NC State Office for Faculty Excellence COIL Awards

NC State’s Office for Faculty Excellence (OFE) provides faculty with support and funding to integrate Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) activities into NC State courses. This funding will support both instructors undertaking curricular development to integrate collaborative projects or assignments that virtually connect NC State students with students from an international partner institution for a period of at least three weeks associated with a regularly scheduled course. In addition, funding is available to support faculty members who want to increase their knowledge and expertise on COIL through formal professional development opportunities.

Program Description

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) is a flexible pedagogical approach to global education that creates learning environments in which participants broaden and deepen their understanding of course content while building cross-cultural relationships through academic and personal engagement enhanced by the perspectives of their global peers. COIL activities should support regular course objectives while also enabling students to examine topics from varied cultural and global perspectives. Examples of activities include shared readings, small group discussions and group projects that span the three weeks (or more). Student collaboration may be synchronous or asynchronous, as long as the technology used to connect students supports the goals for student learning. The goal of COIL activities/projects is sustained and meaningful interaction between students in 2 or more countries. Activities and projects should reflect integrative outcomes. COIL grants are not available for faculty led programs – the goal is to internationalize a domestic course where international travel is not required. 

Two Types of Funding are available to support faculty who engage in COIL. Curriculum Development Awards and Faculty Professional Development Awards. Applications for both COIL Curriculum Development Awards and COIL Professional Development Awards are reviewed by a subset of members of the COIL Learning Community who will forward their recommendations to the Office for Faculty Excellence team. Final funding decisions and notifications will be made by the Office for Faculty Excellence. An applicant may not be awarded both awards in a single funding cycle.

For more information about COIL, visit the NC State COIL website at https://provost.ncsu.edu/ofe/collaborative-online-international-learning/ 

If you have additional questions, please contact Diane Chapman.