Reflections on co-organizing a COIL Experience in Bridge Design
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is an educational approach that connects students and faculty across institutions and countries through structured online collaboration. Rather than relying only on physical mobility, COIL creates opportunities for internationalization within existing courses by allowing students to work together virtually on shared learning activities. It helps students develop not only disciplinary knowledge, but also intercultural communication skills and a broader understanding of global perspectives.
Last fall semester, I had the opportunity to co-organize a COIL experience using my bridge design course as the foundation. The goal was to align activities between my course and the partner institution course while keeping the activities meaningful and manageable for students. Designing the experience required careful planning, but it also became my most rewarding teaching initiative of the semester.
We structured the COIL around several key stages. We started with an icebreaker activity, which was essential to help students feel comfortable interacting with peers from another institution. After the icebreaker, we organized shared sessions and shared lectures, and took the same midterm exam to both groups. These sessions allowed students to learn from both instructors and from different perspectives. In engineering education, students often focus strongly on technical content, but the discussions in the icebreaker and joint work highlighted how design approaches, academic expectations, working habits, and classroom experiences can differ across institutions and cultural contexts.
The main assignment was a bridge design project. Students from both institutions used a different software package and compared their experience. This project gave them the chance to apply course concepts while also practicing teamwork in an international setting. It was particularly valuable because the collaboration was directly connected to the learning outcomes of the course.
We also included a small in-person component, which helped strengthen the overall experience. Even though COIL is primarily online, this face-to-face interaction added an important human dimension and reinforced the sense of connection that had been built virtually.
At the end of the project, we carried out an evaluation and reflection exercise. This final step was crucial because it allowed students to process what they had learned and provide feedback on the experience. The results were very positive. Students evaluated the COIL favorably in terms of internationalization, highlighting that they appreciated working with peers from another context and gaining exposure to different perspectives. They also reported important lessons learned related to communication, collaboration, and engineering practice.
In addition, the course evaluation results showed that the COIL component contributed positively to the overall learning experience. This outcome was encouraging, as it demonstrated that internationalization can be successfully embedded within technical courses without compromising academic rigor – and that my student gave me more grace than I expected as we had to adjust course and make changes a few times during the semester.
The findings from this COIL experience are now being prepared for publication in a conference paper, which will be presented in July. Sharing these results is important because it contributes to the growing body of knowledge on how COIL can be implemented effectively in engineering education, and will hopefully motivate colleagues to experiment with the format as well.
Looking back, co-organizing this COIL confirmed for me that meaningful international learning does not always require travel. With thoughtful design, online collaboration can create rich and valuable learning experiences for students. For me as an instructor, it was also interesting to see how the same topic is approached differently by colleagues, and how different grading outcomes can be.
Have you used the COIL format in your classroom?
