Another elimination simulation which requires people to choose whom they would like to sit with on a train

This inventory assesses participants' willingness to try new and unfamiliar foods.

Many COIL experiences use English as the medium of instruction, with a mix of native and non-native English speakers participating. In some cases, it's a good idea to prepare the native English-speakers for these interactions by helping them to understand what non-native speakers may be experiencing. Redundancia is a very effective (though not free) empathy-building activity that is a great way to make native speakers more aware of the power dynamics that privilege their own contributions to discussions and more willing to be accommodating listeners in COIL/international virtual education interactions with non-native speakers. Another option - and this can be done with the whole group, not just the native speakers - is to watch a relevant film clip from the Crossing Borders Education film, "The Dialogue" (#3 of the list of clips linked above - "On speaking a foreign language") and extract lessons from it in a debriefing discussion.

CILMAR Intercultural Learning Specialist Florence Adibu has recommended this reading to prep students for interacting with others whose names they may perceive to be "hard". She writes (in a review of the Name Game activity):

Consider reading this article about the importance of having an attitude of curiosity when learning unfamiliar names. "Names That Are Unfamiliar to You Aren't "Hard," They're "Unpracticed": "It's time to change the conversation around 'difficult' names."

Imaginative discussion activities such as "If I woke up tomorrow" make great reflective tools for empathy building and the development of capacity for perspective taking. I can see this particular activity being useful before a COIL/international virtual education experience (or in preparation for study abroad), during a program or course - for example when a critical incident occurs that students need help processing - or after an experience such as in a reentry course or debriefing. For COIL, you should probably tailor the activity so that students are perspective taking relevant to other cultural groups involved in the program. For study abroad, target various subgroups of the host culture.

This set of questions might be a good way for pairs or small groups to get to know each other in a COIL/international virtual education experience. I would encourage the use of synchronous meeting platforms so students can talk through their responses with each other. Note that there is the original version with 25 questions and a "mini" activity with only 5, so you have some options in terms of how much time you want to devote to the activity. If asynchronous communication is your only option, consider choosing 1-2 questions a week to jumpstart other discussions, so that group relationships deepen over time.

"Pacing" is a great activity for diverse teams to increase the effectiveness of communication and improve team dynamics. We use it often at Purdue both for on-campus courses and in preparation for study abroad (for example with students who prefer turn-taking but will be immersed in a host culture that uses overlapping). When you have a COIL/international virtual education program that will involve students from different communication styles, this activity would be very good preparation for students. I recommend doing with with all groups of students involved in a program in person before the experience begins rather than trying to adapt it to an online medium. 

We use this often on Purdue's campus in classes and programs that include a good mix of domestic and international students. If you are looking for an activity to encourage deep conversation about cultural values in diverse groups of students, this is a good pick. For this reason, I think it would work well with COIL/international virtual education (though I have never personally tried it in this context). Because it requires coming to a consensus as a group in multiple "rounds" of conversation, I think it would work much better with synchronous online discussions than spread over a longer time period asynchronously. Regardless of if you do this in person or online, pay close attention to the Notes tab, since there are multiple versions of the activity available for download and each has its advantages/disadvantages.

I think the assignments in this course are of particular interest to COIL instructors and international virtual education program developers because they are already adapted or were even originally designed for online use in distance learning. However, keep in mind that many of them are currently meant for individual use by students. If you want to use them with small groups, you'll need to alter some of the instructions. Big thanks to Dr. Dan Jones of CILMAR for collecting these resources together for easy access by  HubICL users.

The American Association of Colleges and Universities have created over the past decade or more a set of 16 rubrics referred to as the VALUE (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) - yes, higher education does love its acronyms. These rubrics are great tools both for choosing concrete learning outcomes and for measuring growth or achievement related to those outcomes. The two rubrics in the set that are most relevant to intercultural learning are: Intercultural Knowledge and Competence and Global Learning. The HubICL Toolbox is of course searchable by the 6 elements of the first of these two rubrics (the intercultural one): self-awareness, worldview frameworks, verbal/nonverbal communication skills, empathy, openness, and curiosity.

In addition to simply searching the Toolbox for relevant learning outcomes to your COIL programs/courses, you  might try going to the Discover menu above, choosing Tags, and searching for key words there. One advantage to this method is that it connects you with items in every area of the HubICL, not just the Toolbox. Also, you can snowball via tags - if you have found something interesting, try clicking on one of its tags (usually located at the top of the screen) to see everything else in the HubICL that shares that same tag.

COIL instructors or designers might want to check out these additional related collections, complements of the HubICL manager, Annette Benson.

D-I-E (Describe, Interpret, Evaluate) is an oldie but a goodie with an unfortunate name! When preparing students for study abroad or a COIL/international virtual education experience, it can be very effective to do this activity in an orientation. It provides essential perspective-taking skills by making students aware of the cultural lenses through which they are interpreting and evaluating events and experiences, and then providing them with an analytical process for examining their assumptions and gut reactions and imagining (or asking for) alternate interpretations and evaluations from other cultural perspectives. 

This activity is great for improving communication in diverse teams. More direct versus more indirect communication styles can be an issue in COIL/international virtual education as people with different cultural norms interact online. It might be helpful to talk explicitly about this difference in communication styles and help students practice "code-switching".  I would assign this in small groups or pairs with members of different cultural groups; they probably need to do the activity synchronously, especially if they include a role play. Some important points to emphasize: 1) there is no inherent hierarchy here, with one style always better than the other; 2) this is not a binary but a spectrum; 3) the same statement can be perceived as direct by some people and indirect by others - context matters!

