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INMACULADA FORTANET-GÓMEZ
Universitat Jaume I
fortanet@uji.es
<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8981-565X>
VIKTORIIA DROBOTUN
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine
v.drobotun@knu.ua
<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5628-6381>
COLLABORATIVE ONLINE INTERNATIONAL
LEARNING (COIL) BETWEEN SPANISH
AND UKRAINIAN STUDENTS: NEW TASKS
AND NEW RELATIONSHIPS
APRENDIZAJE INTERNACIONAL COLABORATIVO
EN LÍNEA (COIL) ENTRE ESTUDIANTADO ESPAÑOL
Y UCRANIANO: NUEVAS TAREAS
Y NUEVAS RELACIONES
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_misc/mj.202511126
Abstract
Nowadays, our professional lives face challenges that inevitably require a quick
reaction and a shift in the field of education. Moreover, globalisation and the
ongoing war in Ukraine motivate teachers to look for new opportunities to
communicate across cultures. This research aims to analyse students’ perceptions
of the effects of collaborative online international learning (COIL). The study
participants were 12 fourth-year Ukrainian students from Taras Shevchenko
National University of Kyiv who were taking the course on Academic English
within the Languages, Literature and Translation program and a group of 20
Spanish fifth-year students from Universitat Jaume I who were enrolled in the
Business English course as part of the dual degree in Business Administration
and Law. The methodology consisted of three stages. Firstly, participants used
online communication tools to establish contacts with partners. Secondly,
students discussed the topic of corporate sustainability on Zoom. Thirdly, each
group used online collaborative teaching (OCT) to write an opinion essay.
Results from the final questionnaire after the COIL experience confirmed that,
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despite the difficulties due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, students’ perceptions
of their experience of COIL were positive. They were more motivated and
believed the activity had helped them to improve their writing and speaking skills
as well as their intercultural competence.
Keywords: collaborative online international learning, online collaborative
teaching, IT tools, intercultural competence, students’ learning self-perception.
Resumen
Actualmente, nuestra vida profesional se enfrenta a retos que inevitablemente
requieren una rápida reacción y un cambio en la educación. Además, la
globalización, y la guerra en curso en Ucrania, motivan al profesorado a buscar
nuevas oportunidades para la comunicación intercultural. Esta investigación
pretende analizar los efectos que produce en el estudiantado una experiencia de
aprendizaje internacional colaborativo en línea (COIL por sus siglas en inglés).
Los participantes en el estudio fueron 12 estudiantes ucranianos de la Taras
Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (Ucrania) de una asignatura de Inglés
Académico en el cuarto curso del programa de Lenguas, Literatura y Traducción,
y 20 estudiantes españoles de la Universitat Jaume I matriculados en Inglés para
los Negocios en el quinto curso del doble grado de Administración de Empresas
y Derecho. La metodología constó de tres fases. En primer lugar, los participantes
se comunicaron en línea para establecer un primer contacto. En segundo lugar,
debatieron sobre sostenibilidad corporativa en Zoom. En tercer lugar, cada grupo
redactó un ensayo de opinión en colaboración. Los resultados del cuestionario
final confirmaron que, a pesar de las dificultades debidas a la guerra en Ucrania,
la percepción del estudiantado sobre su experiencia con COIL fue positiva.
Estuvieron más motivados e indicaron que esta actividad les había ayudado a
mejorar sus destrezas orales y escritas, y su competencia intercultural.
Palabras clave: aprendizaje internacional colaborativo en línea, enseñanza
colaborativa en línea, herramientas informáticas, competencia intercultural,
percepción del aprendizaje por los estudiantes.
1. Introduction
COIL (collaborative online international learning) is considered to be “a new
teaching and learning paradigm that promotes the development of intercultural
competence across shared multicultural learning environments” (Rubin and
Wilson n.d.). COIL requires the engagement of a global network to provide a
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context for virtual communication and collaboration among participants. This
type of online learning gathers at least two groups of representatives from
different cultural backgrounds and educational programs located in another city,
country, continent and even time zone. Furthermore, participants in COIL
initiatives may study different subjects, which means that an interdisciplinary
approach is also one of the components of COIL. This type of collaborative
learning can be synchronous or asynchronous, and language is the aspect that
unites the participants. The beneficial outcomes of participation in COIL appear
to be intercultural information exchange and practice with both previously and
newly gained skills (Hackett et al. 2023).
