Staff, students and international visitors recently celebrated the launch of CPUT’s first Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) Venue. 

The modern facility is based in the Engineering Building on the District Six campus and was made possible through the IMPALA project. 

Jon Rubin, who developed the COIL concept, said it is “a way to connect the students in your classroom to the world.”

“It’s an opportunity for your courses to be enhanced through the input of others and for you to contribute to the teaching and learning in other countries.”

Education students and lecturers Felicity Titus and Vanessa van Staden, who were involved in the COIL pilot project between CPUT and the University College of Leuven-Limburg, were given the opportunity to share their experiences.
Four lecturers and 100 students from the two institutions were involved in the project and according to the CPUT lecturers it helped to “broaden the perceptions and worldview of our students”.

The University of Antwerp’s Piet Van Hove, who is the IMPALA coordinator, said the project tries to bring together expertise and experience from the different partners in Europe and South Africa to advance internationalisation in higher education.

The project provided the funding for the video conferencing equipment in the new venue, which will support the COIL methodology.

Prof René Pellissier, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships, said One Smart CPUT focuses on the two dimensions of human-centricity and “technology-enabledness” in order to provide a relevant and excellent higher education to our students.

She said COIL is not only about the technology, “it is about a new mind-set of learning in an expanded space where the learning can take place naturally and solutions-oriented, bringing internationalisation to the classroom”.

Written by Ilse Fredericks
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A case study on the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project at CPUT has been selected for publication in a respected guide.

Collaborative online international learning as a timely equity-sensitive strategy of higher education internationalisation@home in post-pandemic times: a case study from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa, was submitted to the SDSN (Sustainable Development Solutions Network)  for the guide on “Accelerating Education for the SDGs in Universities” and has been selected for inclusion from a large number of submissions from around the world. 

According to the guide’s editorial team, the guide has become the most visited resource on the SDSN website “and the case study website also has achieved high visibility, becoming a very useful resource for educators from every continent. The case study will also be showcased on the website.  

 CPUT’s COIL facility was opened at the end of 2018 on the District Six campus

The CPUT submission describes the project as going “well beyond infrastructure in as much as it actually creates a new mindset of expanded and solutions-oriented learning”.

“Accordingly, it prepares students for collaborative and project-based learning with an interdisciplinary focus, which goes along with the 4IR, in order to deal with and act in an increasingly complex and globalised environment. To sum up, the CPUT COIL project is an excellent example of an activity within “internationalisation@home>;”, which becomes ever more important in 2021 where the pandemic continues to impact higher education institutions worldwide.” 

“The roll-out of COIL projects is aligned with CPUT’s strategic 2030 vision. The office of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships (SIP) will facilitate new COIL projects in its mission to increase internationalisation activities at home,” said Prof Judy Peter, Director: Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships.

After the current process of institutional roll-out across the faculties and units, the initiative will be upscaled to other institutions in the region and prospectively beyond.

Written by Ilse Fredericks
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