Introduction to COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) Virtual Exchange

Jon Rubin

Director, COIL Consulting

Jon Rubin was Founder and served as Director of the SUNY COIL Center from 2006-2017. He organized COIL virtual exchange workshops at the annual conferences of NAFSA, FAUBAI, AIEA and EAIE, and recently co-facilitated a virtual exchange training for the Stevens Initiative. He designed and co-facilitated three iterations of the COIL Leadership Institute first co-sponsored by the American Council on Education and later with Florida International University.

He directed the National Endowment for the Humanities funded: COIL Institute for Globally Networked Learning in the Humanities (2010-13), which engaged 47 U.S. and international universities in COIL course development. He also directed the COIL Center’s Stevens Initiative project in the MENA region (2016-17) and launched the State Department funded US-Mexico Multistate COIL project which linked 18 Mexican higher education institutions with 14 US campuses.

Between 2002-11 he implemented his Cross-Cultural Video course at SUNY in which his students collaboratively co-produced videos with students in Turkey, Mexico, Belarus, Lithuania, and Germany.

In 2017, he created COIL Consulting (coilconsult.com) to support universities around the world to develop COIL initiatives. He has written many articles on COIL practice and is presently co-writing the Guide to COIL Virtual Exchange, to be published by Stylus Publishers in 2021.