Martin Ward is a professor of Chinese and Japanese translation at the University of Leeds. He is also leading on Collaborative Online International Learning or COIL at the University of Leeds, which is active in intentionally scaling it up as of 2023.
Martin’s initiative stems from the realisation that after working overseas for 16 years or so, he returned to the UK to work in academia and realised that not all students have globally engaged learning opportunities.
“My sense has been – looking across the sector in the UK -there’s not a lot of virtual exchange happening. There are patches here and there, but it’s not something which has been taken up on a wide scale. And I do really believe that, especially in the world that we live in now, it’s crucial for students to have those opportunities provided for them at no cost. It’s really important.
The purpose of UNICOIL
Martin explains that UNICOIL was born out of a symposium that he organised early last year at the University of Leeds. It was called ‘Building COIL Capability in the UK and Ireland’ and brought together professional service and academic colleagues from universities across both countries.
These academics are keen to see these global opportunities provided for their students. UNICOIL has a steering committee of 15 colleagues from universities across the UK and Ireland. The mission is three-pronged and includes scaling up COIL/VE across the sector, building up a supportive community and conducting research into virtual exchange/COIL, its effectiveness and in essence, to work towards how it can be improved to make it more effective and more beneficial for all students.
“I see our role in UNICOIL as one of advocacy because there’s not a lot of COIL happening to date across the UK and Ireland. It’s not that well known as a concept still, and we want to advocate for that. We want to reach out to institutions across the sector, encourage them to come and join us. Talk with us about COIL/virtual exchange, share practice, support one another, and hopefully provide more transformative learning experiences for students right across the sector.”
The UK and its international education strategy
Martin is concerned about the lack of vision in the UK’s education strategy.
“The focus is very much on exporting UK education and recruiting international students,’ he says, ‘but very little or almost nothing is really said about providing internationally engaged learning for students here on our campuses, and I personally think this is an omission, a very problematic one.”
He says that UNICOIL will hopefully raise awareness about the crucial importance of globally engaged learning opportunities.
“I really think that we’re going completely in the wrong direction by closing down language programmes, by removing the requirement to study a language at least until the age of 16. We’re communicating the wrong message. We’re saying that English is the international language. We don’t need to learn other languages, but by doing so, we don’t learn the culture. We don’t show respect for other languages and cultures.
I think it’s some kind of a post-colonial legacy, or something of the sort, which is really unacceptable. I hope that through the work of UNICOIL, we can say, look, it really is important for students to engage with their peers overseas. Language, culture, it has to be understood, we have to make an effort and we have to work at building our students’ cultural competence.
We live in a globally engaged world, a globally networked world, and it’s completely unacceptable for us to have these blinkers on. So I do hope and believe that there’s something that we can do to change that picture.”
The essence of Collaboration
Martin believes that by working together and establishing formally recognised partnerships with other organisations such as COILConnect and UNICollaboration, significant impact and influence can be made on the sector to make it more internationally focused and outward looking.
“The essence of COIL is collaboration, so I think we are crossing those borders. We are recognising each other’s unique mission and by sharing practice and joining up the networks all working towards the same goal, I think, we can influence the sector in an impactful way.
“But we want to work together to see how we can advocate for COIL and virtual exchange across the sector. Therefore, I think, recognising the distinction between each other’s mission and then and then collaborating in the essence of, you know, that’s the spirit of COIL.