The Ideas and Practices of Internationalization at Home in Higher Education Institutions: Promoting Intercultural Teaching Experiences through COIL in Taiwan

• In Event: "Transnational Higher Education: Internationalization, Sustainability, and Student Perspectives from China and beyond"

Proposal

During the 2020-2022 outbreak of COVID-19, governments and higher education institutions around the world have launched various policy strategies to continue teaching and learning activities in order to curb the negative impact of the epidemic on student learning. However, there are ambiguities and disagreements about what to teach, how to teach, the workload of teachers and students, the teaching environment, and the impact on educational equity (Zhang, Wang, Yang, & Wang, 2020). At the same time, large-scale global efforts to support distance learning and address online learning are rapidly developing (Ali, 2020). And as COVID-19 is nearing its end, the world is planning for a new normal in education in the post-epidemic era, which allows the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) and other forms of virtual global learning to continue to exist (Kahn, 2020). Technology-mediated educational delivery has been viewed as an alternative attempt to create the sense of awareness and belonging that can only be obtained through physical exposure to courses and hands-on experience in the past (Reed & Dunn, 2022). COIL can be seen as a way to help address inequities in international education, travel restrictions, and enhance the goal of "global learning for all" in school curricula.
As Leask (2015) pointed out, there will be no internationalization at home without internationalizing the curriculum. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the COIL program operates at no additional cost, making COIL a compelling programmatic model, especially for traditional students who are for any reason unable to participate in international travel. COIL presents an opportunity to transform the globalization of education during this pandemic (Harris, Seo, & McKeown, 2022). Furthermore, COIL itself is seen as a “powerful learning opportunity” for students to be able to “learn in an academic, structured environment” (Reed, 2016). Recognizing if COIL could be carefully planned and well-executed, its advantages even are over study abroad. Faculty also see COIL as a way to address global inequalities in learning opportunity and inclusion in higher education (Landorf et al., 2018; de Castro et al., 2018), to practice the goal of equitable practices of internationalizing higher education through local teaching. COIL is seen as promoting sustainable, cost-effective online pedagogy that targets all students rather than specific minority groups (Jones, 2016) and it provides local students with opportunities for global experience, and allows equitable learning outcomes for all learners.
The essence of COIL is not based solely on MOUs, but relies on like-minded teachers and colleagues from all over the world to cooperate with each other through technology to bring classrooms and planned transnational joint courses (Harris, Seo, & McKeown, 2022). The core of COIL is the concept of voluntary partnerships between professors of different nationalities who collaborate on co-constructed learning experiences that make their individual courses stronger by enhancing international and intercultural understanding.
Taiwan now is promoting policies, such as Bilingual Nation 2030 and Bilingual Universities, This research firstly analyzes the current COIL programs practices in Taiwan to unveil the good/appropriate approaches to practice COIL in Taiwanese contexts. Furthermore, the researcher will implements COIL for intercultural learning in the undergraduate class at National Taiwan Normal University cooperated with colleagues at National Seoul University in Winter 2024. The research expects to obtain first hand findings from the practice to provide those who are enthusiastic about promoting COIL courses at higher education level some practical suggestions and effective examples.

Author

• chenwei chang, National Taiwan Normal University