Taking the Guesswork Out of COIL: How Baylor's Hankamer School of Business Connects Classrooms Around the World

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) asks a lot of faculty. Beyond designing a shared curriculum with a partner institution thousands of miles away, instructors also have to solve a much more basic problem: where do students from two different schools, with two different learning management systems, actually meet?

That was the challenge facing Christina Iluzada, PhD, Global Learning Coordinator at Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business. Iluzada trains and supports more than ten faculty members running COIL projects every semester – each paired with a different international partner – and needed a shared space that worked no matter whose LMS, time zone, or tech comfort level was on the other end. After hearing how Linkr had supported a Canadian institution's COIL program during a webinar with the Texas International Education Consortium, she decided to give it a try. More than a year later, it's still the platform she recommends to every faculty member starting a new global collaboration.

A shared home base for global classrooms

Before Linkr, Baylor faculty cobbled together whatever tool they could (Google Classroom, LinkedIn Learning groups, Padlet) with no consistent way for partner institutions and students to meet. Linkr gave Iluzada one place where students could build profiles, connect with international peers, hold discussions, and post assignments together. She now uses it to onboard every new partnership, with custom, Hankamer instructor and student guides she's built to flatten the learning curve for faculty trying COIL for the first time. One recent example: a fully asynchronous collaboration with the Durban University of Technology in South Africa, run entirely through Linkr.

"Institutions that adopt a dedicated virtual exchange platform take the guesswork out for instructors, making it far easier to say yes to international collaboration."

Christina Iluzada, PhD

Global Learning Coordinator, Baylor University Hankamer School of Business

Features built from feedback

What's kept Iluzada a long-term user isn't just the discussion boards, video posts, and shared calendar, even though the calendar's due-date visibility has become a favorite with students who, as she puts it, "live by due dates." It's that her feedback has visibly shaped Linkr's roadmap. Early on, video upload limits were a bottleneck for a program built on students seeing and hearing each other; Linkr expanded them for COIL and virtual exchange users broadly. When she asked for a way to organize small international teams without cluttering the whole class, that need helped inform Linkr's new Subgroups feature — now available to all COIL and VE users.

Preparing students for a connected world

For Iluzada, Linkr's value goes beyond logistics. Global teamwork and cross-cultural virtual communication are skills students will need well beyond the classroom. Having one, recommended, well-supported platform means faculty can focus on designing great COIL experiences instead of troubleshooting technology. As she puts it: institutions that adopt a dedicated virtual exchange platform take the guesswork out for instructors, making it far easier to say yes to international collaboration.

Ready to make global collaboration easier for your faculty? See how Linkr can support your COIL and Virtual Exchange programs.

What Baylor's COIL program looks like on Linkr: