My plenary talk for the first-ever European Conference on Collaborative Online International Learning on December 1st and 2nd 2016 at the Hague, Holland.

1. COIL is clearly the
future…
Telecollaboration is
clearly the future…
Virtual Exchange is
clearly the future…
Virtual Mobility is
clearly the future…
COIL initiatives across university education:
Learning to learn from each other
The European COIL Conference
2 December 2016
09.15-10.00

2. My plan for this morning…
• Carry out a short overview of the different
fields of “COIL” practice and research
• Identify where there appears to be
consensus in good practice
• Look to the future: How can this field of
learning continue to develop and have a
greater impact on university education?

3. What exactly are we talking about?

5. Looking for least common denominators….
The engagement of groups of students
in online intercultural interaction and
collaboration…
…with students/ peers from other
cultural contexts or geographical
locations….
…as an integrated part of course
work….
…and under the guidance of educators
and/or expert facilitators.
•What do all these
names/monikers have
in common?
•COIL (Collaborative
Online International
Learning)
•Telecollaboration
•OIE (Online
Intercultural Exchange)
•Internet-mediated
Intercultural Foreign
Language Education
(Belz & Thorne)
•Virtual Exchange –
(Soliya / EU)
•eTandem (Europe)/
Teletandem (Brazil)
•eTwinning / ePals
(secondary education)

6. COIL is clearly the
future…
Telecollaboration is
clearly the future…
Virtual Exchange is
clearly the future…
Virtual Mobility is
clearly the future…
The danger of having “un diálogo de sordos”

7. • My personal conclusion…
• Let’s use Virtual Exchange as an umbrella term
• Why?
• Increase mutual comprehension across disciplines (How many here today
knew the term telecollaboration?)
• It’s transparent and self-explanatory: It will facilitate our activity’s
promotion among a wider academic public (although it ignores the
intercultural/international element).
• It’s increasingly being used by our sources of funding such as foundations,
governmental and inter-governmental bodies such as the Stevens
Inititiative (http://stevensinitiative.org/), the Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs in the USA (http://eca.state.gov/gallery/virtual-exchange)
and the European Commission.

8. Let’s look briefly at
Differing Approaches to Virtual Exchange …

9. Models of Virtual
Exchange in
University
Education
Shared Syllabus
Approaches (e.g.
COIL )
Facilitator-led
Models (e.g.
Soliya &
Sharing
Perspectives)
‘Integrated’
Virtual
Exchange
Initiatives
Telecollaborative
Foreign Language
Models
9

10. Differing Approaches to Virtual Exchange
(1) Foreign Language Learning Models

11. Telecollaborative Foreign Language Learning Models
• Well known examples: e-Tandem, teleTandem, Cultura
• Main goals:
– Provide opportunities for authentic foreign language practice with native speakers /
speakers of other languages
– Provide experience in intercultural communication and collaboration in digital
environments
• Main characteristics:
– Task themes are often personal or cultural in nature (not based on ‘curricular content’)
– Interaction is often organised in pairs or small groups to encourage interaction
– Usually a practitioner-initiated practice (‘bottom-up’ approach)
• Research findings:
– Great potential for awareness raising of cultural differences in communicative practices
– different genres, pragmatic competence etc. Partners = ‘people who matter’ .
– The key is to combine online interaction with reflective reviews and discussions of online
interaction.

12. Simultaneous teletandem sessions between Georgetown
University, USA; Universidad Autonoma de Mexico (Mexico) and
Universidade Estadual Paulista (Brazil)

13. 2: The Cultura Model
http://cultura.mit.edu/

15. UNICollaboration.eu:
A virtual hub for finding partners, tasks and resources

16. Differing Approaches to Virtual Exchange
(2) Shared Syllabus Models

17. Shared Syllabus Models to Virtual Exchange
• Well known examples: COIL, XCulture
• Main goals:
– To give students intercultural experiences based on online collaboration about shared
curricular content
– To provide different cultural perspectives on curricular content
• Main characteristics:
– Collaborative tasks are based on shared syllabus
– Usually introduced into universities from the top-down (initiative of senior management)
• Research findings:
– COIL interactions make abstracts subjects more real and tangible for students
– Potential for overcoming student stereotypes
– The importance of task design – “Tasks must be designed so that students depend on
one another to complete the task” (Guth and Robin, 2015).

