Japan-Multilateral COIL/VE Project

Dear ITS Students,

About COIL/VE Project

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is one method of Virtual Exchange, more closely tied to a pre-existing course in a university curriculum. So, if you are a student, one of your courses may have decided to collaborate with a course overseas to give you a chance to work together in a virtual international group. That’s COIL. In the COIL model, as described by SUNY (State University of New York), students from different countries enroll in shared courses with faculty members from each country, by co-teaching and managing coursework. COIL courses may be conducted fully remote (online) or may be offered in blended formats with traditional face-to-face sessions taking place at both schools, while collaborative student work takes place online. Meanwhile, Virtual Exchange (VE) uses technology to connect people from different countries or cultures for mutually beneficial educational exchange and cross-cultural dialogue. VE uses a mix of synchronous (e.g. Google meet, zoom) and asynchronous (e.g. recorded video/audio materials, social media posts, or email) technologies that allow participants to interact and interface beyond surface-level connections.

About COIL/VE Project Works

This project proposes a COIL program to be jointly owned and implemented by Japan Virtual Campus and multiple universities that support and participate, rather than the standard COIL courses that are co-taught for a certain period of time at domestic and overseas institutions.  Module subjects in the fields of “SDGs in Business,” “Diversity & Inclusion,” and “21st Century Skills” will be established as “J-MCP subjects,” and syllabi (lecture themes and lesson plans), educational materials, and the online platform necessary for virtual implementation (hereinafter referred to as “CMS/Course Management System”) will be provided by IIGE, the organizer of this project.

In this project, IIGE will provide training for J-MCP instructors utilizing pre-established professional development activities for COIL instructors in addition to sharing knowledge and first-hand experience gained from numerous COIL/VE cases. Those who successfully complete the training program will obtain certification through the digital certification system (digital badge) used in this project. Training content will be developed with instructor development in mind.

Strengthening this project into a framework that incorporates the target audience of working adults will also enhance the role of institutions, which should be responsible for “fostering the qualities of human resources required” by taking advantage of the strengths of industry-university collaboration.

About Example J-MCP Module Course Information

The J-MCP subjects will be developed in the three fields. Understanding and application of the SDGs and Diversity and Inclusion are in increasing demand, especially among domestic industries and local governments, and the project will have significance as “human resource development for the near-future society” produced by universities, as well as function as recurrent education for current working people.

We will utilize the cooperative relationship that IIGE has cultivated in building curricula, including syllabi and teaching materials, in these three fields. (1) “SDGs and Business” will be developed jointly with the Hawaii Innovation Center, which is affiliated with the University of Hawaii at Hilo.  (2) “Diversity and Inclusion” will be developed with the cooperation of i-BAVI (Executive Director, Dr. Craig Shealy), which operates BEVI, and Core Collaborative International, LLC. (3) “21st Century Skills” is an area that IIGE has been working on for the past 7 years, and we already have various curriculums such as “Presentation Skills”, “Critical Thinking”, and “Research Methods”.

About CMS Platform

The COIL/VE dedicated course management system (CMS) has been upgraded with three new features to illustrate the quality of learning. The current main function of ImmerseU, which will be adopted as the CMS, is dedicated to COIL activities conducted by foreign and domestic universities. Normally, individual instructors in charge of COIL courses are responsible for tracking the overall evaluation of the participating students. In other words, in the past, COIL was integrated into pre-existing courses, and the demand for functions related to grading and learning analytics was not a high priority.
In the case of J-MCP, students take courses from various institutions, and the courses are managed interchangeably. Therefore, it is necessary to record the learning history of each student more explicitly and convert it into data. In addition, we will adopt a “digital badge” as a certification tool to verify what competencies students have acquired by taking J-MCP courses. By linking these digital badges with ImmerseU, we will be able to evaluate participants more efficiently.

How to Apply For ITS Students

For ITS Students who want to apply for this program, please prepare the documents required below :

CV
Official Academic Transcript in English Version
Certificate of English Proficiency (min TOEFL 500)
Scan of Student ID card

Please kindly send all of your documents to Ms. Yani at int_off@its.ac.id maximum on 6 January 2022.

Send your query with subject: ASK_UMAP_COIL_[your name]