VE/COIL Clinic: Integrating VE/COIL into the First-Year Experience

Overview

The first year is a critical period for helping students build connections, develop confidence as learners, and begin seeing themselves as participants in a broader academic and global community. Integrating virtual echange/collaborative online international learning (VE/COIL) into first-year courses and experiences can extend access to global learning early in students’ college journeys while connecting that learning to broader goals for student engagement and success.

This three-week online AAC&U VE/COIL Clinic helps participants identify meaningful opportunities for integrating globally collaborative learning into first-year seminars, gateway courses, general education, learning communities, and other first-year contexts. Through applied tools, examples, guided planning, and peer exchange, participants consider where VE/COIL can add value within the first year and develop an approach suited to their students, curriculum, and institutional context.

Learning Goals

By the end of the clinic, participants will be able to

• identify opportunities for integrating VE/COIL into first-year courses, programs, and experiences in ways that align with existing learning and student-success goals;
• develop approaches to globally collaborative learning that account for the developmental, academic, and transition needs of first-year students; and
• create an actionable plan for incorporating or strengthening VE/COIL within a first-year course, program, or broader institutional initiative.

Who Should Participate?

This clinic is designed for faculty, first-year experience and student-success professionals, general education leaders, international education staff, teaching and learning professionals, academic administrators, and others interested in expanding globally connected learning within the first year.

It is relevant both for those seeking to integrate VE/COIL into an individual first-year course and for those exploring broader curricular or programmatic approaches across first-year seminars, gateway courses, general education, learning communities, or related initiatives.