COIL@Western
Collaborative Online International Learning
COIL is a form of online virtual exchange embedded for several weeks into an existing face-to-face or online course, during which a Western professor and their students collaborate with an instructor and students in another country on a shared assignment(s) or project.

Courses that contain a COIL component include a faculty partnership to create the joint curriculum, highly interactive student-centered learning in an intercultural environment, and a variety of choices regarding the use of synchronous and asynchronous online technology. Students are enrolled at their home institution, and their work is assessed by their own professor.
COIL is part of a well-established global movement in higher education pedagogy and is one element in Western’s comprehensive internationalization effort. It is meant to supplement and enhance other educational opportunities for students, such as study abroad and faculty-led Global Learning Programs.
For Western students, COIL is a cost-effective way to deepen global engagement. It does not require travel and yet provides meaningful opportunities for an interactive global learning experience built into their program of study.

For faculty, COIL promotes the use of an innovative teaching pedagogy, adds or enhances an international component and comparative perspective to an existing syllabus and associated course learning outcomes, and can lead to or strengthen a longer-term teaching and/or research partnership with a faculty member at an institution abroad.
COIL@Western is a partnership of the Office of Global Engagement and Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment.
COIL Resources
COIL Connect Virtual Exchange Directory
The Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange: Implementing, Growing, and Sustaining Collaborative Online International Learning, edited by Jon Rubin and Sarah Guth (Stylus Publishing, 2022)
Faculty-Inspired Team-Teaching Makes Internationalization Affordable (The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 26, 2011)
COIL Faculty Fellows
The Office of Global Engagement and Center for Instructional Innovation and Assessment offer annual faculty fellowships to support COIL implementation throughout the curriculum.
Next Application Deadline: February 7, 2025
Congratulations to members of Western's first Faculty Fellows cohort:
Brian Bowe, Journalism
Patrick Buckley, Environmental Studies
Holly Diaz, Morse Leadership Institute
Kirsten Drickey, MCL
Margarita Ruiz Guerrero, Early Childhood Education
Tim Kowalczky, Chemistry
Derek Moscato, Journalism
Shantala Samant, Management
Hilary Schwandt, Fairhaven
Karen Stout, Morse Leadership Institute