Billed as a way to increase the international awareness of students who may not be able to study abroad, the COIL-inspired courses will have students in their home countries use technological tools to collaborate on projects — and in one case, an entire course.

Representatives of the SUNY Center for Collaborative Online International Learning visited
SUNY Oswego May 17 to welcome the college as a “node” on COIL’s growing network of SUNY institutions. From left are Damian Schofield, director of Oswego’s human-computer interaction program, and Lisa Langlois, associate professor of art history, who each plan to collaborate with a class overseas; along with Jon Rubin and John Fowler, director and assistant director of COIL, respectively.

Damian Schofield, director of the human-computer interaction graduate program, sees this as a “phenomenal” opportunity for his students and the students of Patrick Murphy, graduate studies director in the English and creative writing department, to study for a semester with Australian media and communications scholar Lisa Dethridge and her class. “Transhumanism” will explore an academic realm where science fiction collides with real science in such areas as superintelligent robots, avatars in virtual life and more.

Lisa Langlois envisions her online Japanese art history class and its international project partner helping to break down barriers to international study for those with physical challenges or child-care responsibilities, as well as those with financial limitations.

Susan Coultrap-McQuin, director of Oswego’s Institute for Global Engagement, plans to internationalize parts of an upper-division course titled “Women, the Workplace
and the Law.” She sees COIL as another important tool among SUNY Oswego’s many
options for international study, travel and engagement.

“From my perspective, the great benefit of … this is the opportunity for our students
to engage with students from other countries,” Coultrap-McQuin said.