Another valuable point is the opportunity to receive information about the world
through eyes, senses, emotions and understanding directly from those who
experience them. In such a way, we can form images and perceptions of the world.
That is why COIL can promote students’ intercultural awareness and foster their
curiosity and motivation to learn more.
After gaining the experience of working outside the classroom during the two
years of the COVID-19 pandemic, educators and students have become more
acquainted with a wide range of educational IT platforms and tools. COVID-19
forced teachers to understand that the world, which was previously perceived as a
‘small global village’ where people had a great number of opportunities to travel,
work, study and actually explore, may at a certain times force us into isolation,
causing us to become unreachable.In this setting, teachers, now equipped with
the skills to work online, feel more confident and ready to gain new experience in
implementing the COIL methodology in their classrooms.
COIL fosters communication and collaboration across cultures without requiring
physical border-crossing and can broaden students’ awareness of cross-cultural
communication and foster multicultural literacy. Students may participate in
activities abroad, not only by acquiring new knowledge and improving skills
developed previously, but also by sharing ideas, knowledge and experiences while
staying at home and attending classes at their university. Moreover, this kind of
activity requires the involvement of modern means of communication that are
tightly connected with IT programs, platforms and applications, thereby enhancing
students’ digital literacy. In other words, COIL may help to raise a generation of
technologically savvy global citizens with profound knowledge of others.
2. Literature Review
In the search for new angles and approaches for teaching and learning foreign
languages, growing attention is being given to COIL (O’Dowd 2016; Marull and
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Kumar 2020). Virtual exchange is considered to be an umbrella term for COIL
(O’Dowd 2018), which is broader. There is a wide range of terminology used to
denote technology-based learning and collaboration: online intercultural
exchange (O’Dowd 2016), telecollaboration (Sonnenwald et al. 1999; Lee and
Markey 2014; O’Dowd 2016), globally networked learning (Crabtree et al. 2008;
McNair and Paretti 2010), internet-mediated intercultural foreign language
education (Belz and Thorne 2006) and e-tandem (O’Rourke 2007) or teletandem
(Telles and Leone 2016). The authors of this research agreed to use the term
COIL, as for us, such notions as internationalisation and online learning are of
central importance.
As great attention is paid nowadays to global citizenship education around the
world, COIL approaches can be employed to foster “a flexible body of issues,
skills, attitudes, and sensitivities that enable individuals to be thoughtful,
responsible, participatory citizens of their local community, state, nation, and
world” (Cruz 1998: 28). This means that by applying COIL, instructors may
engage participants in meaningful interactions, such as dialogues between
students from different cultures. This approach fosters cross-cultural awareness
and helps students discover common ground while also encouraging an
appreciation of the uniqueness of their own and others’ perspectives. To reach
this goal, classroom discussions about messages or problems depicted in videos or
articles are beneficial, as they encourage students to draw on their knowledge and
share experiences. Furthermore, the received knowledge, which is the product of
collaboration with peers, could be a valuable source for further assignments, both
oral and written (O’Dowd 2016). Thus, this type of online collaboration and
communication has become vital for researchers and language learners as,
through partnerships and networks, students perform various tasks and improve
both their language skills and background knowledge of the topic.
O’Dowd (2016) delves into the tendency to involve university students in
collaboration exchanges in many ways. For instance, the use of English, French,
Spanish or other languages as a lingua franca can successfully build and develop
students’ intercultural and sociocultural competence and awareness of the role of
a language in intercultural communication. Such activities enable the development
of critical reflective skills of primary importance in our modern world, as they may
help sustain peace and the principles of democracy or build cultural and economic
contacts. Recognising COIL approaches helps improve soft skills and professional
knowledge in the younger generation, which in turn might contribute to mitigating
or preventing future economic crises and armed conflicts.
Moreover, King de Ramirez (2019) provides COIL project results among students
enrolled in universities located in the Arizona-Sonora Megaregion. Using various
platforms such as Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, Gaming, Snapchat and Instagram,
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participants collaborated in communication to discuss the political debates held
due to the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
The aim of the project was to understand whether international online
communication could increase students’ awareness of intersections between local
and global communities. In this research, COIL was intended to remedy a general
lack of knowledge and communication between students who live in the Arizona-
Sonora Megaregion within 70 miles of the United States-Mexico Border in either
one or the other country. This can be considered an example of how collaborative
initiatives can foster the development of essential global competences, including
the ability to analyse international relations, critically appraise media and
recognise the intricate connections that shape global interdependence. All of the
aforementioned experiences demonstrate that COIL enhances global citizenship
and language skills (Marginson and Sawir 2011).
