A STRATEGY FOR INTERNATIONALIZING THE CURRICULA IN A HISPANIC-SERVING INSTITUTION
General description of the project
General description of the project.
To increase educational access and success for the Hispanic population in the United States of America, under Title III and Title V of the Higher Education Act of 1965, Higher Education Institutions (HEI), with at least 25% of the student Hispanic population, were designated as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HIS). Today, HSIs represent 16% of all higher education institutions in the country and serve 65% of all Hispanic students.
Nowadays, HEIs, including HSI focus on internationalizing their curricula and ensuring that their students acquire intercultural capabilities that allow them to function as global citizens and global professionals.
The Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) model is an innovative strategy that allows professors to internationalize the curricula, by providing students opportunities to learn and relate with international peers in multicultural virtual environments, with low or even no additional cost to tuition.
This paper presents a strategy that was implemented in the College of Business and Entrepreneurship in a HIS, to offer a joint course with a European University, for the internationalization of the curricula.
Qualitative research by surveying students allows us to gather relevant information on their approaches to managing multicultural contexts as a result of taking part in a virtual international classroom.
Examples or evidence that shows success
COIL courses provide teaching and learning experiences across countries/continents, across disciplines, and often expose participants to different home languages and cultures using a variety of materials, activities, and assessments.
A brief summary of the participant students at the end of the joint course is as follows:
• The COIL course is interesting since they are international students and it’s great to work with them.
• I really enjoyed the COIL, it was fun!
• Successful experience getting to work with students in a foreign country.
• It was a great experience I learned a lot.
• It has helped me gain experience in working with people with different cultural views and practices.
• Different, new, challenging, and cool.
• Learning about the management world.
The cost-effectiveness of the initiative
The COIL model could be one cost-effective solution for universities to internationalize curricula, develop new partnerships globally, and provide their students with international learning opportunities and global competencies. COIL courses use technology innovatively to foster collaboration between faculty and students in partner institutions worldwide, and to facilitate student learning (the SUNY COIL Center, n.d.). As campuses systematically update classroom technology to include virtual exchange communication tools, usually, no additional technology is required. Instead, existing hardware and software available on the partner campuses as well as technologies housed in the instructors’ and students’ homes/dorms are used. Thus, when taking a COIL course, students do not need to make a huge commitment financially or in terms of time, compared to their peers who study abroad (Fowler, Pearlman, LeSavoy, & Hemphill, 2014). Instead, the students take the course in their current institution and use existing networking technology for communication and collaboration, which adds no additional cost (Zhang & Pearlman, 2017).
Technologies
The strategy that was used to internationalize the curricula in the College of Business and Entrepreneurship at the UTRGV is the technology-enhanced Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL).
COIL is an innovative learning model that enhances cross-cultural student competence through the development of multicultural learning environments that link university or college classes in different countries.
COIL adds a global perspective to the syllabus enhancing real international/intercultural interactions with a shared goal:
• Two classrooms are connected across borders and time zones.
• Each professor teaches their own syllabus and curriculum.
• COIL does require co-teaching or virtually linked classrooms with shared lectures.
• Students work in small, bi-national teams, on manageable projects with clearly defined deliverables, and the emphasis is placed on intercultural understanding and collaboration among learning the class discipline.
The COIL strategy that we wanted to share at the Conference is a 3-week joint course implemented in the Fall semester of 2021, which was named COIL-Fall2021 Entrepreneurship & Principles of Management.
The adscription of the two professors who designed the course is the College of Business and Entrepreneurship, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) which is a HSI, and the Faculty of Economics, University of Niš, Serbia, respectively.
The COIL joint course counted 104 participants (50 from UTRGV and 54 from UNiš) enrolled from November 12 to December 3, 2021.
Our course technology is based on the use of a very common Learning Management System (LMS), Blackboard.
The prerequisites to participate in this COIL course is to be enrolled in MGMT-3361 Principles of Management or BBSc-4430 Entrepreneurship, at the COBE-UTRGV or the Faculty of Economics and the College of Business, UNiš, respectively; and, to have a firm wish to collaborate and participate in the frame of diversity, and multiculturality, under a business college-level approach.
Three-course objectives were settled for the COIL joint course: Identify the opportunities and challenges associated with diversity and inclusion and the steps managers and their organizations can take to cultivate diversity and manage globally; implement the best practices to work within multicultural and multilingual teams; and assess the business options to start an enterprise with international partners.
The course goals are as follows: students will develop intercultural competencies by critically analyzing the effects of stereotyping in the workplace, the best practices for effective teamwork, and the opportunities and challenges that arise from working with international partners.
The Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) to be reached at the end of this course are students will be able to: develop awareness and understanding of cultural similarities and differences; develop teamwork skills in international and multicultural environments; and identify entrepreneurial opportunities in local and global settings.
During the implementation stage of four weeks, the students got to know their classmates, attended lectures, shared their takes on the discussion boards, and worked in teams on a common assignment. The detailed activities for each section are described in the Methodology section.
