3. Exchanging knowledge

Visualizations is an obvious choice in your COIL project. The digital learning space makes it easy and flexible to include pictures, films or drawings. Just upload! Visualizations support learning and scaffold understanding when knowledge exchange is challenged due to international, intercultural and language barriers. Therefore, instead of just using words, try also to include visual expressions.

Exchanging pictures or videos related to a professional field: Students are ususally highly motivated to learn about how their professional field unfolds in a different context. In the UCOILD project we asked students to exchange pictures & videos of local playgrounds in relation to a project on ideal playgrounds:

Visualizations in presentations: Visualizations can also be allowed as a dominant part of a student presentations. In the UCOILD project, Norwegian students had already before the COIL project taken part in a project where they developed a nature playground. As this focus was highly relevant for a COIL focusing on an ideal playground, the teachers made the Norwegian students present their aquired knowledge and experiences – but by using visualizations dominantly:

Knowledge is not only exchanged cognitively, but also by sharing body movements and expressions. In the fields of pedagogy, social and early childhood studies this is highly relevant as the body is a key pedagogical instrument. In the UCOILD project we have worked with video-exchanges and live-streaming to support the exchange of variations in body movements:

Video-exchanges: In “the dance, fight and play project”, students were asked to prepare a video of a children’s play to present to students from a partner country. The videos were used to investigate body movements related to childrens’ play in different contexts (read more about the project under co-creating)

Live-streaming: If you have IT-support at campus, you can set-up a learning environment where students meet to exchange body movements and expressions synchronously. In the “circus COIL project” students were gathered in a Norwegian and a Danish gym hall, watching each other on big screens, realizing a circus performance together (read more about the project under co-creating):

ONLINE EXPERTS: In the UCOILD project we have experimented with various expert roles integrated into the digital learning space.

The teacher as a traditional expert x 2: In a learning space teachers represent the traditional experts. In a COIL you partner up with an international colleague and therefore you are suddenly more teacher experts in the room – probably also representing different expert fields. Make use of it!  In the UCOILD project we not only took advantage of giving students lectures from new expert angles. We also made teachers into go-to-experts:

The teacher as a go-to expert: In COIL students are often working independently in digital group rooms. To support this way of learning we placed specific teacher experts in general online rooms (alterantively you could open chat channels) for students to come and visit, if they decided that they needed advice. The ambition was not only to support students in achieving the right knowledge, but also to establish a more student-centered way of achieving knowledge.

Students as experts: It can be inspiring and motivating to make use of concrete knowledge achieved by specific student groups in a COIL project. In the UCOILD project, Norwegian students had in a previous semester worked in depth with a subject relevant for the COIL project. Therefore, teachers acknowledged their expertise and made them present this relevant knowledge to their co-students from The Netherlands.

ONLINE RESOURCES: In the UCOILD project we worked with several international online resources in relation to the fields of pedagogy, social and early childhood studies and beyond, that could support international knowledge exchange:

Written resources simply refers to the recommended academic literature that students are adviced to read. We mention this, because it can sometimes be a challenge for COIL teachers to agree on academic texts. A word of advice is to make each teacher choose a text of their preference, e.g., a translated academic text from each country. This will often put the chosen subject into perspective from different academic angles – which is exactly one of the overall ambitions with COIL (see the I-TPACK-I model)

For scaffolding students’ reading, we used a reading template in the UCOILD project that you can download here:

In a COIL project it is always relevant to explore differences and similarities of different national contexts, be it the educational, childcare or other relevant systems. This support students’ analytical skills and critical reflection, and will also support the learning process when students dive into a more specific COIL theme. Below, a few examples on how the UCOILD project has worked with comparing systems and expanding context knowledge:

Discussion cards is a great way to work with discovering similarities and differences on childcare. In the UCOILD project students were given discussion cards and met online to share context knowledge scaffolded by these cards:

Reflection paper: The discussion could also be scaffolded by a reflection paper organizing student reflections taken place during the dialogue on comparing systems:

Padlet is another good way of organizing knowledge exchange on similarities and differences in e.g. childcare systems. In the UCOILD project national student groups were asked to explain their childcare systems on a padlet, using pictures of indoor/outdoor spaces and presenting country/policy plans. This can be done asynchronously – or synchronously where students meeting online can comment on their padlet presentations