University’s International Experience and Mobility Service, which later became the Centre for Global Engagement. Both initiatives helped to internationalise the staff and student experience at Coventry University, contributing to the university’s reputation as one of the leading study destinations for international students in the UK.
After working at the University of California Riverside as Associate Dean International, and then Chief Partnership Officer, JB is currently COIL Project Lead and CPO for Europe and North Africa at Oxford International Education Group (OIEG).
By the early 2010s, JB’s internationalisation strategy at Coventry University included embedding short student and staff mobility programmes into the curriculum, making extracurricular language and cultural programmes available to all, and deploying a flexible framework - known as Online International Learning (OIL). In 2014, the European Association for International Education (EAIE) recognised this outstanding work by presenting JB and Coventry University its much sought-after Award for Innovation in Internationalisation.
Online International Learning - which is often referred to in some academic contexts as virtual mobility, virtual exchanges, or telecollaboration – firmly established itself as the core of Coventry University’s internationalisation success. The framework was later renamed into Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), reflecting global thought leadership, and the model developed in the US at State University New York, by Professor Jon Rubin.
Since 2014, Coventry University’s work has shown the world the flexibility of the COIL framework, and its potential for embedding intercultural perspectives across all disciplines. Every year, around 7,000 Coventry University students participate in over 200 COIL projects with counterparts across the world, strengthening and broadening their intercultural competence. JB’s early institutional advocacy means that even today, Coventry University is recognised as one of the world’s leading hubs for COIL projects.
