Introduction

In an increasingly globalized world, developing 21st-century workplace skills, particularly intercultural communication, has become essential for students to thrive in diverse and interconnected environments. Many higher education institutions are internationalizing curricula and focusing on global communication, cultural awareness, and skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity (Anderson & Or, 2023; Rubin, 2017; SUNY COIL, n.d.). To address these interests, collaborative online international learning (COIL) virtual exchanges have emerged as a powerful pedagogical approach, providing students with opportunities for global engagement, and as a promising avenue for fostering intercultural competencies and 21st-century skills among students (Amaral & McLay, 2021; Bali et al., 2021; Commander et al., 2022; De Wit, 2017; O’Dowd, 2018; Rubin, 2017). COIL can be defined as a virtual exchange that involves collaboration among instructors and students from two or more international higher education institutions: Instructors create a shared syllabus and course learning objectives as well as connect students from their courses through online platforms to participate in peer discussions, joint lectures, and collaborative activities (Barbier & Benjamin, 2019; Bryant et al., 2020; De Wit, 2017; Guadamillas Gómez, 2017; Rubin, 2022; SUNY COIL, n.d.).

COIL exchanges are designed to go beyond traditional classroom boundaries, enabling students to interact with diverse perspectives and develop a deeper understanding of global issues. Research widely suggests that COIL experiences contribute significantly to the development of student intercultural skills, including developing greater cultural awareness and sensitivity, navigating cultural differences, challenging assumptions and stereotypes, and developing empathy and a more nuanced understanding of cultural diversity (de Hei et al., 2020; Deardorff & Jones, 2012; Hackett et al., 2023; O’Dowd, 2021; Paige et al., 2009; Vinagre & Corral Esteban, 2019; Zak, 2021). Research has also shown that COIL exchanges provide one venue for students to practice these skills in a facilitated environment, allowing them to gain greater awareness of the perspectives of the “other” and to develop a multi-faceted view of social issues and injustices (Helm, 2016; O’Dowd, 2021).

In a similar way, higher education institutions have linked COIL with internationalization processes, which are intentional processes with the objective of integrating the international, intercultural, and global dimensions to improve the quality of education and research, providing a meaningful contribution to society (Ramírez Ramírez & Bustos-Aguirre, 2022). Latin American universities have particularly demonstrated a growing commitment to integrating COIL exchanges, like the Red Latinoamericana COIL (LatamCOIL network), an initiative created by the Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitano de Medellín (Zilberberg Oviedo & Krimphove, 2022). In addition to providing international experiences, initiatives like these address equity and inclusion issues by providing rich cross-cultural exchanges to students who may otherwise be unable to participate in study abroad exchanges. For Latin American students, having an international experience is expensive. Yet, innovative pedagogical approaches such as COIL appear as a suitable alternative to develop international and intercultural skills and to provide these learners with the opportunity to have authentic international experiences (Casallas, 2010). In the same vein, Lemos-Shlotter and Tineo Espinal (2023), in a study where they used COIL as an internationalization strategy for the teaching of English, claim that their participants reported high levels of commitment and participation in the topics explored in the experience. They also report that the participants broadened their understanding of the English term “sustainability,” as the Spanish-speaking participants had problems understanding it, given that there are two terms for the same concept in Spanish. Finally, these authors claim that English plays an especially key role when implementing COIL experiences, as it becomes a lingua franca that contributes to developing a global citizenship that is interconnected not only by technology but by a common language. In other words, COIL allows English to become a language that belongs to the world.

The purpose of our study was to capture student reflections on a COIL experience between two groups, one from a public university in Colombia and another from a community college in the US. We used a single instrumental case study with a holistic and interpretative approach to data analysis, and our data collection instruments were video or audio recordings together with the participants’ final products (artifacts). We employed and adapted the Intercultural Competence Dimensions and Subdimensions Framework (Deardorff, 2004, p. 196) as a tool to analyze the information and to explore the participants’ perceptions of the experience and how their intercultural skills developed through the COIL experience.

Our COIL experience presented participants with several common exchange challenges and benefits, such as communicating through different time zones, working in an authentic international team, and engaging in critical thinking skills like evaluation, analysis, and comparison. The study also seems to indicate that the exchange provided students with an opportunity to develop a stronger awareness, understanding, and knowledge of their culture as well as that of their partners. Significantly, students identified an increased sense of openness and tolerance by recognizing the differences and similarities among cultures, which suggests a deeper level of cultural understanding.

