This spring, St. Catherine University’s Office of Global Studies piloted a new form of global learning for both faculty and students called Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL). COIL typically involves the co-development of a course module by two or more instructors from different countries, each of whom recognizes the value behind connecting students from across the world to learn and work together on a common area of focus. COIL projects are integrated into existing courses and offer students meaningful global engagement without needing to travel.
COIL does not involve a set curriculum or delivery platform but is a flexible framework for developing courses; connecting institutions, faculty, and students; and supporting institutional goals for student learning and engagement. COIL helps St. Kate's deliver global learning and cross-cultural experiences to a larger number of students.
COIL at St. Kate’s
In spring 2025, Global Studies opened COIL with the course Building a Sustainable World, where Katies collaborated with students from the Universidad Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. Students in the course explored issues around sustainability and climate change in their home communities, co-creating videos about their topics.
Neela Nandyal, PhD, director of Global Studies and Competitive Fellowships, led the course from the St. Kate’s side.
“COIL can be difficult to conceptualize if you haven’t experienced it before, and to be honest, I didn’t fully understand its power until I piloted a COIL module in INDI 2222: Building a Sustainable World last spring,” Nandyal said. “Connecting with a faculty member in Mexico, watching our students engage in conversations with their peers there, and finally seeing their final projects were true highlights of my 15-plus years working in higher education.”
This fall, two more COIL courses were taught by Bethsabé Huamán Andía, PhD; Rafael Cervantes, PhD; and Amy Hamlin, PhD. In Huamán Andía’s English course, Literature in Translation: Afro-Latinidad, St. Kate’s students partnered with students at Universidad de Sonora in Mexico to engage with the digitized Memorialize The Movement exhibit.
Huamán Andía said, “What we did was a group project trying to better understand the realities of African descendants in both states/countries, as Sonora/Mexico and Minnesota/U.S. are at the north of the country and are seen as ‘white’ states. Students chose different topics to show these realities, creating academic posters and visual art to highlight language, culture, music, street art, social movements, political policies and housing practices, to understand racism and racial systems. These topics make connections with the materials students review and with the exhibition ‘Day and Night’ that all view.”
Professors Cervantes and Hamlin taught an honors seminar, Cultures of Crossed Destinies: Tarot for Collective Transformation. This course asked students to engage with the history and modern application of tarot. Students worked with colleagues from the Universidad Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico in small groups to create a movie trailer about a myth, symbol, or archetype that the group created, using cultural elements from Turkey, Chile, Ukraine, Germany, the U.S., and Mexico.
Working interculturally with counterparts abroad helps students grow their own understanding of intercultural communication and explore how different people learn and approach topics and ideas.
Ella Brefo ’29, a first-year majoring in international studies, said, “Working and collaborating with international peers has been one of the most eye-opening experiences for me. It’s amazing how people from different backgrounds can bring such unique perspectives to the same topic… Everyone approaches things differently depending on their experiences, and that diversity is what makes group work so enriching. I also learned to be more patient and open-minded because not everyone thinks or reacts the same way I do, and that’s okay.”
Raina Tenenbaum ’29, an ASL and interpreting major, likewise developed her understanding of culture and communication through the course and COIL experience.
“Culture is ingrained in people, and the ways that I interact with others and the world and understand ideas is based on the culture that I’ve lived in,” Tenenbaum said. “It was really cool to see ideas from other cultures and to understand, at least a little bit, how it is for students from other places. I think learning this way helps me understand different learning styles and ways of communicating, and the ways I understand my own perceptions and biases have changed as part of this project.”
COIL can also help enrich how students grow to understand the topic and themes of the course — as it did for Dru Hurd ’29, a first-year pre-nursing student whose understanding of the role of myth in culture and intercultural communication was shaped by COIL.
“I think the role that mythology, fantasy, and literature play in our world today is an important one because all three of them keep art and imagination alive as well as important history from different cultures,” Hurd said. “Without fantasy, mythology, and literature, I don’t think that we would have any culture at all.”
Future of COIL at St. Kate’s
In spring 2026, Ericka Schmidt, associate director of Global Studies, will lead COIL with INDI 2222: Building a Sustainable World, along with colleagues at the Universidad Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. Additionally, plans to incorporate COIL into the capstone course CORE 3990W: Global Search for Justice are in discussion for fall 2026.
Global Studies is part of the Office of Scholarly Engagement, St. Catherine University’s hub for engaged learning.