The successful implementation of COIL encourages educators to conduct
research and analyse the merits of COIL in different fields of science, as shown in
the research conducted by Rubin (Center for Innovation in Teaching and
Learning 2017), who implemented a four-credit COIL course on video
production for university students from Belarus and the US. The purpose of the
course was to identify and improve cross-cultural and professional competence.
As part of the research, each team of students produced a 4-minute film on the
theme chosen and later emailed the final video to the members of the second
team. The outcomes reflected an improvement in professional skills and
meaningful international experiences that enhanced cross-cultural sensitivity,
comprehension and perception of the different images of the world (Center for
Innovation in Teaching and Learning 2017).
Similarly, another group of educators implemented technology-based learning in
a virtual exchange project between the Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi Hryhorii
Skovoroda State Pedagogical, Ukraine, and Trakia University, Bulgaria
(Rzhevskaya et al. 2020). The researchers found that students enrolled in non-
engineering fields of study used well-known tools for their collaboration, resulting
in a positive impact on their outcomes and gained further appreciation for
learning new IT skills for successful cooperation and communication. Therefore,
alongside improving language skills and communicating across cultures, students
acquired new knowledge in the field of digital literacy.
The study carried out by Orsini-Jones and Lee (2018) provides an account of a
COIL project dealing with the integration of global citizenship education into
the curriculum and assessment of language courses provided at Coventry
University, in the United Kingdom, and the Université de Haute-Alsace, in
France. Students from both institutions used a common learning management
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system, where they participated in activities related to developing strategies for
intercultural pragmatics and netiquette.
Previous research has highlighted that students perceive COIL as an excellent tool
to boost language skills, raise cross-cultural awareness, enhance professional
knowledge and skills and develop critical thinking and IT literacy (Nguyen et al.
2024). It allows educators to engage at least two groups of students from
universities in different counties or even continents to participate in discussions on
socially relevant topics and to work collaboratively through an online platform
using a lingua franca. Nguyen et al. (2024) found different ways in which students
perceived an improvement of English as a lingua franca. On the one hand, they
made an effort to make themselves understood and to understand their interlocutors
by means of the resources available in online communication. As other authors
(Çiftçi and Savaş, 2018) point out, in telecollaboration, learners’ abilities to
communicate and adapt interculturally can be boosted through problem-solving.
Furthermore, Nguyen et al. (2024) showed that students believed COIL had
helped them develop not only their English skills but also their attitudes, awareness,
knowledge and intercultural skills, making them more confident to use English.
3. Objectives and Research Questions
Though previous studies have explored the use of COIL, to our knowledge none
has dealt with COIL between Spanish and Ukrainian students, especially in
wartime. This research aims to determine whether students perceive that COIL
can create advantages for learning the English language and make them aware of
cross-cultural communication, while they learn new content and cultural aspects.
In order to reach this objective, the following research questions will be answered:
RQ 1. What is the students’ perception on how COIL affects English language
learning in interdisciplinary settings?
RQ 2. What additional benefits for global education do students report after
the implementation of COIL?
4. The Study
4.1. Participants and Context
The study participants comprised 32 students from two groups: one consisting of
fourth- and fifth-year students enrolled at Universitat Jaume I (UJI), Spain, and
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another from the Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology, Taras
Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in Ukraine (KNU). The students in the
first group belonged to the dual degree in Business and Law who took the English
for Specific Purposes (ESP) course titled Business English at UJI. The second
group consisted of 12 students enrolled in a degree in Turkish, Persian, Chinese
and English language and literature, and took a course in academic English at
KNU. Although the special circumstances of Ukrainian students (most located in
a country at war) were not taken into account for the development of the COIL
activity and the research study, they inevitably affected participants’ performance
in several ways.
In November 2022, the second author of this article was a visiting professor at
the UJI, teaching online at KNU, and together with the first author organised a
series of COIL activities between students of the two institutions. Firstly, the
students communicated online to establish contacts and find out information
about the other country’s customs and traditions as well as the university itself.