Literature Review

To understand the development of intercultural skills, scholars have drawn upon various theoretical frameworks. Deardorff’s (2006) Process Model of Intercultural Competence offers a valuable perspective to analyze the stages and processes involved in intercultural development. Her model can be used as a framework to guide instructors in developing a curriculum for COIL exchanges because it promotes both intercultural awareness and assessment of the experience. The framework comprises five dimensions: attitude, knowledge, skills, internal outcomes, and external outcomes, and it implies that intercultural development goes beyond country borders and includes communication “within human diversity that is inclusive of age, race, genders, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, physical abilities, ideological beliefs, and so on” (Deardorff, 2006, p. 256). COIL exchanges provide an opportunity to go beyond knowledge exchange to include interactions that strengthen intercultural understanding and communication, build teamwork skills, and enhance cultural self-awareness (Deardorff, 2022). From a COIL perspective, the process of exchanging ideas through discussions offers students a forum to initiate and transform their intercultural communication (Arndt et al., 2021; Kumi-Yeboah et al., 2017) in addition to assisting in reducing stereotyping, prejudice, and othering; in many cases, students report finding common ground with their peers (Custer & Tuominen, 2016). Cultural awareness building involves recognizing and respecting differences while fostering a sense of curiosity and openness.

In COIL exchanges, empathy plays a crucial role in fostering intercultural competence. Additionally, virtual exchange provides students with immersive experiences that enhance their ability to understand and appreciate diverse perspectives and impact their cultural sensitivity and adaptability. By engaging students in collaborative projects and discussions, they develop a heightened sensitivity to the experiences of others, a key component of intercultural empathy (O’Dowd, 2021; Thorne, 2016; Verzella, 2018).

Other studies have also pointed out that COIL experiences contribute to student intercultural effectiveness and cultural humility (Anderson & Or, 2023), which is “a process of openness, self-awareness, and incorporating self-reflection and critique after willingly interacting with diverse individuals” (Foronda et al., 2016, as cited in Anderson & Or, 2023, p. 213). Students who develop cultural humility demonstrate an awareness of others’ perspectives and perceive their peers from diverse cultures as equals; a viewpoint that fosters collaboration, mutual empowerment, and teamwork.

However, King de Ramirez (2021) points out that exposure alone does not necessarily make intercultural competence grow; furthermore, the academic nature of the exchange may impact student engagement and experience. Without instructor guidance and support, virtual exchanges could potentially enforce assumptions or create a superficial experience of cultural awareness (O’Dowd, 2021). Instructors can help move from this surface-level engagement by introducing difficult topics into the exchange (Helm & Guth, 2012; Vinagre & Corral Esteban, 2019); otherwise, students may fall back on completion of the project tasks and avoid facing up to differences, confrontations, or barriers to completing the tasks. Bassani and Buchem (2019) likewise found that students’ lack of confidence in their English skills, as well as elements like time zone differences, challenged both synchronous and asynchronous communication and cooperation. Furthermore, Curtindale et al. (2020) point out that additional barriers affect the success of student intercultural collaborations, such as assessment techniques, student resistance to meeting outside of class, and inability to use various technologies.

Research has shown that through intentional design and implementation, COIL experiences offer a platform for students to engage in meaningful cross-cultural interactions, enhancing their communication abilities, empathy, and cultural awareness. Research also suggests that instructor preparation, as well as the preparation of students engaging in COIL, is crucial for success and for avoiding potential conflicts and misunderstandings. SUNY COIL’s (n.d.) COIL exchange program recommends four components that occur over five to fourteen class weeks in designing the progression of a COIL experience (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Progression of a COIL Module (SUNY COIL, n.d.)

As explained by SUNY COIL (n.d.), the stages increase in complexity of the critical thinking tasks students complete:

The first stage is team building, which includes introductions and icebreakers to help students get to know and feel comfortable working with one another online and across cultures. The second phase includes comparative discussions and organizing the project that teams of students will be working on. The third phase is focused on the main activity for the collaboration. This is the time students apply their knowledge, create something together, or have substantive discussions around the topic of the collaboration. The final phase involves the presentation of the completed work, reflection on both the content of the module and the intercultural aspects of the collaboration, and conclusions.

