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

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 developing effective digital communication in education globally.