Collaborative online international learning (COIL) is a pedagogy that allows faculty members to open their classrooms to concrete collaborations with colleagues teaching at partner institutions in other parts of the world. Through COIL, students get to interact in structured learning experiences with international peers, opening the door to transformative intercultural experiences.
DePaul has its own COIL initiative, branded as the Global Learning Experience (GLE) (
http://go.depaul.edu/gle), through which over 100 faculty members have participated in faculty development workshops. On October 30 and 31, 2017, DePaul, in collaboration with the SUNY COIL Center, will organize and host the "Global Learning Conference: Transcending Boundaries through COIL", an international conference devoted to the COIL pedagogy.
A group of 250 international COIL practitioners and scholars came to Chicago to engage in two days of reflection, information sharing, and planning, centered on COIL. This was the first international COIL conference in the US that is held outside of New York City, where the SUNY COIL Center has hosted COIL conferences for over a decade. Over 80 proposals were submitted to the conference from all over the world. Members of DePaul Comprehensive Internationalization Committee served as proposals reviewers. Keynote addresses at the conference were delivered by Mohamed Abdel-Kader, Executive Director of the Stevens Initiative at the Aspen Institute, Obst, President and CEO of AFS, and Denise Lewin Lloyd, Associate Professor of Business at UIUC. Several DePaul faculty presented their experiences in implementing GLE-COIL in their classrooms. We are excited and proud to have hosted this high visibility event that recognizes the work of our GLE team and our faculty.