Collaborative online international learning (COIL) is one of UIC Barcelona's clear commitments to internationalisation and teaching innovation. Through this initiative, students at the University will be able to work together with students from universities around the world on projects assessed as part of their subjects. COIL also helps bring the experience of global learning closer to a wider range of students, regardless of their geographic location.

COIL projects can be carried out in many ways, but they all share a common philosophy and values: to foster experiential learning, strengthen teamwork, enhance intercultural skills and develop idiomatic and digital competences. As such, university students can use this methodology to forge relationships with other countries, learn about new ways of working and experience the reality of an increasingly global world.

With a view to increasing internationalisation, the University is making a commitment to implement collaborative online international learning through a series of actions resulting from a pilot project carried out by the International Relations Service and the Teaching Innovation Classroom. One of the initial actions has been a four-week teaching and research staff training course titled “Class to class COIL design for higher education faculty”, which began on Friday 21 May.

The aim of the training course was to familiarise teachers with this methodology and teach them how to integrate COIL projects into their lessons. The training was provided by Uni-Collaboration, a cross-disciplinary organisation that promotes COIL in the higher education academic community.

Staff members from six faculties took part in the course: the Faculty of Communication Sciences, UIC Barcelona School of Architecture, the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, the Faculty of Education Sciences and the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Members of the Institute for Multilingualism, the Vice-Rector for Research, Innovation and Knowledge Transfer, Dr Jordi Villà, and the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Dr Marta Mas, also took part.