Scenery, Machinery, People is an activity that we have been using at Purdue in various contexts - it seems really effective for encouraging self-reflection and empathy for others. In COIL/international virtual education as well as in study abroad, I think it makes students more aware of how they are treating others (and how that feels). To modify it for COIL, you could either assign a pre-reading or give instructions with the powerpoint in a synchronous meeting. Debriefing can be in groups via discussion board or individually in a reflective writing assignment. You'll want to be sure to focus discussion or reflective writing on the COIL experience via effective prompts, such as: when operating unthinkingly on "auto-pilot", when might you be in danger of treating others involved in this COIL experience as scenery? as machinery? how would you feel if others place you in that category? how can we intentionally work to treat each other as people in this course/program? how will this be beneficial?

This interactive online tool that allows users to explore cultural values in country comparisons based on Geert Hofstede's classic research works well for both COIL/virtual international education and preparation for study abroad. However, instructors really need to take care not to create or reinforce cultural stereotypes by dealing only with these aggregate means. It is so important to treat the research on this website as a starting point for discussion of within group variation and getting to know individuals in other cultures. For COIL, for example, you might assign students to explore a country comparison with the groups involved in the course/project and then to discuss among themselves questions such as: what did you think about the way your country was represented - does it apply well to you personally? did anyone have the experience of not being represented (your country is not listed)? in what contexts do you think this research leads to accurate expectations, and when would it be misleading for anyone relying on this information about your national culture? are their subgroups in your country that are strikingly different from these overall trends? based only on the website, what conflicts might be predicted among students in this COIL experience? now that you have more nuanced understandings of each other as individuals, do you think those predictions will hold true? what can you do as a group to manage conflicts and misunderstandings now that you have this information?

There are several excellent recent documentaries from CBE that work well to prep students for intercultural interactions, helping them to develop more self-awareness, openness, and empathy. These include the films "Crossing Borders" and "The Dialogue"

I really like these documentaries for both pre-departure for traditional study abroad and for COIL/international virtual education experiences. Watching and then discussing this film allows students to open up and be vulnerable about their own processes of becoming more aware of the cultural stereotypes they have of others as they prepare to interact more intimately through immersion or online interaction. If you don't have access to the whole film through your institution, cannot afford to purchase a copy, or simply want to use shorter film clips as part of a dialogue or written reflection activity, there are several excerpts available for free streaming from the Crossing Borders Education website. 

This is a great short (<20 min) video to incorporate into a COIL course if you are trying to get students to complicate their understandings of the members of other groups as well as work on self-awareness of their own stereotypes and preconceptions of others. For international virtual education, I would modify this activity by assigning the video to watch individually beforehand and then providing prompts for either synchronous or asynchronous discussion among students. Small or large groups both work. I would add some debriefing questions that apply the concepts in the video to the COIL context and the particular groups represented. For example: what stories are told of the places/peoples in the COIL group? who tells those stories? what are the limitations of understanding others in the COIL experience just on those stories? what stories do students wish out-group members could hear about their cultural groups? 

The Institute for Innovative Global Education is another leader on the world stage for COIL. They are especially committed to documenting with rigorous research the effectiveness of COIL and COIL + study abroad combinations of various kinds for intercultural competence development. See their website for more information on virtual education conferences, publications, sample course syllabi, and more. 

One of the quantitative instruments most commonly used to assess intercultural learning outcomes in COIL is the Beliefs, Events, and Values Inventory. Several large scale government supported projects are using the BEVI. See http://www.kansai-u.ac.jp/Kokusai/IIGE/resources/BEVI-COIL.php for more information as one example of these research efforts.

SUNY (the State University of New York system) is one of the pioneers of international virtual exchange in the US and the world. See their website for resources, conference information, publications, and more.

This is another way for students in a COIL experience to get to know each other with an added cultural layer to the introductions. You'll need to modify it for a virtual setting. I think it works well to put 1-2 students from each university in a group together to exchange the stories of their naming in asynchronous discussions. 

I think this icebreaker is a great way to move beyond students in each group learning each others' names to a deep exploration of cultural values expressed in sayings heard during childhood/youth.  For COIL, the activity needs to be modified to utilize either a synchronous virtual setting or an asynchronous discussion board type setting. The latter seems to work better in my experience. In this case, you would ask each student to post the information the activity asks them to put on a name card, and then follow up with questions and comments for their classmates. 

This study explores social work graduate students’ evaluation of an assignment involving food. The assignment was designed to develop empathy and cultural humility. The article used in this tool contains a description of the assignment and questions for critical reflection. There is enough information that the assignment could be adapted for other contexts. It would be important, however, to ensure an environment of openness and mutual support for the assignment to work as well as it did for the authors of the article. 

The instrument, a short checklist, was created for use in clinical professional assessment of athletic trainers and/or health-care professionals or for self-assessment by the health professional. It covers "bedside manner," tone of voice, facial expression, posture, zone of proximity, and distracting or negative body language. Although created primarily for use in clinical health-related professions, it may also have some value for use in STEM lab partnerships, shared office spaces and/or conflict resolution situations.