Collaborative Online International Learning: Experiences in Higher Education

Background/purpose. Collaborative Online International Learning projects have emerged as practices that connect students from different countries. Such actions can be appealing to universities but also arouse uncertainty. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore COIL experiences in HE reported in the scientific literature in terms of implementation and effectiveness, as well as the implications for the future of HE.

Materials/methods. Following the PRISMA protocol, the systematic literature review was conducted in the Web of Science and Scopus databases from 2000 to 2023. The search was conducted on the titles and abstracts of the documents, and Boolean operators were utilized.

Results. The findings regarding the implementation of COIL experiences in HE showed that they were concentrated in the last 4 years, with this form of learning being framed in social constructivism and not in a theoretical, epistemological framework. In the reported projects, intercultural and linguistic competence development was mainly promoted and implemented in English. Besides, assessment in COIL activities focused on the acquisition of intercultural competencies and satisfaction with the project undertaken. However, regarding effectiveness, the studies did not provide comparative results regarding the effects of different research designs or methodologies. The results also revealed that existing research did not typically suggest implications for the future of HE.

Conclusion. We conclude that COIL practices are planned from a practical point of view, although based on social constructivism, and these experiences involved a prevalence of English and Anglo-Saxon culture. The implementation experience is well documented but suffers from a weak design, without control groups and with an incoherent definition of variables. It also presents some challenges, such as the lack of professional recognition for professors and the need for research designs that examine their effectiveness for students learning and their contributions to internationalization.

Keywords: active learning, COIL, digital technology, systematic literature review, university education

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