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Evaluation of good practices and opportunity areas of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) program: Global Shared Learning Classroom

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Abstract

The post-COVID-19 educational landscape requires novel teaching strategies to cultivate skills in a global environment where knowledge can be shared between similarly demanding and evaluated universities. This research focuses on the Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) strategy at a Higher Education Institution in Mexico. Its objective is to assess the COIL approach to generate advice on improvement opportunities for other COIL experiences at the global scale. Answers to a survey applied to students and educators participating in a COIL experience were analyzed using a mixed-method approach. It consisted of an ordinal answer scale part and open questions. Additionally, the opinions of the COIL management personnel of the universities participating in the ERASMUS + project were collected in a focus group. Our findings show that the COIL program is a ground-breaking platform that benefits students and faculty. The opportunity to collaborate with international peers is highly appreciated. However, we identified some areas that require improvement, such as providing better faculty training and support for adapting courses, increasing the opportunities for student-instructor and student-student interaction, improving the organization between implementing instructors, and promoting guidelines flexibility inside organizations. We found that implementing COIL enhances students’ competency development by contextualizing knowledge, fostering collaboration and innovation among universities, creating an international professional network for students and instructors, and nurturing future skills. The results reported in this work constitute valuable insights for develo** effective digital communication in education globally.

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The data supporting this study’s findings are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This study was funded by the ERASMUS-EDU-2022-CBHE-STRAND-1 Grant through the project “DigiUGov” (Ref. 101082408) of the European Commission.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the Future of Education, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

    Patricia Vázquez-Villegas, Daniela Gómez-Guerrero, Luis Alberto Mejía-Manzano & Jorge Membrillo-Hernández

  2. Vice Rectory for International Affairs, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

    Gisselle Morales-Veloquio & Luz Patricia Montaño-Salinas

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  1. Patricia Vázquez-Villegas
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study’s conception and design. Patricia Vázquez-Villegas, Gisselle Morales Veloquio, and Luz Patricia Montaño Salinas performed data collection. Patricia Vázquez-Villegas, Daniela Gómez-Guerrero, and Luis Alberto Mejía-Manzano performed analysis. Patricia Vázquez-Villegas wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors commented on previous versions. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jorge Membrillo-Hernández.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

Tables 4 and 5

Table 4 Students survey questions and variables
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Table 5 Faculty survey questions and variables
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Appendix 2

Table 6

Table 6 Protocol of the focus group regarding management personnel of the ERASMUS + DigiUGov project
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Appendix 3

Table 7

Table 7 Deductive codes that were used in this work
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Appendix 4

Tables 8 and 9

Table 8 T-test results for the quantitative questions of the GSLC survey for students with a significance level of 0.05, comparing answers from International vs. Tecnologico de Monterrey students
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Table 9 Omitted item statistics for students’ survey
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Appendix 5

Tables 10 and 11

Table 10 Topics of codes obtained from each open-ended question, including both sets of students
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Table 11 Topics of codes obtained from faculty answers to each open-ended question
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Appendix 6

Tables 12 and 13

Table 12 One-way ANOVA results for the quantitative questions of the GSLC survey for faculty with a significance level of 0.05
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Table 13 Omitted item statistics for faculty’s survey
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Vázquez-Villegas, P., Gómez-Guerrero, D., Mejía-Manzano, L.A. et al. Evaluation of good practices and opportunity areas of a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) program: Global Shared Learning Classroom. Educ Inf Technol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-024-12739-3

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