Rachelle MEILLEUR    Department   Kyoto University of Foreign Studies  Department of British and American Studies, Faculty of Foreign Studies    Position   Associate Professor
Date	2021/12/03
Presentation Theme	The Intercultural Benefits of a Short-Term COIL Project
Conference	19th AsiaTEFL International Conference 2021
Promoters	Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi, GLA University, Mathura
Conference Type	International
Presentation Type	Speech (General)
Contribution Type	Individual
Country	India
Venue	Mathura, India (Online)
Holding period	2021/12/03～2021/12/05
Publisher and common publisher	Rachelle R. Meilleur
Details	Long before the Covid-19 pandemic prevented students and researchers from pursuing study abroad, the reality is that many students do not have the resources for extended study in foreign countries. Yet in an increasingly globalized world, the need for students to gain some international and intercultural experience is still there. One positive takeaway from the pandemic is that it has provided a steep learning curve for many students and teachers to become more fluent with online resources. In such an environment, this researcher was part of a COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) project that paired high- intermediate global studies writing students based in Japan with first-year Canadian writing students primarily studying early childhood education. Despite the differences in majors and levels of English, the students were able to successfully collaborate on a group research project and to present their findings in an online forum. This researcher will discuss the process she and her Canadian colleague went through to set up the project, how they dealt with both expected and unexpected problems along the way, the positive and negative aspects of running a COIL project with completely different students over different time zones in an asynchronous setting, as well as the intercultural takeaways gleaned from the project. This information will be useful to any teachers who would like to attempt a similar undertaking with their own students.