Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Incubator Program
COIL creates virtual exchange experiences that connect your students with faculty and peers overseas and can provide them with opportunities to work with international peers to undertake projects or solve problems that help students master your course content.
Global engagement, even when it happens from the comfort of home, is broadly understood to be a high-impact teaching practice that helps students better learn how to engage with others—skills they will need in the workforce, no matter what they study. COIL is a great strategy for providing students with a meaningful opportunity for global engagement.
COIL can involve collaboration between two similar classes covering the same subject matter, but it can also be interdisciplinary, involving two classes on different topics or in different disciplines that can find a point of convergence in a shared activity, often built around a project. Some examples to stimulate your thinking:
- A course on fashion design and marketing and a course on supply chain management work together in small groups on a fast fashion project.
- A US-based communications COIL with an advanced English language class and students interview each other and give speeches or presentations on some dimension of the other student's culture.
Participants in the seminar will participate in three meetings during the Spring term to develop a plan to incorporate COIL into a course they will teach in the 2026-2027 academic year. If you don't already have a partner, we will do our best to help you identify one so that you can collaborate with the partner to work out details between the seminar meetings. We especially welcome faculty wishing to work with partners at University of Costa Rica or Regensburg University and are happy to facilitate the development of appropriate connections with these strategic university partners.
- To participate, you do NOT need: Existing (or any) international content in your course.
- Non-English language fluency.
Expected outcomes for the program are that you define:
1. At least one learning outcome for one or more undergraduate or graduate classes that would not be achievable without having a COIL component.
2. Strategies to overcome potential temporal or language barriers and ensure effective online engagement (synchronous or asynchronous).
3. A project or activity that you will undertake with your COIL partner.
Timeline:
1. The seminar will meet 3 times in person to progress toward achieving the outcomes outlined above. Meetings are tentatively set for: March 11 and April 15 from 12:00-1:30 and at a date TBD during finals week.
2. Teach the target course in Fall 2026 or Spring 2027.
3. Submit a brief final report (~ 2 pages) on their assessment of the course modifications by January 30, 2027 (for fall courses) or June 30, 2027 (for spring courses)
4. Share the results of their work in a poster (with support from a CTE graduate student fellow) at the CTE Celebration of Teaching in May 2027. The poster and related materials will also be submitted to KU Scholarworks, or seminar participants can choose to develop a portfolio (again, with support from a CTE graduate student fellow).
Who is eligible?
Faculty (including teaching specialists, teaching professors, and multi-term lecturers) from any department or academic program on the KU Lawrence or Edwards Campus can apply.
How will you benefit from participating?
In addition to what you (and your students) will gain from the COIL experience, you will also:
- Become part of an intellectual community of colleagues from across campus who are interested in embedding meaningful international engagement in their students’ learning experiences.
- Receive a $1000 stipend/professional fund (please note that if you take this as a stipend, the amount you receive will be reduced by taxes and fringe, and professional funds must be spent by the end of the current fiscal year which is June 1). Up to four of these stipends must be used to support COIL activities with either University of Costa Rica or Regensburg University.
- If your proposed project would benefit from international travel to a particular nation or region, KUIA may be able to provide additional support of up to $1000.
How do you apply? Submit an application by February 13 at this link. The application should address the following:
1. What course do you propose to focus on, and why?
2. What learning outcome(s) might you adapt or create to involve some kind of information exchange or collaborative project with overseas partners?
3. Do you have an existing collaboration or connection with University of Costa Rica (UCR), Regensberg University (RU), or another institution outside the US that you wish to build into a COIL? If so, please list the name and affiliation of your collaborator and describe the nature of your collaboration.
4. If you don’t have a connection, tell us what discipline(s) you’d be open to connecting with (transdisciplinary COIL projects can be a great way to bring something new to your class). To help you answer this question, you might think about what kinds of projects or activities your students could do collaboratively, and what other disciplines teach courses that could connect to that project. If you would like to discuss ideas prior to submitting your application, feel free to reach out to Megan Greene at mgreene@ku.edu
5. If you believe your project would be improved by your own international travel to meet with potential COIL partners, tell us about the location and how your contact could lead to longer-term relationships regarding teaching and research.
Selection criteria
Selection will be based on applicants’ openness to teaching innovation and curricular internationalization, applicants' interest in engaging with an interdisciplinary faculty community, and our ability to match you with a partner. We may be in touch with you as we try to identify a good match.
Participants accepted into the program will be notified by February 20, 2026.
Questions? Contact Megan Greene or Prajna Dhar at with any questions.