Internationalising Higher Education through Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL): Experiences from a UK–HK Teacher Education Partnership (June 5th, 2025)

Abstract

With recent technological advancements, COIL has become an increasingly popular model of international exchange in higher education. This approach promotes virtual international collaboration, fosters foreign language/content learning, and enhances intercultural awareness via the pedagogical principles of co-developed learning/teaching practices, shared learning outcomes, and deep collaboration. This webinar showcases how COIL can be applied to internationalise teacher education through a postgraduate course jointly organised by a Hong Kong/UK university. It reports on the COIL experiences of two cohorts of MA(TESOL) students (n=83/69) in a core module, English Language Teaching Methodology, offered by two universities, one in Hong Kong and the other in the UK. The COIL initiative sought to broaden the multilingual student-teachers’ repertoire of TESOL methodological practices, strengthen their multicultural competencies and sharpen their collaboration skills. With micro-teaching as the shared goal, they engage in collaborative lesson planning and material design, peer feedback, video annotation and joint reflections through various synchronous/asynchronous activities.

Adopting an action research framework, the teacher-educators sought ways to leverage the student-teachers’ COIL experiences in two cycles (12 weeks each). Data were collected via web-based interactions in spoken and written forms, artefacts of the student-teachers’ work (lesson plans/teaching materials), video-recorded teaching practice, questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, reflective (video) essays, and observational notes. The findings reveal the participants’ notable pedagogic gains and personal growth despite several challenges. The paper highlights the strategies that were found to work to good effect in heightening their multicultural awareness, fostering professional exchanges and peer learning in the target language, and honing their communication/collaboration skills. It concludes by discussing how COIL activities can be strategically devised and implemented using a task-based approach, how learner empowerment can be advocated, and how combining synchronous/asynchronous methods can enhance multicultural awareness.

Speaker

About the Speaker

Nicole J. Tavares is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Her expertise is in English language teaching (ELT) methodology and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Her research interests range from technology-enhanced good ELT and CLIL practices to the impact of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), Collaborative Online Annotation Platforms (COAP) and other technological tools on teacher professional development. Some of her work has been published in Computers & Education, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, RELC Journal, English Teaching & Learning, Modern English Teacher, and others. Nicole has received multiple teaching awards, notably the HKU Teaching Innovation Award (2020), her Faculty’s Emergency Remote Teaching Award (2020), and the HKU Outstanding Teaching Award (2015).

Jim Y.H. Chan is a Lecturer in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at Newcastle University. Before he moved to the UK, he was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at The University of Hong Kong. His research interests include English as a lingua franca, global Englishes, language use, attitudes and identities, ELT material design, phonology, bilingual education, language-in-education policy, and TESOL pedagogy and assessment. Some of his recent work has been published in TESOL Quarterly, Language Teaching Research, World Englishes, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Language and Education, System, Language Assessment Quarterly, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, Asian Englishes, RELC Journal and The Journal of Asia TEFL.

Date

June 5th, 2025

Time

5-6 PM (HK Time) / 10-11 AM (UK Time)

Location

Zoom (https://hku.zoom.us/meeting/register/3qnu01j8T6KswO-uj1-spw )