18. Differing Approaches to Virtual Exchange
(3) Facilitator-led Models

19. Facilitator–led Models to Virtual Exchange
• Well known examples: Soliya, Sharing Perspectives
• Main goals:
– To develop students’ intercultural understanding and tolerance
– To develop students’ 21st century skills – critical thinking, media literacy
• Main characteristics:
– Projects use specially designed synchronous communication tools and platforms
– Interaction is facilitated and led by trained intercultural facilitators
– Interaction is based around a syllabus designed by the organisation
– Universities usually ‘sign up’ cohorts of students to participate
• Research findings:
– “The critical role of being heard” – Developing positive attitudes to other cultural groups
through dialogue (Bruneau & Saxe, 2012)
– Development of 21st century skills such as critical thinking, cross-cultural collaboration
skills (van der Heijden & Ploss, 2014)

20. The Soliya Model – East-West Negotiations
• Soliya connects over 200 students
from over 30 different
universities in the US, Europe and
the predominantly Arab and/or
Muslim worlds.
• Students are placed into small
groups of 8-10 students and
guided through a 9-week, English
language dialogue program by
pairs of trained facilitators.
http://www.soliya.net/

22. Differing Approaches to Virtual Exchange
(4) Intregrated Approaches

23. Integrated Models of Virtual Exchange
• Well known examples: VE combined with physical-mobility, MOOC’s, work
placements
• Main goals:
– To enhance existing educational programmes
– To increase fluidity between ‘class work’ and ‘field work’
• Main characteristics:
– Virtual Exchange is one part of a larger educational programme, course or initiative
– Online interaction is considered an ‘add-on’ to main activity
• Research findings:
– The online interaction facilitates greater reflection on what students are doing in their
‘fieldwork’ (e.g. physical mobility, work placements) (Vriens & Van Petegem, 2012;
Kinginger, 2009)
– Virtual connections allows non-mobile students to benefit from those who are mobile or
from people in distant locations (Huber, 2015)

24. There is so much going on….
Is there anything we can all agree on?

25. 1. Simply achieving “Contact” between students is not sufficient
Richardson: “…the espoused benefits from mobility do not derive from the act
of crossing borders but instead from two other factors. First, the encounters
that students have. And second, the influence on their psychological make-up
of responding to these encounters” (Cosmopolitan Learning for a Global Era,
2016, p.54).
Task Design
Tasks should enable students to go beyond simply exchanging information
and to actually engage in genuine intercultural collaboration and then to
reflect on that interaction.
Allport (1979!!!): “The nub of the matter seems to be that contact must reach
below the surface in order to be effective in altering prejudice. Only the type of
contact that leads people to do things together is likely to result in changed
attitudes.”

26. 2. Students need a gradual immersion into online intercultural interaction
Richardson: “[Virtual Exchange] activities need to ensure that students are
given a gradual introduction to online learning and are allowed to engage in
relatively low-risk …activities before they are called on to engage with peers
on a deeper basis” (Cosmopolitan Learning for a Global Era, 2016, p.124).
Tasks should introduce learners to online intercultural interaction step by
step:

27. Sharing Perspectives follow similar steps…

28. 3. Students need support through facilitation or pedagogical ‘interventions’
Reid & Spencer-Oatey: To be most effective, intercultural activity also needs to be located in a
context of experiential learning where the participants are properly prepared and where they have
the opportunity to reflect on their experiences and consciously develop new knowledge and skills.
(Towards the Global Citizen, 2012, P126)
Pedagogical Interventions in Telecollaboration:
Cunningham & Vyatkina (2012), Cunningham (2016) : Interaction between German and American FL
learners combined with instructional interventions focusing on pragmatic competence
The role of the teacher in COIL courses:
Guth & Rubin (2014): “The partner teachers will play a fundamental role in helping students
interpret and understand not only the origins of their peers’ responses to a given task but the
cultural assumptions behind their own responses” (p.38).

29. We all have something to learn from each other:
• Telecollaboration: A large body of practitioner-based research
to provide evidence of Virtual Exchange’s value
• COIL: An institutional ‘top-down’ approach to promoting and
introducing Virtual Exchange across universities
• Soliya/ Sharing Perspectives: Importance of on-line
intercultural facilitation
• Physical mobility organisations: Integration of virtual and
physical exchange

30. UNICollaboration.org : An academic organisation to support
researchers and practitioners through publications, training and
research initiatives

31. Thank you for listening!
• Contact:
robert.odowd@unileon.es
– Publications:
http://unileon.academia.edu/RobertODowd
– See this presentation again:
http://www.slideshare.net/dfmro
– Join UNICollaboration:
www.unicollaboration.eu

32. • All the links and resources you see here today
can be found in this Google Collection:
• https://goo.gl/XLhP7k