Deardorff (2022) suggests that scaffolding assignments, preparing for intercultural communication strategies, and expectations can assist with the successful implementation of COIL experiences. Finally, in developing project and task-based curricula, student interaction takes place in concrete situations where students must communicate and negotiate meaning to meet their project objectives (Casañ-Pitarch et al., 2020).

Description of the Experience

Selection of Technology Tools

File Storage and Folder Sharing

We used a Google Drive folder for storing and sharing files. This folder had two purposes: first, to function as a repository of material (documents, presentations, and instructions for completing activities) and second, as a space for students to share their materials for their final presentations and videos. Figure 2 shows the structure of the folders.

Figure 2: Structure of the Google Drive Folders

Noticeboard

We used Padlet to display students’ work and to provide easy access to teaching and learning materials. We divided our noticeboard into these sections:

• basic information about the experience

• video introductions, teams’ publications

• shortcut access to the teams’ storage and sharing folder

• final task display

The noticeboard also had a display of the video introductions of the participants. Students recorded a short video using Padlet’s video-recording tool. Participants provided their names, three hobbies, their favorite food, and their experience learning languages. The participants then responded to the videos by asking a question or posting a comment. Our noticeboard included a space for the participants to share a brief description of their project, including the topic, the perspective, and the reasons they chose that topic. Finally, the noticeboard had a space for the participants to display their final products. Figure 3 shows the structure of the noticeboard.

Figure 3: Structure of the Noticeboard

Instructional Strategies Before the Implementation

Design of the Activities that Frame the COIL Experience

The first instructor activity was to identify a framework that contained all the actions that would happen during the implementation. Drawing from Cuesta and Marsee (2022) suggested framework (Figure 4) for the instructor process of virtual exchange design, which is based on Kolb’s Experiential Learning Model (1984), instructors move through a series of components to develop the curriculum for a COIL experience. These components ranged from defining the learning outcomes for both groups to the task’s design, the design of the collaborative strategies, and the assessment activities. Figure 4 captures the components and design flow for instructors in the pre-COIL exchange design process.

Figure 4: Instructor Framework for Designing a COIL Experience (Cuesta & Marsee, 2022)

Instructional Strategies During the Implementation

Method

To assess both our COIL experience and to explore the development of intercultural skills, we used a single instrumental case study with a holistic and interpretative approach to data analysis (Creswell, 2013; Creswell et al., 2007).

Findings

Development of Intercultural Skills

The findings show that 57 of the instances analyzed (32.6%) indicated the development of awareness, understanding, and knowledge of one’s own and other cultures, followed by 38 instances (21.7%) that showed the development of openness, tolerance, skills for teamwork and interacting with others, and curiosity toward the other culture. Twenty-eight instances (16%) indicate the development of critical thinking skills, including the ability to analyze, evaluate, and compare. Finally, only nine instances (5.1%) pointed to the development of organizational and technical skills. Figure 5 summarizes the percentage of instances showing the development of intercultural skills.

Figure 5: Percentages of Instances Portraying the Development of Intercultural Skills

An example of the development of awareness and understanding of the participants’ own culture is found in this description from one of the final videos of the experience, highlighting problems within the Colombian educational system:

And students have trouble commuting because traversing the woods and the mountains and the rivers can be very dangerous and difficult. There is no public education in those places, and neither parents nor schools have the resources to provide transportation. So, this ends up in children not being able to finish their basic education, so they must drop out of school. This is another way people lose access to higher education here in Colombia, because if you can’t finish your basic education, you can’t apply for admissions exams in public universities. (Final video presentation 2)

An example of developing openness is seen in the following comment from an American participant, who mentioned that the project provided an open space to speak and hear different ideas:

I just really like that different . . . ideas kind of going around and being able to hear from everyone because I feel like a lot of people, um, believe what they believe, and they’re not really open to hearing what other people believe or kind of go through, so I feel like this project was extremely helpful with that. (Video opinion 8)

An example of developing awareness of one’s own and others’ cultures is this quote from a participant, which shows how he begins to broaden his understanding of another culture by identifying differences between the participants’ countries of origin:

After this project, I’m becoming very aware on what the differences are when two very different countries in two different continents even, and it’s just kind of interesting to see the differences and be able to get like a firsthand account. (Video opinion 3)

