UzhNU teachers will soon have another opportunity to establish international cooperation

UzhNU continues to establish cooperation with American colleagues within the framework of the EducationUSA programme "Internationalisation Leadership Academy+". Namely, with the help of the COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) educational model, which was developed to implement internationalisation strategies and is used by teachers in many countries around the world. Currently, Antonina Bulyna, a senior lecturer at the Department of English Philology at UzhNU, is taking part in the COIL Coordinator Workshop, which will help her become a COIL coordinator. Later, as a COIL coordinator, she will support a colleague from Uzhhorod National University (who will also have the opportunity to join a separate training) in establishing a partnership with a representative of an American higher education institution.

The advantages of the COIL model are

- non-bureaucratic implementation - no need for bilateral agreements;

- international and intercultural experience for students, often also improving their foreign language skills and acquiring digital competences;

- the opportunity to gain international experience for non-mobile students (special care, employment, other restrictions on travelling abroad).

This is not the first COIL project coordinated by Antonina Bulyna. Last year, the international COIL virtual exchange project "Small Group Collaboration Using the Principles of Nonviolent Communication" was completed, which was implemented as part of the elective "Workshop on Nonviolent Communication (using fiction texts)", which lasted from September to December 2022 and was joined by 18 students from different courses and specialities of UzhNU. The "Workshop on Nonviolent Communication" was focused on raising awareness of violent and non-violent ways of communication. During the course, as part of the COIL virtual exchange project, students from Uzhhorod National University collaborated with students from California State University, Chico (USA).

Researchers who successfully completed the project last year were given the opportunity to apply for the COIL Coordinator Workshop. As a result, 10 future COIL coordinators were selected, who are now undergoing relevant training and receiving certificates and will help their colleagues coordinate a partnership with a representative of an American higher education institution.

Antonina Bulyna says: "COIL is a popular teaching and learning methodology that promotes global virtual exchange, equipping educators with the skills to successfully interact with groups of students from different universities. The COIL model creates a safe platform for joining the international academic environment and, undoubtedly, making personal and professional discoveries. I, as the coordinator, will provide the necessary support to help establish this cooperation with interested colleagues. The COIL model is easy to work with because it contains a lot of variability, is devoid of bureaucracy, and requires the desire of the lecturers themselves. In practice, it looks like this: two lecturers from different universities come together and work together on an agreed joint COIL module, and the disciplines they teach at their universities may not coincide, i.e. interdisciplinarity is encouraged. The basis of this model is precisely virtual exchange, which involves synchronous and asynchronous sessions - while remaining geographically in our own country, we can build connections, collaborate and constructively influence each other." 

So the coordinator of COIL:

- promotes COIL virtual exchanges in their institution;

- helps to find partners;

- facilitates first contacts between colleagues and their potential partners;

- provides support whenever requested.

"The COIL Coordinator workshop will run from 7 to 25 August. After that, an information meeting about COIL will be organised, where I will share all the details and benefits of this exchange model. In the future, we will work to coordinate at least one partnership with a representative of an American institution and a UzhNU professor by the end of December 2023, which they will be able to implement during the spring or autumn semester of the 2024 academic year, and thus present a case of a successfully completed project," adds the future COIL coordinator Antonina Bulyna.

Follow the link to visit the website of the centre that provides the training.

 

• International Activities