Explain project results
Explain how project results or accomplishments helped the institution or students in the track selected with a Hispanic focus. *
The first goal of HSIs is to increase educational access and success for the nation’s Hispanic population. HSIs represent 16% of all higher education institutions yet serve 65% of all Hispanic students.
This COIL international course was designed for students enrolled in the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) which is a public research university with multiple campuses throughout the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas and is the southernmost member of the University of Texas System, besides being the second largest Hispanic-serving institution in the United States of America (USA), with a student population that is approximately 92% Hispanic (UTRGV, College of Education and P-16 Integration, Division of Academic Affairs, n.d.).
By designing and implementing the COIL model joint course we are emphasizing the education of students from Hispanic backgrounds and helping to develop their inclusion, diversity, and global competencies to become leaders and professionals who are culturally fluent and have a deep understanding of the perspectives, languages, and values of people from diverse backgrounds, and managing global others.
Why it should be considered best practice?
Discuss why this project should be considered a “best practice” and be replicated. *
In terms of European policy where the virtual exchange is beginning to find a space, it is not seen as a replacement for student or youth mobility, but rather as a complement, since it offers a means of providing intercultural, international experience through sustained online projects in formal or informal educational contexts. In this sense it can be a stimulus for a study abroad experience, instilling curiosity and providing the confidence and competences which can enrich a period of study abroad (Jager et al. 2019).
With the development of technology and the strengthening of international collaboration and connectivity, COIL has become a valuable approach to pedagogy as part of internationalizing the curriculum, with scope for diversity of practices across all subjects (Shulteis, Moore & Sunka, 2015).
The opportunities that the COIL model implementation are listed as follows:
Students’ competences development.
Interinstitutional/international collaboration.
The presence of HIS (UTRGV) in the world.
New COIL generations.
Research opportunities (in teaching, and management fields).
Definitively, COIL enables students to develop sensitivity to different intercultural contexts and knowledge perspectives in the way that real-world industry has to operate in work practices across different countries. This finding is supported by Wimpenny et al. (2016) research regarding COIL benefits in preparing graduates for complexity.
Highlights of your proposed presentation
Highlights of your proposed presentation
The COIL courses offer college students in a HIS a platform to enhance student-to-student interactions and emphasize experiential and collaborative learning. By using COIL, the students are engaged to learn course content through their own and the other’s unique cultural lenses, build knowledge together, and develop diverse personal relationships through negotiation of meaning when working in virtual teams (Fowler, Pearlman, LeSavoy, & Hemphill, 2014). Accordingly, technology-enhanced COIL courses help increase not only intercultural awareness but also online intercultural communicative competence, so that students are better prepared for work and show civil engagement in a global context (Zhang & Pearlman, 2017).
In addition to the benefits to students, technology-enhanced COIL courses offer professional development and opportunities to faculty and staff members through networking and collaboration. It is a cost-effective pathway to internationalize curricula and an avenue to develop new partnerships globally (Fowler, Pearlman, LeSavoy, & Hemphill, 2014).
The international virtual classroom, under the COIL model, organized for students on two continents, with different customs, languages, and cultures, represents an interactive space for learning.
Students were participating in a multicultural and multilingual context which brings more opportunities for motivation to learn and develop communication skills.
Besides the learnings that comes from course materials by themselves (principles of management and entrepreneurship), students improved their intercultural and teamwork competencies to be applied in professional environments.
…and lessons learned.
Yet virtual exchange is no panacea: the design and implementation of virtual exchange projects require time, resources, experience and support, and the outcomes are not always predictable or always successful.
Technology might be another obstacle. For example, some campuses may not use learning management systems such as Blackboard as their teaching and learning system, while others may not have access to certain free online collaboration tools. Lack of funding might prevent potential instructors from attending the necessary professional development events; course development, promotion, and marketing; and COIL-related research. Lack of understanding and support, time, technology, funding, and resources are all possible challenges to the success of COIL courses (Zhang & Pearlman, 2017).
Despite the benefits technology-enhanced COIL courses bring to Hispanic-American and international students, faculty, and institutions, it is important to point out the lack of pedagogical and instructional support, and ongoing technological professional development for faculty who teach online (Bailey & Card, 2009; Van Rooij & Zirkle, 2016). Thus, it is essential for the administrators to support and recognize the work of the participants. It is also worthwhile for higher education institutions to explore the possibilities for overcoming the challenges and offering faculty and students collaborative online international course experiences.
Some of the challenges of working in virtual classrooms are the differences in:
• time zones (in this case a difference of 7 hours)
• languages
• institutional cultures and expectations
• semester periods
• course contents
• methods for learning assessment
• quality assurance systems
• issues of technology
• lack of technical and administrative support
The Evaluation Committee will evaluate submitted proposals based on the following criteria. Each area will be rated on a scale from 1 to 7 (1= non-satisfactory; 7 =outstanding), for a maximum of 63 points.