Collaborative Online International Learning and Biodiversity Education across the Arctic Circle

COIL has the potential to democratize student mobility and strengthen international learning opportunities for students, faculty, and researchers using freely available online tools. COIL pedagogy enables issues of global concern to be explored through experiential, collaborative learning techniques.

One of the most urgent is the rapid decline in biodiversity due to the unsustainable use of natural resources, climate change, the fragmentation of ecosystems, the spread of invasive species, the destruction of habitats, and other human activities.

Within the context of the Arctic dialogue, the network has four key aims:

• To promote and enable wider engagement with COIL as part of a future-focussed, globally connected, virtual learning strategy.
• To highlight the importance of biodiversity for the well-being of the planet as well as for sustainable development.
• To enhance student employability within the Arctic region through the promotion of future-focussed, inter-disciplinary, transversal skill development using COIL.
• To democratise student mobility and strengthen internationalisation at home through the expansion of COIL knowledge and opportunities across the Arctic region.

COIL@UArctic is currently looking for UArctic member institutions, who have already ran COIL (or virtual exchange) projects with their students. COIL@UArctic would like to include project examples and best practice advice in the new COIL@UArctic website, and have your feedback and suggestions on the planned content of the website. If you have such examples and are interested in sharing your experience, please contact: coil-uarctic@rgu.ac.uk.

Video interview: Izzy Crawford (Lead, Robert Gordon University) and Elina Oksanen (Vice-Lead, University of Eastern Finland) of the COIL@UArctic