Internationalizing the Curriculum

IGE periodically offers a forum aimed at internationalizing the curriculum and the faculty’s role in that process. Participants discuss resources related to internationalization and identify a specific course they wish to create or revise. They also learn about their role in supporting global partnerships, expanding education abroad opportunities for students, and enhancing the educational experience of international students. This forum is supported by the Provost’s Office, and participants earn a stipend for their participation. Space is limited.

In the 2023-2024 academic year, the Institute for Global Engagement will launch the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) initiative and award grants to its first cohort of Western faculty fellows.

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 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 decade-old global movement in higher education pedagogy and is one element in Western’s comprehensive internationalization effort. It is meant to complement 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.   

In fall quarter, IGE will host an information session with Western faculty interested in learning more about COIL.  This session is intended, in part, as a precursor to soliciting and awarding faculty fellowships in winter quarter.  A workshop series for the first cohort of faculty fellows is planned for spring quarter, and it hopes that integration of a COIL component into an existing course will occur sometime in the 2024-2025 academic year.