Growing COIL: Strategies for building Virtual Exchange into a comprehensive approach to internationalization

As the field of Virtual Exchange, or Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), has grown over recent years, institutions around the world have sought innovative ways to engage this method of internationalizing the curriculum. Ensuring that COIL experiences are widely available, of high quality, and sustainable requires a strategic institutional approach. The design of this approach varies depending institution type, presence of a COIL support network, social and political environments, and the institution’s vision for internationalization, among other factors.

In this pre-conference workshop, presenters from the following institutions will explore themes related to their efforts to build Virtual Exchange into their internationalization efforts.

Universidade Estadual de São Paulo (José Celso Freire Junior and Ana Cristina B. Salomão)

UNESP has been developing virtual exchange as part of their internationalization at home strategy since 2017. Efforts have been made to launch Brazilian Virtual Exchange (BraVE) and to implement courses both in undergraduate and graduate levels.

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (Ana Cecília Vieira da Nóbrega, Paulo Sávio Angeiras de Goes and Maria Leonor Alves Maia)

The UFPE Internationalization Plan includes uses Virtual Exchange (VE) as one path to providing global learning to students. The UFPE experience includes BRaVE (Brazilian Virtual Exchange), with the goal of developing activities in phases, introducing innovation into the classroom for teachers and students.

DePaul University (GianMario Besana)

DePaul University implemented an institution-wide virtual exchange initiative as part of our strategic plan in 2013. The initiative, called Global Learning Experience (GLE), is one component of its strategy for internationalization of the curriculum. To date, DePaul has implemented approximately 100 courses, involving 1750 students.

FATEC (Osvaldo Succi Junior)

São Paulo State Technological College (FATEC) started its first COIL (virtual exchange) partnership in September of 2013. Key aspects of FATEC’s International Collaborative Projects (ICPs) include analysis of partners needs an ongoing interest in adapting projects to “fluid times”. Fatec has implemented approximately 40 projects with over 700 students.

SUNY COIL Center (Jan McCauley)

The SUNY COIL Center, founded in 2006, works with a network of campuses in the State of New York and around the world to train professors in COIL methodologies, as well as to provide guidance around research, assessment, and best practices for internationalization of the curriculum.

Durban University of Technology (Lavern Samuels)

DUT has successfully developed sustained COIL partnerships with institutions around the world, guided by their university-wide strategic plan and with an eye toward decolonization of the curriculum.