Abstract:

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) projects aim at achieving a common goal through team or pair work. Collaborative skills are among the top soft skills employers want from their employees. COIL as a teaching and learning method develops reflexivity skills, since at the core of a COIL experience students are asked to examine their own reactions and motives to face specific course contents (such as ways to feel about and act to find solutions for environmental problems) and they can also discuss analyse how and what other cultures do or think in the same situation. This particular COIL experience brought together two universities, one located in Canada and the other in Spain, both including students from different cultural provenance, customs and traditions.
COIL is a learning process that integrates different skills and attitudes to succeed in the workplace of the future. Among these skills, problem-solving, intercultural skills and collaboration skills are key to COIL projects. This presentation reports on a COIL project focusing on SDG13 with two student cohorts, one focussed on criminology and security studies and the other on sociology and critical thinking. This presentation shows how 21st century skills are developed in the online collaboration and how they may be seen as a step towards achieving collaborative skills in a professional environment. The project engaged students in discussion and debates about contemporary environmental and community issues, climate change/climate crisis, food security/urban development and the relationship between environmental problems and marginalization/exclusion, and racial discrimination.

Keywords:

Collaborative work, Collaborative online international learning (COIL), 21st century skills, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).