For this purpose, students at both universities were divided into 12 groups and
provided with the email addresses of their interlocutors to conduct the first online
meeting outside the classroom. Then, all students had an online class (Google
Meet) as part of their coursework. In the case of the KNU students, it was based
on the course book Global: Level Advanced, 2nd edition by Lindsay Clandfield and
Amanda Jeffries, Macmillan, 2016, and Academic Writing, A Handbook for
International Students, 3rd edition by Stephen Bailey, Routledge, 2011. Regarding
the students at the UJI, the class was about the specific disciplinary discourse of
business in English. In both groups, the goal was to introduce the characteristics
of academic discourse and to learn the strategies of source-based writing, the
ways scientists integrate their ideas into their written texts, using paraphrasing,
citations and stylistic devices to express different points of view; and rules for
organising a list of references according to the APA, 7th edition.
4.2. The Task: Instruments and Procedure
The task was divided into 3 parts. First, the students in each group were assigned
a partner from the other institution. As the number of students was not the same
in both institutions, some Ukrainian students were assigned 2 Spanish students.
The first part of the task consisted of establishing contact.
To facilitate this, all students were provided with a guide for the first virtual
40-minute interview, which included a list of 13 open-ended questions (see
Appendix 1). The file was published on Google Classroom (for Ukrainian
students) and Moodle (for Spanish students). This questionnaire was designed so
that students could collect information about their counterparts’ academic
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background, personal interests and perspectives on their studies. Students’
responses provided their partners with insights on the country and its culture and
traditions. Additionally, in order to foster successful academic collaboration, it was
essential for them to know more about their partners’ study habits and learning
preferences as well as their attitude toward time management and responsibility.
The aim of the second and third parts of the task was to learn about the discussion
topic of corporate sustainability and the norms of written and spoken academic
English. As preparation, students were provided with some instructions on the
conventions of academic English and two scientific articles on corporate
sustainability (Montiel and Delgado-Ceballos 2014; Michie 2018) which they
had to read during the following week. Then, as a second part of the task, they
were asked to participate in a live discussion on the topic, for which UJI students
were in the classroom and connected online through Google Meet with KNU
students, who were online and outside the classroom setting. To stimulate this
discussion, they were provided with some questions to answer:
1. What do you think “corporate sustainability” is?
2. Are many companies committed to it?
3. Why? Why not?
4. Which aspects of corporate sustainability do companies mainly pay attention
to: governance, product, economic and social impact, environment, energy
saving?
5. Do big and small companies implement corporate sustainability measures in
the same way?
6. How do you see the future of corporate sustainability?
After the discussion, students were given two more weeks to asynchronously
prepare a collaborative academic research-informed opinion essay on corporate
sustainability and then submit it as a Google Doc, as the third part of the task. In
order to fulfill this task, they were provided with the instructions appearing in
Appendix 2. Although an assessment of the quality of the essays is out of the
scope of this research, it should be pointed out that they were assessed according
to a rubric made known to the students and shared by both instructors, and the
mark received for this thask counted for 15% of the final grade.
Before concluding the collaborative writing task, the students were asked to
voluntarily fill in an anonymous questionnaire in a Google Form to analyse the
outcomes of their collaboration (see Appendix 3). All the respondents gave their
express consent to the processing of their data, and all personal and private
information was anonymised and treated confidentially. The questionnaire
consisted of 13 multiple-choice, open-ended and linear-scale questions, which
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were designed to evaluate students’ experience and perception of their collaborative
online learning.
In order to achieve the study aims and answer the research questions, we analysed
the anonymous answers provided voluntarily by students in the final questionnaire:
their perception on the contribution of COIL to their English language learning
and what it had meant as an intercultural and personal experience. Although 32
students participated in the COIL activities, the number of respondents to the
second questionnaire was 27 (18 Spanish students and 9 Ukrainians). The
answers were coded as Sp and Uk and assigned a number indicating the order in
which the response was received. In the next section, the responses to this
questionnaire will be analysed in order to answer the research questions.
5. Results and Discussion
Before answering the research questions, there are some data about the participating
students that need to be highlighted. It was essential to know whether the students
had any experience in participating in COIL activities; the answers to questions 1
and 2 would help predict obstacles and barriers to participating successfully. In the
case of UJI students, 90% acknowledged it was their first COIL experience, and for
56% of them, this was the first time they communicated with someone for whom
English was not their native language. In the case of KNU students, it was
surprising that for all of them it was the first time they had contacted foreigners
with whom they could only speak in English, even though for only 60% of the
students it was their first COIL experience. The explanation is that some students
had participated in previously organised virtual telecollaborations between Turkish
and Ukrainian students who majored in Turkish linguistics. That is why the
language of their communication was mainly Turkish; however, if
miscommunications happened, they applied their knowledge of English.
