A Review of a Collaborative Online International Learning

Abstract

Globalization has exacerbated the need for engineers who are capable of working in a cross-cultural environment. Multinational companies continuously seek for engineers who are intercultural competent and capable of conducting business successfully in a cross-cultural environment. However, the skills required to be successful in a multicultural environment are difficult to be taught in the traditional classroom. One of the most effective approaches to acquiring intercultural competence skills is through experiential learning. It is, therefore, not surprising that most colleges all over the world are devoting resources towards the internationalization of their classrooms and the campus community. This ensures that students are provided with a diverse environment so they can learn from, and about diverse cultures and develop their intercultural competence skills. Another effective approach is the study abroad programs, which require students to travel to different countries. However, these approaches require a lot of resources that may not be available to the poor and needy students. Therefore, a more cost-effective approach, such as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is receiving a lot of attention in recent years. In this study, some engineering technology students participated in an 8-week long COIL program with materials engineering students from different languacultural and geographical region. This study reviews the results and compares the performance of the COIL students with those who were not involved. It was observed that the COIL teams performed significantly better on the project work.

The Influence of Online Project Collaborative Learning and Achievement Motivation on Problem-Solving Ability

“…Collaborative learning is very beneficial for team members in doing project tasks (Ellis & Hafner, 2008). Students who learn in international classes with online collaboration perform better significantly in project work compared with students who are not involved in this study (Appiah-Kubi & Annan, 2020).…”

Innovation and Use of New Teaching Technologies in Undergraduate Learning and Empowerment for the Labour Market

“…However, is important to prepare the students with another teaching forms. The new teaching technologies may include the use of distance education [18]- [25] and new ways of conducting learning [26]- [31].…”

Professionally oriented training of specialists to work in the conditions of the inclusive educational environment

“…At the methodological level of our research, the leading idea was stated, which, in our opinion, can be put into the bases of the modern concept of inclusive education (Appiah-Kubi & Annan, 2020;Billingsley, McLeskey & Crockett, 2019). At this stage of the research, we consider it expedient to analyse philosophical bases of the methodology of the inclusion modelling (Atoum, 2019;Clark, Dyson & Millward, 2018).…”