COIL overview
The Office of the Provost and International Academic Initiatives office continue to promote, foster, and support Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) at Montclair State University. This innovative, online, globalized pedagogy is a vital, nimble, and powerful tool of internationalization. By leveraging virtual exchange, COIL supports intercultural dialogue, shared curriculum development, and global engagement—without requiring physical travel. This approach enriches course content, fosters professional development, and expands global learning outcomes across institutions. All Montclair faculty are invited to develop COIL courses, to facilitate cross-border collaborative learning experiences for our Montclair students. Details about the COIL pedagogy and its benefits are detailed here by the State University of New York, a pioneer in this area.
COIL initiatives at Montclair State University have a strong history, and have thrived through partnerships between the Office of International Academic Initiatives, the Office of Faculty Excellence, and Instructional Technology and Design Services. COIL courses are particularly timely given the calls for comprehensive internationalization from the Global Reach Task Force, from the International Advisory Committee, and many other campus stakeholders. See below some details about recent courses taught using COIL pedagogy.
Colleagues Antonella Calarota-Ninman, Jean Alvares, and Christopher Kaczmarek were very active with COIL in 2023 and 2024, and recently there are additional faculty from CHSS, CEEL, SBUS, and CCOM who have completed COIL workshops and envisioned future COIL courses. We encourage faculty teaching in this modality to get to know one another and share challenges, successes, and good practices. The current COIL Coordinator for Montclair State University is Sandy Holder of the Office of International Academic Initiatives.
Student-Led International Collective Exhibition
COIL courses are effective across a wide range of disciplines. In Spring 2023, Professor Christopher Kaczmarek of Art & Design brought a fascinating course to life in partnership with a professor at the University of Dundee in Scotland. The course was a student-led creative and collaborative challenge designed to give students the opportunity to build transferable creative skills, and to give them an international exhibition credit on their resumes. Students envisioned and orchestrated a collective trans-Atlantic exhibition with a peer group from the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in Dundee, Scotland. Faculty from both universities guided the class with imagining the cloud of potential possibilities, working through a process to narrow the possibilities down into a plan, and then finding a way to make it happen. Part of the challenge was how to do a cohesive collective exhibition, not just an exhibition exchange. The students worked together to have works of art exist in two places at once, and were mindful of how the transport/translation of the work would impact its reception. As a culmination of these trans-Atlantic efforts, the collaborative work completed by both groups of students was shown simultaneously at exhibitions in Dundee, Scotland and Montclair, NJ.
