Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL)

COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) is an innovative teaching concept offering valuable learning experiences and creating connections across disciplines. Students from different countries work together on projects, develop their intercultural skills and gain valuable experience in international teamwork – essential key qualifications that enhance students' employability.

Annually we provide one COIL

Responsible Person: Prof. Dr. Andrea Nagy

First COIL seminar (winter term 2025/26) Contemporary Issues in Child and Youth Welfare: A Cross-National Collaboration (Supported by the Teaching Innovation Grant Program of Munich University of Applied Sciences)

A Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) module jointly developed and facilitated by James David Simon, Associate Professor at the School of Social Work at California State University, Los Angeles, and Andrea Nagy, Professor for Child and Youth Welfare at the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences at Munich University of Applied Sciences. The module brought together undergraduate students in their last year from Munich and graduate students in their first year from Los Angeles.

This collaboration was inspired by both personal commitment and pedagogical purpose. Both instructors share a long-standing commitment to internationalizing the classroom experience and have previously collaborated on a joint short-term immersion program in South Tyrol, Italy. COIL presented itself as a natural next step: a format that enables sustained, structured intercultural exchange without requiring students to travel across borders. In a field such as social work, where professional practice is inextricably bound to the cultural, legal, and institutional contexts in which it unfolds, the value of such an exchange can hardly be overstated.

Over six synchronous sessions held on Thursdays between October 9 and November 13, 2025, students from both institutions explored the child welfare systems of their respective cities and countries side by side. Working in small international teams—students from each institution — they investigated the legal frameworks, intervention methods, key terminology, socio-political underpinnings, and equity dimensions of a specific field within child and youth welfare. The collaborative project culminated in a joint presentation.

The module was designed with a dual focus: disciplinary depth and intercultural growth. Students were expected not only to compare child welfare policies and practices across two national contexts, but to do so as members of an international team, navigating differences in language, professional culture, academic tradition, and lived experience. To support them, both instructors drew on learner-centred pedagogical approaches — engaging students’ existing knowledge and practical experience, building in structured reflection at multiple points, and scaffolding intercultural communication through the twelve guidelines for cross-cultural collaboration and the NASW Standards for Cultural Competence in Social Work Practice.

The learning outcomes targeted by the module — comparing child welfare systems, identifying relevant policies, analyzing intervention strategies, and working effectively in international teams — align directly with the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions). It is our conviction that social work education has a responsibility to equip future practitioners with global awareness and intercultural competence, and that collaborative international learning is one of the most effective means of cultivating both. See the results of the first COIL

Contemporary Issues in Child and Youth Welfare: A Cross-National Collaboration Munich and Los Angeles

Second COIL (winter term 2026/27) Concepts of Critical Social Work with Children and Family