Educational Alternatives, Volume 22, 2024

Streszczenie: During the COVID-19 pandemic, study abroad programs in the universities all over the world were exceptionally limited due to campus closures and travel restrictions. An innovative Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) program was developed in a quantitative business core course. Students from Salem State University paired with students from Xi’an University of Posts and Communications to work on an assigned course project over a five-week period. Without traveling abroad, students had meaningful and valuable engagement with peers in another country. COIL is a practical way to prepare students for diversity and multi-culture while still helps fulfill academic program goals in their home universities. Additionally, COIL helps faculty leverage the utility of online learning technologies and structure the course in support of the social and emotional well-being of students during the COVID-19 pandemic. This COIL effort also has potential to show promising progress and fruitful results in business courses redesign. Courses in other disciplines could benefit from a properly designed COIL beyond the pandemic. The positive outcome of this COIL effort was supported by student survey. Survey result is discussed and future research direction is explored.