SUNY Oneonta to host online learning center

Feb. 3—SUNY Oneonta announced Friday it is the new host of the SUNY Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Center. In the COIL program, professors and students "work with their peers in an online learning environment to explore subjects, themes, issues and ideas," according to a media release from the university.

The SUNY COIL Center "serves the largest and longest-standing community of its kind, the release said, connecting more than 147 institutions throughout the world "in a virtual web of cultural and educational exchange." The center provides international partners to faculty throughout the SUNY COIL Global network and at colleges and universities around the world to create inclusive, team-centered, teaching and learning opportunities.

"Together with the SUNY COIL Center, we recognize the value of virtual exchange as a high-impact practice, integrating intercultural experiences into the curriculum in a sustainable way for the benefit of all students," SUNY Oneonta President Alberto J.F. Cardelle said in the release.

"By hosting the SUNY COIL Center, Oneonta is taking the lead with virtual exchange for all of SUNY and will become an incubator for innovative methods to engage students and campuses with peers around the world," said Hope Windle, who was hired in December as the new SUNY COIL Center executive director. "Being embedded in a vibrant campus environment with a long history of incorporating COIL programming across academic disciplines will enable the center to more effectively serve its member institutions."

For an example of the program, SUNY Oneonta Professor of Educational Psychology, Counseling and Special Education Anu Shastri had students in an educational psychology course collaborate with students from a business communication course at Jindal Global University in Sonipat, India. The students worked together on oral and written projects to facilitate the development of intercultural understanding and digital literacy skills. COIL "has become an essential part of the curriculum" for SUNY Oneonta Associate Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures Maria Cristina Montoya, who has students in her Advanced Spanish Usage course collaborate with students from Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia, the release said.

Associate Vice Chancellor Sally Crimmins Villela of SUNY's Office of Global Affairs said she sees Oneonta as "the ideal environment" to launch the SUNY COIL Center's campus-based effort on Global Learning for All: Educating for a Sustainable Future (GLFA) as part of a larger SUNY GLFA initiative. "We commend the wisdom and leadership of President Cardelle in gathering the synergies of global education, online learning excellence, sustainability, and diversity and inclusion to support all students for success during their college experience and beyond," she said.

SUNY Oneonta has agreed to host the SUNY COIL Center for two years, with the possibility of renewal.

For more information about the SUNY COIL Center, contact Executive Director Hope Windle at hope.windle@oneonta.edu.