Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)

Abstract

The UG module “Understanding People & Cultures” cuts across the whole Business School with approximately 425 students divided into 16 seminar groups. To meet accreditation for our International Business programmes, it was decided to embed a COIL-light activity into this module. The pre-existing assessment, a 15-minute pre-recorded presentation, was amended to include analysis from an interview with an ‘external expert’, namely a student from an international partner university. The real-life engagement diminishes the potential to exploit AI, thus improving the authenticity and robustness of the assessment. We now have collaborations with 100 international students from five universities across three continents.

As the module is still ongoing, it is not possible to say how successful this COIL-light activity has been. Nevertheless, there have already been many lessons learned in terms of organising a COIL activity involving some 600 people. The fact this project was begun so close to the start of term made planning very difficult, and as such I, as module leader, tried to absorb the burden of organisation – had the process begun earlier, parts of the organisation could have been disseminated to seminar tutors. Moreover, Dora has been working assiduously to foster a more equitable COIL activity, ensuring not only our university and students benefit. For example, a recent online presentation from one of our professors attracted an audience of over 100 students from our partner universities and ours. Dora and I have also discussed how we can ameliorate and amplify this process in the forthcoming academic year.