It was revealing to learn the participants’ preferences for communicating with each
other: they communicated using online video meetings, email or texting on social
networks. Unfortunately, the time chosen for the COIL activities in 2022
coincided with electricity outages throughout the territory of Ukraine, thus raising
the researchers’ concern about the impact of technical obstacles, which could cause
frustration and disappointment with the COIL experience for students. As a
result, the researchers did not insist on synchronous spoken communication.
However, students overcame these difficulties, communicating mainly by email or
texting, with about 50% successfully holding video communication on Zoom,
Meet or WhatsApp (questions 3-6). To meet the requirements of the thask, the
Ukrainian students tried to find cafes, restaurants or offices which had generators
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to produce electricity and cope with power cuts. That is why 90% of all participants
had a fluent exchange of messages, in which they shared information and organised
their work, especially the collaborative writing task.
The analysis of the questionnaire data (question 7) revealed similarities and
differences in the topics discussed. For instance, 100% of the Ukrainian students
concentrated their attention on exchanging information and organising
collaborative writing, followed by 89.9% who discussed the task performance and
77% who addressed personal matters (Figure 1). Similarly, 100% of the Spanish
students prioritised the topics on organising collaborative writing, while 88.9%
concentrated on exchanging information and 83.3% addressed attention to task
performance issues, whereas only 66.7% of Spanish students showed interest in
discussing personal matters (Figure 2).
7. What were the messages about?
9 answers
7. What were the messages about?
18 answers
Figure 1. Topics of messages by Ukrainian students
Figure 2. Topics of messages by Spanish students
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These findings indicate that participants from both universities recalled having
placed equal importance on the task-related discussion and collaborative writing,
in particular. However, the Ukrainian students reported placing greater emphasis
on information exchange and personal issues than their Spanish counterparts.
This highlights the importance of addressing both professional and interpersonal
aspects to foster collaboration in cultural contexts.
5.1. Students’ Reported Effect of COIL on Language Learning in
Interdisciplinary Settings
Based on the responses to the second questionnaire (Appendix 3), we found that
students evaluated the COIL activities very highly: 78% of students gave the
initiative a score of 5 out of 5 points, and 22% gave it 4 points (questions 8 and 10).
Students claimed that the COIL activities carried out were successful and fruitful,
prompting them to employ previously received knowledge and experience and to
focus on new knowledge gained from reading and listening tasks. The Ukrainian
students learned about the topic of corporate sustainability, which Spanish students
were familiar with, but they were not. On the other hand, Spanish students learned
about academic writing, a skill which was not new for the Ukrainian students.
Therefore, interdisciplinary settings, in our case Business English and Academic
English courses, created a fruitful environment where participants delved into
business approaches and modern concerns to save the planet. The process of
broadening their subject knowledge was not only undertaken through reading
articles, but also through oral communication. The topic of corporate sustainability
provided a context in which to receive and convey ideas in English (questions 9 and
11), according to the views of some Ukrainian students:
I deepened my knowledge in this field, listened to different points of view and
learned something new. [Uk_2]
It was interesting to hear foreign students’ opinions on corporate sustainability.
[Uk_4]
The live classroom discussion motivated students to practise their speaking skills.
Spanish students appreciated their partners’ active participation during the
discussion and valued the wish to sincerely express themselves on the topic, thus
finding whether the points of view coincided, as some of their opinions reflect:
It was interesting to hear the Ukrainian students and their opinions. Thanks to this
discussion, I could learn about their opinion. [Sp_7]+
I saw that many people think like me about corporate sustainability. Also, I saw that
Ukrainian students participated every time, unlike us, and I liked that. [Sp_3]
It was also at this time when participants of COIL could check and practise their
comprehension skills and learn that a different accent is not a barrier to understand
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a speaker if the participants in the conversation can negotiate meaning by asking
questions to check they have understood the message.