An interesting example of the development of organizational skills is this quote from a participant who expresses the regularity and seriousness with which everyone approached the group meetings, as she explains that all the members of the groups were very committed to completing the tasks:

Some of the benefits that we had in our group were that everybody was really on top of their work, we got everything in on our due dates and we met on Thursdays at 2:00 p.m., and everybody, for the most part, showed up every single time; we took it very seriously. (Video opinion 6)

Another set of skills that the participants in this experience developed was critical thinking skills, which are defined by Scriven and Paul (1987) as “the process of actively conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication” (as cited in Todd et al., 2019, p. 21). For this investigation, critical thinking skills are skills to observe, interpret, analyze, evaluate, relate, and adapt, as identified in Deardorff’s (2006) Intercultural Competence Dimensions and Subdimensions Framework. An example of this is an excerpt from one of the final videos where the student explores the reasons and effects of gambling:

[Gambling] tends to impact society as a whole. It impacts crime, business, and the mental health of all those who are involved. Gambling is regulated and sometimes outlawed entirely for good reason. No matter where these games are played, humans in general, no matter where they come from, culturally become greedy, which leads to their clouded judgment and poor decision-making. (Final video presentation 1)

Another important set of skills that we identified in this experience is the skills to analyze. An example of these skills is this excerpt from a final video where the students compared the effects of illegal mining in Colombia and the US. The students provided an analysis of the reasons why people in Colombia and the US end up having undrinkable water:

Whether it be corrupt businesses in Arizona, mining illegally and not following the rules and regulations of their trade, or illegal mining operations with armed individuals in Colombia, one thing stays the same. The people of Colombia, the people of Arizona, and the people of the US are being affected by these malpractices, leaving many with undrinkable freshwater. (Final presentation, Group 3)

Discussion

Although there has been a lot of research on implementing COIL experiences, many benefits have been identified, but continued exploration of the development of intercultural skills, particularly on student’s ability to address cultural differences, is lacking (Kučerová, 2023). These findings agree with Kučerová (2023), as she reports that COIL helps students and teachers develop their intercultural and interpersonal skills and gain new knowledge of their own and the others’ cultures.

These findings show that one of the disadvantages of COIL experiences is the time differences between the participants, as they are in different geographical locations and in different time zones. In our study, the time difference was two hours (Colombia was two hours ahead of their American counterparts). This presented participants with difficulties meeting synchronously and they preferred to have mostly asynchronous work to complete the task. These findings agree with Kučerová as she says that not only the time difference between countries or academic calendars but also time in general poses a challenge to the success of COIL implementations. However, Marcillo-Gómez and Desilus (2016) view this as an opportunity to promote asynchronous activities, which allow participants to develop their autonomy and analytical and teamwork skills (Romero-Rodríguez et al., 2023).

The findings of our investigation show that students developed critical thinking skills (i.e., skills to analyze, evaluate, and compare) which can be described as global leadership skills. Our findings are similar to those of Curtindale et al. (2020) who report preliminary findings on the successful use of interdependent intercultural tasks (ITT), a teaching approach that can be used in COIL experiences to stimulate student cross-cultural engagement and to increase their gain of knowledge of cultural differences related to a specific global problem. This ITT approach strives to create cognitive dissonance to motivate students to analyze information about another culture as opposed to passively consuming it (Curtindale et al., 2020). In the ITT process, instructors provide tasks that ask students to learn about subjective elements of another culture by interacting with the exchange peers. In the case of their study, “students discussed native and non-native country media articles describing culture-specific perspectives on a global problem” (Curtindale et al., 2020, p. 81). This activity increased awareness of differences, developed team interaction, and fostered intercultural interaction in collaborative efforts. In our case, students had to compare the similarities and differences between their community and a foreign community. They had to establish the content and the comparison angle considering social, political, business/economic, educational, environmental, and/or cultural values (like individualism/collectivism, risk-taking versus conventional approaches, gender power, etc.).

Finally, the findings of this implementation show that the participants developed openness, tolerance, and skills to work and interact in teams. These findings agree with the findings from Loyo Rosales and Raynal Gutiérrez (2022), who show that the participants in their COIL experience increased their ability to participate in international online collaboration as well as their openness and tolerance to work with international teams.

