Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects are a way of doing exactly this. An innovative approach to teaching and learning, these projects allow students to internationalize their curriculum and share intercultural competence through interaction with peers from other countries without going abroad. Instead, any two classrooms - that could be across the world from each other - will be working together. While gaining knowledge on a topic already embedded in the students’ curriculum, they will broaden their understanding from an international perspective through group work, discussions and reflective tasks. By doing this, the true complexity of an issue is allowed to rise - there is more to a topic than simply viewing it through your cultural lenses.
Even though COIL was born before the COVID-19 pandemic, its benefits are perhaps now - bearing the past year in mind - more evident than ever. It was a year that imposed distance from the normality of our everyday lives and each other, yet, at the same time, grew solutions from the soil of a crisis. We have seen businesses, universities, teachers, and innovators’ impressive answers to unfamiliar problems. New ways of teaching online, software replacing conference rooms and a state-of-the-art approach to what it means to communicate through a screen. Recognizing the possibilities, employers have also seen the benefits of remote work.
According to business magazine Forbes, a greater reliance on remote work will be one of the noticeable changes in the future. “In surveys, 72% of executives say that their organizations have started adopting permanent remote-working models.” So, the question becomes: what can prepare us for this? The ability to collaborate online, picking up on the subtle shifts in mood, and communicate whilst body language gets lost - and the skill to work in a diverse group. Without limits of a physical office, assembling a competent team knows no geographical limits. COIL projects, simulating what the future has in store, is a way to develop those soft skills that will be much in demand for the future workplace.
Since 2015, Italy-based Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, the largest European non-state university, has coordinated multiple COIL projects with universities in Europe and the United States, such as Appalachian State University in North Carolina and DePaul University in Chicago. The first project was the Global Learning Experience (GLE), an intercultural exchange project promoted by DePaul University. After a pilot edition in the 2015-16 academic year, coordinated by Professor Amanda Clare Murphy at Università Cattolica, Milan campus, the project landed at the Brescia campus 2016-17, where it continues today.
One of Università Cattolica’s partner universities in Europe is Amsterdam School of International Business. COIL projects were established together within three different courses for Università Cattolica’s Master of Science program in Management: Business Communication, Performance Measurement and Supply Chain Management. In the latter, some of the soft skills the students will develop in the project are management in a cross-cultural environment, communication styles, and interacting with peers from a different socio-cultural background. An example of what the students did during this COIL project was to analyze the procurement procedures regarding the sustainability of two Italian and two Dutch companies and develop a report where differences and similarities were highlighted and discussed.
Università Cattolica has focused on the employability of its students by developing different competencies during this past year. Around 3,000 students go abroad per year for a study or work program, and although online courses were offered, the pandemic shed light over how COIL projects have a different added value, despite being virtual too. It is a chance for students to truly engage in a community that extends beyond a country’s borders. Hard knowledge is essential, but it first becomes valuable when we know how to use it in real-life situations. It is collaboration and interaction, diversity and broadened perspectives that prepare future employees and underlie employability, which is why Università Cattolica will continue to develop more of these projects in the future.
Furthermore, what the COIL project leaders, professors at Università Cattolica, have seen is that the interaction between students did not end in the classroom. Their continuing relationships were a great realization since it is, in a sense, a confirmation that the core meaning of these projects was successfully reached.
“The COIL projects will increase the students’ ability to work in multicultural settings, and I believe that for students aspiring to become a manager, this is something that should be embedded in his or her DNA,” said Professor Stefano Baraldi, Program Director for the Master of Science program in Management.
So, this shift of our time is not to be seen as unfavorable, since one of the most significant outcomes is, in fact, cross-border collaboration. Bringing different people, skills, experiences, and backgrounds to the - virtual - table, we cherish a timeless beauty: that we have so much to learn from each other.