While performing COIL activities, participants completed exercises to learn new
vocabulary and discourse and practised its usage by asking and answering
questions in the discussion, which demonstrated the ability to use new vocabulary
and discourse, along with the subject knowledge of the topic of corporate
sustainability. More specifically, students explained in English the meaning of the
term “sustainability” and its growing importance in the modern world. In the
words of a Ukrainian student, the COIL classes equipped them with the
background knowledge on the topic, gave them information about the researchers
who carried out studies, and also further details about the main components of
corporate sustainability:
I have learned that corporate sustainability consists of 3 parts and that Adam Smith’s
economic theory does not require entrepreneurs to make positive social and
environmental impact on the world. [Uk 7]
Students reported that reading the articles, watching the video, and later
participating in the online discussion helped them to develop different language
and cognitive skills (Appendix 3 - question 13). One of the main learning
objectives of COIL was to encourage students to analyse and synthesise the
information from texts and use the knowledge gained in their essays. Thus,
students signified and conveyed in their essays the idea that entrepreneurs are
concerned about corporate responsibility and the implementation of its main
principles to make our world better.
According to the results of the questionnaire (Appendix 3 - questions 11 and 13),
both Spanish and Ukrainian students indicated that they had opportunities to
improve their academic writing skills by practising and using formal vocabulary
easily, as they expressed:
On an academic level, I think it has prepared us for future, because nowadays in
most companies you have to be fluent, and you are going to have to interact with
people from all over the world. [Sp 10]
It has helped me to learn English and have new experiences communicating with
new persons. [Sp_5]
I have applied the essay writing requirements that we received during our English
class. [Uk_3]
The whole topic of corporate sustainability was new to me, so I learned quite a lot
about it and at the same time practiced my academic English. [Uk_6]
Since English was the only language of their communication, students were
provided with a rich opportunity to share their knowledge and develop fact-based
arguments in English:
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I have learned to work with people who don’t speak the same language as me. To do
an opinion essay with another person only speaking English. [Sp_8]
As explained by the students, during their online conversations, cross-cultural
pronunciation differences sometimes required some clarifications and at the same
time forced them to rephrase and explain their ideas to avoid misunderstanding.
That is why the communication was natural and effective. What is more, in both
groups there were students who considered themselves introverts and for whom
speaking up in the classroom setting was a common source of tension. For these
subjects participating in COIL was a way of facing these challenges, and they
overcame communicative difficulties (question 13).
It helps us to get loose and it helps us to lose the embarrassment of talking to people
who don’t speak our language. [Sp_12]
Any communications with English speakers give you lots of skills. It is a great
opportunity to get out of comfort zone. [Uk_8]
All in all, students reported having learned about both the language and a relevant
topic for society such as corporate sustainability. They acknowledged the benefits
of collaborative writing and also those of speaking in English as a lingua franca
with other students.
5.2. Additional Student-Reported Benefits of COIL
Students acknowledged that by performing language-learning tasks, their soft
skills, which are of great importance in the modern workplace, had been boosted
(questions 11 and 13 in Appendix 3). In their answers to these questions, both
Spanish and Ukrainian students highlighted an important benefit of COIL: the
opportunity to work as a team, as the task required them to collaborate and
produce an outcome from their joint work — an informed opinion essay. Similarly,
students acknowledged the difficulties they had faced and how they had learned
time management skills, while arranging online meetings with a partner, making
plans and setting deadlines.
Then, some more soft skills they seem to have acquired are adaptability and
problem-solving, as can be gathered from their answers to question 13. Being in
different countries, having time differences and facing problems related to
internet connectivity and electricity, the students quickly adapted their timetables
and coped with the challenges they were faced with:
I learned that even tasks which seem impossible can be completed in time. [Uk_9]
The necessity to activate communication skills helped them to broaden their
knowledge about cultural aspects of both countries, Ukraine and Spain, everyday
lifestyle and the current state of life and business, as they acknowledged in their
answers to question 12.
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Analysing the feedback, we can state that, after finishing COIL activities,
participants of both universities seem to have become more cross-culturally
competent inasmuch as they have learned the characteristics of people in the other
country. Spanish students considered Ukrainian students brave, strong, very
intelligent and hard-working. Spanish students also mentioned that Ukrainians
put much effort to continue their studies in spite of the war in their country, with
the circumstances they must overcome every day and the suffering involved:
I didn’t have any specific ideas about how Ukrainian people were, but now I think
that they are very motivated and hard-working. Feeling this through the experience
was really motivating for me also. [Sp 15]
I think they are having a very bad time, and it is a situation, I would not wish to
anyone. Despite this, they are very predisposed and kind people. In addition, they
are very friendly for the situation in which they find themselves. I don’t think I
would take it so well. [Sp 12]
Then, they noticed that, though Ukrainian students majored in languages, they
could also show some competence to discuss business issues. Likewise, Ukrainian
students defined their Spanish peers as kind, friendly, sociable, open-minded,
easy to work with and they made a positive impression for being punctual and
respectful of deadlines:
Spanish students turned to be very open-minded, sociable, and easy to work with.
