Virtual Exchange in International Education

This past fall semester, I trialed a 5-week COIL in my Technical English class, where my students connected with students in a course at Oakland University in the United States. Judging from the course evaluation at the end, my students valued the experience.

What exactly is COIL you may ask? Well, it is Collaborative Online International Learning that is conducted as part of a virtual exchange. It generally takes place over a few weeks or months and involves a project that is done jointly by mixed teams. It is great for students who cannot or do not wish to travel. The cultural experience is the most important aspect of the COIL, and when combined with existing course objectives, where there is common ground, the teachers can kill two birds with one stone.

Implementing COIL for the first time is not easy. The facilitators at both ends need numerous meetings to plan the COIL module components: for example, synchronous online sessions, ice breakers, discussions, project and reflection guidelines, and any associated rubrics and assessment metrics. They need to be tech savvy and capable of juggling several apps while also being adaptable team players. In this sense, COIL involves collaboration not only of students but also of teachers (and sometimes institutions if COIL is formally institutionalized). The students appreciate the recognition when they receive certificates at the end of the experience.

My colleague in the US and I gave a presentation about our COIL this past October at the hybrid International Virtual Exchange Conference in Greece, entitled “Overcoming Virtual Exchange Barriers: A Mobile-Mindful Approach in Crisis-Affected Regions”; I will  be giving another presentation on the exchange at the AUB International Conference on Effective Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, with emphasis on student writing, which will hopefully inspire others.

A similar COIL is anticipated for fall 2026 in my Technical English class.

Having prompted Copilot to create for us a short poem capturing the spirit of COIL in education, here is the generated text, which merits sharing:

 A COIL Classroom

Across the world a window swings wide,

Where distant voices learn side by side.

Ideas travel farther than any map can show,

As cultures meet and understanding grows.

A shared project, a spark, a global view—

COIL turns “me” and “you” into something new.

My final message is don't recoil from COIL; try it if you get the chance. The benefits will outweigh the initial complications. The students will love their certificates, and in the US at least, COIL alumni may be viewed as HOTS, potentially hired on the spot!

More Words of the Year 2025

 

While my previous blog post was about the Cambridge word of the year for 2025, this post will reflect on words of the year from three other sources: Oxford, Collins and Merriam-Webster. Not surprisingly, all three dictionaries chose words related to online activities.

Oxford University Press announced that “rage bait” was its top choice for the year, an expression referring to online content intended to incite anger by being irritating or sounding taboo, for the purpose of increasing hits or enhancing interaction on specific sites or social media accounts. Rage bait works through provocative framing, rather than facts; creating false dilemmas; and de-contextualizing or exaggerating normal situations. An example would be posting a video clip of someone shouting to insinuate that that is their regular style, when it is, in fact, a one-off. Rage bait often succeeds because it quickly triggers emotions, increasing comments and shares while exploiting people’s differences and alliances, ultimately boosting engagement metrics for the concerned online platforms. Though similar in meaning to an older term, “click bait”, it distinguishes itself by eliciting anger.

Oxford’s runner up for the year 2025 was “aura farming”, focusing on the impression you make online: projecting charisma and strength or appearing cool as part of an impressive public image, which naturally could be divorced from reality. In any case, it always involves a deliberate effort. Humorous examples that come to mind would be adjusting your sunglasses while indoors or pretending to text while actually opening your calculator. Other scenarios could involve walking slowly towards the camera or trying different poses.

Collins found “vibe coding” to be the most important expression of the year, referring to “the use of AI prompted by natural language to assist with the writing of computer code”. According to the dictionary, the term was made popular by Andrej Karpathy, the former Director of AI at Tesla and the founding engineer of OpenAI. He used it to reflect how AI encourages creativity while saving users the hassle of writing code themselves. An example in creative writing would be prompting an AI to create a character that is simultaneously manic and autistic.

Merriam-Webster’s chosen term “slop” is defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence”. It may be linked to last year’s “brain rot”, but with special emphasis on large quantities and AI involvement. It may also draw on the above concepts of rage bait, clickbait, and aura farming, while being generated through vibe coding.