Conclusions

The objective of this investigation was twofold: to explore the participants’ perception of a COIL experience and to assess the development of intercultural skills. The following conclusions can be mentioned: First, although the experience was challenging for the participants, it also had many benefits in different areas, such as the use of English for a real purpose, the understanding of the other’s culture and country by allowing the socialization with people from another country, and the use of several technological tools for collaboration and communication. Second, this experience helped participants develop awareness, understanding, and knowledge of their own and others’ cultures. It was also useful for the participants to develop openness, tolerance, teamwork skills, and the ability to interact with people from different nationalities and contexts. Finally, another important conclusion from this experience is that the participants developed their critical thinking skills—their skills to evaluate, analyze, and compare—which are crucial 21st-century skills to develop global citizenship.

This study opens the scope of understanding of how to implement COIL exchanges in higher education institutions and offers a step-by-step explanation of how to set the floor for these kinds of experiences. It also provides an overview of how these experiences help develop skills that are not easily developed using traditional approaches.

This concludes that participation in COIL experiences equipped participants with valuable skills and tools, such as empathy, openness, understanding of their own and others’ cultures, and the ability to analyze, evaluate, and compare. Participants could apply these skills to perform future tasks in international contexts with people from different backgrounds.

This investigation shows that implementing COIL experiences in higher education can be viewed as an internationalization opportunity for students who do not have the economic means to go to a foreign university to study.

Limitations

We encountered the following limitations. First, the number of participants was low and there were twice as many participants from the US, which did not allow an even and homogenous distribution of team members. This placed the Colombian participants in an unequal position. Second, the length of the experience was short, even though other experiences report similar lengths of time, and third, as this was a pedagogical experience rather than a research experience, a more rigorous research design may shed light on different issues that we did not identify.

This investigation shows that there are several limitations when implementing COIL experiences that need to be addressed to ensure the scalability and sustainability of these types of innovative pedagogical experiences. For instance, there can be technological barriers. In the case of this experience, we found that some participants did not have access to WhatsApp, and they had to look for other alternatives. There can also be problems with time differences, which, in the case of this investigation, hindered the possibility of synchronous work.

Recommendations

As pointed out by many studies in COIL exchange, this experience provides an opportunity for students to engage in a globalized experience at home and to broaden their sense of self and cultural awareness as well as to increase their sense of empathy, cultural humility, and awareness (Commander et al., 2022; Giralt, 2020; Helm, 2014; Levinson & Davidson, 2015). By engaging with peers from another country, students are better able to contextualize through personal examples their partner countries’ social and political issues (O’Dowd, 2021). For example, in our experience, several students identified a stronger understanding of the role and value of education in their peer countries. Additionally, using students’ ongoing reflections on the experience provides an insight into their perception of intercultural development (Ramírez-Marín et al., 2020).

To move toward the full potential of COIL exchanges and address some implicit challenges, it is important to put several measures in place. Intentional design and collaboration between instructors to create a scaffolded, multiple-staged course schedule are paramount for guiding students through the various stages of intercultural development. Part of that intentional design should include pre-exchange identification of cultural awareness and communication strategies. It is important to have multiple points of instructor feedback and of student reflection on the process (Machwate et al., 2021), including some directed reflection that encourages students to not only identify similarities among their international peers but also to explore differences. Additionally, with potential barriers of time zones, internet service, and complicated schedules, helping students develop project management skills can contribute to the project’s overall success. Regular instructor feedback and interaction, as well as regular guided reflection, can support the concerns around students falling into the “illusion of commonality” purported by Ware and Kramsch (2005); they suggest that students can fall prey to only recognize commonalities and identify minor differences like time zones or geographic location.

Further analysis and studies designed to explore the level of cultural understanding and awareness of differences are needed, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. As suggested by Ramírez-Marín et al. (2020), continuing qualitative analysis of deeper student and instructor reflections may help identify intercultural development constructs by providing more opportunities for thinking about similarities and differences. They also suggest assessing student preparedness for virtual exchanges by integrating a global competency questionnaire which would also help “determine barriers and enablers of students’ experiences during the COIL course” (p. 124). A pre- and post-questionnaire may yield further depth to the analysis of student intercultural awareness.

This investigation shows that for COIL experiences to be sustainable, they should be integrated into study programs and require institutional support and continuous professional development for teachers. While COIL experiences can be conducted in any language, English should be used as a lingua franca for communication.