Introduction & Definitions
This guidance is designed to help staff understand what is involved in integrating a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) component into a course, or creating a new COIL course, and how to go about doing this. It is advised that all staff proposing a course that incorporates COIL activity, and the Boards of Study that are considering these proposals, read this guidance.
COIL stands for “Collaborative Online International Learning”. These words refer to the defining characteristics of a COIL course:
Collaborative: Members of staff in the two (or more) collaborating institutions are co-teaching the course on an equal footing: students are put in a position of having to cooperate effectively and efficiently to produce the required outputs of the activity.
Online: The interaction between the students and staff in the two (or more) institutions for the COIL component of the course takes place mostly or exclusively online.
International: There is meaningful interaction between students and staff in two (or more) different countries, leading to the development of international and intercultural competences.
Learning: COIL is a learning activity and should be an integral part of the curriculum of a credit-bearing course, not an optional or inconsequential ‘extra’. As such, the COIL component should be identifiable from the course ILOs.
COIL is a form of ‘virtual mobility’, and as such is a form of Internationalisation at Home which can be particularly valuable in enabling students who are unable, or choose not, to prioritise travel abroad as part of their studies to gain international and intercultural experiences during their degree.
Virtual mobility, including COIL, counts as mobility in terms of the University’s reporting of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in cases where it takes place over a period of five or more teaching days. COIL exchanges most typically run over five weeks for a semester-long course, to eight weeks within a longer course.
The threshold for a course to be formally recognised as COIL is that the total student engagement with the partner(s) should last at least five teaching sessions from the start to the end date. While there may be more than five activities or interactions planned (as illustrated in Models 2 and 5 above), there should be no fewer than five if the course is to qualify as COIL for the purposes of recording KPIs.
As illustrated in the table above, the COIL window opens with the first activity or interaction and should remain open until the related assessment has taken place. In Model 2 above, for example, COIL activities are spread across ten weeks of the UofG semester, with two activities in Week 1 and two activities in Week 5, and then a final activity in Week 10, before a related assessment in Week 12. In Model 5, on the other hand, COIL activities take place weekly across the final 6 weeks of the course, with the assessment in Week 12.
Note that while assessments are set locally, and are therefore not shared across institutions (see assessment in a COIL context Section), students may wish to continue their correspondence and access shared materials in preparation for assessment. Therefore, the COIL window should remain open until after the assessment period is over.
At the University of Glasgow, we have not defined a set number of contact/group working hours or similar for COIL, beyond the 5 teaching session threshold set out above. It is at the discretion of course convenors to determine the appropriate contact hours for a COIL activity to be meaningful in the context of their course and its ILOs. This is also a key discussion to have with possible partners from the outset (see working with partner institutions section).
If you have any questions on the COIL guidance and want to discuss it with the Learning & Teaching Strategy Unit, please contact: strategy-learningandteaching@glasgow.ac.uk