A cohesive research agenda and assessment design for COIL/Virtual Exchange

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and Virtual Exchange methodologies are increasingly popular as a cost-effective and accessible means of bringing curricular internationalization to scale in higher education. Among the underlying goals of many COIL/VE projects is to increase Intercultural Awareness (IA) among students. As the COIL/VE field grows and develops, there is a strong need for new tools and research methods to investigate change in IA through virtual exchange and provide insight into what factors play a role in promoting or inhibiting such change.
More generally, the COIL/Virtual Exchange community of practice is interested in developing a consistent research agenda combining quantitative and qualitative data to build a more complete picture of the field. Through engagement with players representing a cross-section of international educators, virtual exchange practitioners, and research experts, the SUNY COIL Center has begun a global conversation around research design and information sharing. Among the many questions being asked are how to create/support a global community of practice, how to best map the typologies of virtual exchange/COIL, how to ensure that assessment tools are capturing comparable and impactful information, and how to coordinate research efforts within the field. This session will present these coordinating efforts to date.
In this larger context of much needed research, uniform assessment of multiple COIL/VE projects, allowing for the collection of large data sets, is a challenging problem. It requires resources that are not always readily available. This session will explore the consistent use of a distinct assessment model examining student perceptions of the impact of their COIL experience, implemented by DePaul University.
DePaul University launched an institution wide COIL initiative in 2013. In Fall 2015 a single assessment instrument for students participating in COIL courses was developed and deployed each term. The instrument aims to assess the impact of the intercultural aspects of the COIL experience on students’ attitudes and behaviors. It has been distributed to 1216 students from 63 courses through 10 terms. Responses from 542 students (44.6% response rate) have been collected and results of the assessment will be presented.
Following the presentation, the audience will be engaged in a discussion on both assessment of the impact of COIL and the continued development of a global research agenda for virtual exchange. This session hopes to contribute to the ongoing effort of the COIL community of practice to go beyond anecdotal evidence of its impact, towards a data-driven scholarly approach.