Learning & Teaching

Experience of COIL

Helen first heard the term COIL pre-covid in 2019. She was introduced to it and encouraged to think about it primarily through an intentional exchange with the University of Denver as an alternative to student exchange – an international experience for students who cannot commit to travel to another institution. In her experience COIL it is flexible and can take different forms, the essence is international teaching.

Lockdown provided Helen with the confidence in using the technology.

Benefits of COIL

• Inclusion, in relation to financial circumstances or time commitments.
• Opportunities to diversify the curriculum: it enables broader academic expertise without the pressures and costs of bringing people into the institution. For example, UofG has no expert in Native American literature, so the student experience was enriched and achieved through partnering with an expert from the University of Denver.
• Student experience of intercultural exchange.

Challenges of COIL

• Ensuring a consistent and balanced experience on both parts, supporting all the students (from different learning experiences and backgrounds) equally and fairly, properly assessing all students.
• Different time zones can make simultaneous events difficult to organise.
• There is a need to find ways of ensuring that students talk to each other.
• Different university calendars (e.g. semesters) can make co-ordination of teaching difficult.
• Different teaching patterns (2 vs 4 hours a week) raise questions about how to divide the teaching.
• The above considerations mean that there is more of a reliance on asynchronous material

Recommendations

If you are thinking about using COIL in your course, you should speak to others who have successfully delivered COIL to understand what it actually is. Be aware that you might need extra support for the marking process (i.e. for extra markers for the assessments).

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COIL Topic/Theme	Literature Intercultural exchange, diversifying curriculum
Partner Institutions	University of Denver
Course Co-ordinator/staff involved	Helen Stoddart
College/Subject(s)	Arts, English and American Literature
Length of Exchange	1 week
Language(s)	English
Level (e.g. Pre hons, hons, PGT)	Undergraduate (honours)
Goals/ILOs	Provide students intercultural experience, diversify curriculum with external expertise
Description of project	American Literature course incorporated 1 week COIL exchange with University of Denver to connect students and bring in expertise on Native American literature
Assessment	Incorporated into existing course assessments
Synchronous Activities	Joint Zoom calls
Asynchronous Activities	Moodle discussion boards
Platform(s) used	Zoom, Moodle
What worked well?	Successfully connected students and provided valuable new perspectives
What would you do differently next time?	Better prepare for challenges of time zones, differences in term schedules. Seek more guidance on balancing teaching loads across institutions

First published: 25 July 2024