Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)

What is COIL?

COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) is a pedagogical framework that enables faculty members to design and facilitate cross-border collaborative learning experiences between their students and international peers. By leveraging virtual exchange, COIL supports intercultural dialogue, shared curriculum development, and global engagement—without requiring physical travel. This approach enriches course content, fosters professional development, and expands global learning outcomes across institutions.

What is the Purpose of COIL at Montclair State University?

The Office of the Provost and International Academic Initiatives office continue to promote, foster, and support Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) at Montclair State University. This innovative, online, globalized pedagogy is a vital, nimble, and powerful tool of internationalization. By leveraging virtual exchange, COIL supports intercultural dialogue, shared curriculum development, and global engagement—without requiring physical travel. This approach enriches course content, fosters professional development, and expands global learning outcomes across institutions. All Montclair faculty are invited to develop COIL courses, to facilitate cross-border collaborative learning experiences for our Montclair students. Details about the COIL pedagogy and its benefits are detailed here by the State University of New York, a pioneer in this area.

COIL initiatives at Montclair State University have a strong history, and have thrived through partnerships between the Office of International Academic Initiatives, the Office of Faculty Excellence, and Instructional Technology and Design Services. COIL courses are particularly timely given the calls for comprehensive internationalization from the Global Reach Task Force, from the International Advisory Committee, and many other campus stakeholders.

COIL At Montclair State University:

Montclair State has collaborated with SUNY COIL, the pioneer of the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) virtual exchange model, standing at the forefront of empowering professors, students, and institutions to engage in high impact teaching and learning.

About the Workshops:

COIL Foundations specifically address how to support students’ intercultural skills online, considerations for finding and maintaining a strong relationship with your COIL teaching partner, when, the importance and how to use reflection activities, options and approaches to bridging language differences, and how to approach team building and developing trust.

The COIL Elements workshop explores what makes a compelling COIL Collaboration, roles of students and professors, online behavior, creating active student teams, matching technology choices to activity design, preparing students for COIL, and developing your COIL resource bank.

Both are three weeks in duration, conducted asynchronously, with one-hour weekly synchronous meetings. The one-hour meetings are full of activities for professors to emulate with their students and are recorded for those who cannot make a specific date/time. All SUNY COIL workshops are interactive and require 2+ hours of work per week.

The current COIL Coordinator for Montclair State University is Sandy Holder of the Office of International Academic Initiatives.

Faculty COIL Collaborators:

If you are interested in a collaboration, future project, workshop, or finding an international partner, please reach out to the COIL Coordinator for Montclair State University: Sandy Holder of the Office of International Academic Initiatives.

If you would like additional information about previously completed projects, please contact faculty members who have participated in past, current, or upcoming projects.

Past COIL Projects

Previous COIL that has occurred at Montclair prior to the Fall 2025 Semester:

COIL Fellows:

Professor Christopher Kaczmarek of Art & Design
Professor Ian Drake Associate Professor, Political Science and Law, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Antonella Calarota-Ninman

Student-Led International Collective Exhibition

COIL courses are effective across a wide range of disciplines. In Spring 2023, Professor Christopher Kaczmarek of Art & Design brought a fascinating course to life in partnership with a professor at the University of Dundee in Scotland. The course was a student-led creative and collaborative challenge designed to give students the opportunity to build transferable creative skills, and to give them an international exhibition credit on their resumes. Students envisioned and orchestrated a collective trans-Atlantic exhibition with a peer group from the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee, Scotland. Faculty from both universities guided the class with imagining the cloud of potential possibilities, working through a process to narrow the possibilities down into a plan, and then finding a way to make it happen. Part of the challenge was how to do a cohesive collective exhibition, not just an exhibition exchange. The students worked together to have works of art exist in two places at once, and were mindful of how the transport/translation of the work would impact its reception. As a culmination of these trans-Atlantic efforts, the collaborative work completed by both groups of students was shown simultaneously at exhibitions in Dundee, Scotland and Montclair, NJ.