After this project I was left with a nice impression of Spanish culture and people. [Uk 5]
As for me, it was very interesting to communicate with Spanish students. During the
online meeting, it was interesting to observe how they communicate, how they
behave, what emotional state they have. [Uk1]
In addition, COIL aroused self-awareness. Students seem to have understood the
importance of appreciating and valuing their everyday life, and that the best way
to receive true information is by engaging with witnesses:
After this experience I realised that they are struggling much more with the Ukrainian
war than of what it is shown on TV. Despite of this, I think that all of them wanted
to work with us and were motivated, so for me it is very appreciated. [Sp 2]
The students’ answers reveal how they have developed intercultural competence
by learning about how their counterparts in the other country behave. All
participants reported in the anonymous questionnaire that they had a positive
and invaluable experience of collaboration with students from another country.
6. Conclusion
This paper studies COIL, an educational approach that connected university
students from two countries to collaborate in asynchronous and synchronous
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formats during four weeks. A final product of the initiative was a collaborative
academic opinion essay conducted by students of the UJI in Spain and KNU in
Ukraine.
The objective of this research was to find out if students perceived that COIL
could make them aware of cross-cultural communication and its advantages for
learning language, content and culture. In order to reach this objective, the study
tried to unveil, on the one hand, students’ attitudes regarding the way COIL can
affect English language learning, especially in interdisciplinary settings, as the
Spanish students belonged to an ESP course, while the Ukrainian students were
studying Linguistics. On the other hand, the research study sought to depict
additional benefits of COIL for global education recognised by students.
The implementation of COIL in these two universities proved that it can be an
extension of classroom learning and teaching in a virtual setting where
collaborative learning and peer guidance prevail. This study enabled active
learning and a constructive process in which the instructors’ influence on task
performance was limited to setting the goals, forming groups and choosing
learning materials, while participants sought ways to perform the task successfully.
Answering the first research question, students reported that the COIL approach
helped them to create multicultural learning environments and to apply English
to support communication in the virtual classroom. Live discussions and having
English as the only language to interact with their partners seem to have
compensated for artificial language learning and created the environment to
build content knowledge and individual accountability in students.
The English language became the bridge to connect students from the two
participating universities, countries and cultures. The relevant COIL activities
seem to confirm their efficacy in times of uncertainty, as in some cases participants
successfully maintained their collaboration asynchronously through texting
despite power outages in Ukraine. Students perceived that performing the tasks
had allowed them to improve their academic oral skills in the discussion sessions
and meetings, their reading skills by reading two scientific articles, and their
writing skills through the collaborative writing of an opinion essay which involved
text structuring, citation and referencing. As noted by the participants through
an anonymous questionnaire, COIL activities seem to have upgraded both their
oral and written English language skills. In addition, these activities were effective
in making them aware of their different English language levels, accents and use
of English, and made them realise the importance of learning in authentic
situations in which English is the only lingua franca for communication. In
addition, for most students, the COIL experience was the first occasion they had
to establish a relationship exclusively through the English language, and they
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gained self-confidence in its use, as previously noted by other researchers (Çiftçi
and Savaş 2018; Nguyen et al. 2024). Moreover, this activity seemed to motivate
students to learn new vocabulary and discourse to be active participants in
discussions and in studying the interdisciplinary content, in this case, corporate
sustainability.
As for the answer to the second research question, the results show that
participants felt they had developed soft skills such as the ability to collaborate.
Collaborative writing made them organise themselves to complete pairwork with
students from a geographically remote setting in order to create a single document,
a very useful skill nowadays. In the business world, organisation and negotiation
are essential and the perceptions gathered from students by means of a post-task
questionnaire showed that COIL could develop these skills. Majoring in different
disciplines (Linguistics and Business), the participants had different types of
subject knowledge and they were required to help and complement each other,
which developed tolerance and respect.
Another valuable outcome of the COIL activities was that they contributed to
developing cross-cultural competence. Students learned about another culture by
meeting students who were almost their same age. They appreciated the
opportunity to meet each other and eventually some of them might continue
their relationship.
Finally, using online tools in a creative way can be motivating for students. Most
of them appreciated the activity of writing an academic essay collaboratively, in
spite of the fact that, especially for the Ukrainian students, due to the war
situation it was not an easy task to keep in contact with the Spanish students and
carry out the activity.
Although sharing war experiences was not one of the aims of the activity, some
students held conversations about it. For Spanish students, it was a way to learn
first-hand from their fellow students what it means to live in the middle of a war
and maybe to avoid conflicts in the future, if ever they are in a position to do so.
For the Ukrainian students, it was a way to share their situation and to raise
awareness of the problems they have. In the case of the Ukrainian students, COIL
acted as a substitute for physical mobility, something that is not possible at the
moment due to ongoing war in the country and economic downturn.
This study shows some limitations. It involved the attitudes and perceptions of
students regarding one COIL activity held in a single subject. In the future, it
would be very interesting to conduct further research in order to compare
students’ perceptions with their actual improvement in English language
competence and in intercultural communication skills. In addition, it would also
be relevant to analyse the effect of a continuous plan of COIL in these courses,
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how effective it could be for language, content and the development of
intercultural communication.
To conclude, as other researchers have done before (Çiftçi and Savaş 2018;
Nguyen et al. 2024), we want to invite other English as a Foreign Language and
English for Specific Purposes instructors to introduce COIL activities in their
courses to allow their students to enjoy an international intercultural experience
using English as a lingua franca. It may be especially relevant and motivating for
those who cannot travel due to their personal circumstances, or restrictions
imposed in times war, as was the case in this research.
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Appendix 1.
Initial Questionnaire: Building Rapport with your Partner
1. Student’s name.
2. What is the name of your university?
3. When was your university founded?
4. What does its name mean?
5. How many students / departments are there at your university?
6. What do you study?
7. Why did you decide to major in Business Administration and Law/Linguistics? What
are the benefits and drawbacks of your specialization?
8. Tell me about some of the courses you are taking. Which is your favorite?
9. How long have you been studying English?
10. Do you prefer to work independently or as part of a team?
11. Have you ever missed a deadline? Why, and what was the outcome?
12. What are your interests and hobbies?
13. Where do you see yourself in 3 years?
14. What are your favorite national holidays?
15. What is your favorite national dish?
16. Any other questions
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Appendix 2.
Guidelines for the Collaborative Writing Task
COLLABORATIVE WRITING TASK: CORPORATE
SUSTAINABILITY
Directions
The following assignment requires you to use information from two sources (see
a list of references below) to discuss concerns that relate to a specific issue. When
paraphrasing or quoting from the sources, cite each source used by referring to
the author’s last name and the year of publication, and page, if you quote. Try to
paraphrase, summarise, or synthesise the ideas of other authors.
Assignment:
Read the selected articles carefully and then write an essay in which you identify
the most important concerns regarding the issue and explain why they are vital.
Your text must draw on information from several sources. In addition, you may
draw on your own experiences, observations, or readings. Be sure to CITE
sources whether you are paraphrasing or directly quoting.
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Appendix 3.
Final Questionnaire. Assessment of Collaborative Work
The anonymous answers to these questions will be used for research purposes and to
improve the international collaborative task you have carried out. Please tick if you agree
that these data are used for research.
I agree
1. Has this been your first communication experience with somebody with whom you
can only speak in English?*
Yes
No
2. Is this your first academic international telecollaboration experience?*
Yes
No
3. How did you communicate with your partner?*
Online video meetings
Email
Texting
Other:
4. How many online meetings did you have with your Ukrainian/Spanish partner?*
One
Two
Three
Other:
5. How many email exchanges did you have?*
One
Two
Three
Other:
6. How many texting exchanges?*
One
Two
Three
Other:
7. What were the messages about?*
Exchange of information
Personal matters
Organisation of collaborative writing
Task performance of collaborative writing
Other:
8. How much did you like the discussion held on Corporate Sustainability on the 14th of
November?*
Very little 1 2 3 4 5 Very much
9. Did you learn something new from this Discussion? What?*
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10. How did you like the collaborative writing task on Corporate Sustainability?*
Very little 1 2 3 4 5 Very much
11. What did you learn from this task?*
12. How has your idea about Ukraine and the people who live there changed after this
experience? *
13. Reflect on the whole telecollaboration experience: personally, methodologically,
content knowledge, etc.*
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR ANSWERS
Received: 15/10/2024
Accepted: 4/03/2025
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.