Sustainability Communication on Campus – A Bilingual COIL Project

Freie Universität Berlin & University of Minnesota Duluth

Students involved: 15 from Berlin and 10 from abroad

Professors involved: Antje Wilton & Daniel Nolan 

Synchronous units: 2 sessions at the beginning and end of the project via Zoom

Asynchronous units: Supervised group work phases during the project. Each previously organised groups received a task. 

Tools used: Zoom, Google docs, Flipgrid

The course unit was about researching public sustainability communication on the university campuses in Dahlem and Duluth. In the spirit of the sociolinguistics approach of researching linguistic landscapes, the students had the task of collecting image data on sustainability communication on their respective campuses, systematizing it and then analyzing and presenting it in mixed groups. The joint work represented an application and research-oriented sequence within the participating courses.

Icebreaker session to get to know each other, group work, working on collectively gathered empirical material, discussion, readings of scientific literature.

The COIL was part of the coursework, so only participation was required, but no performance was graded. The students provided feedback via the course evaluation. The feedback was very positive, although organizational difficulties were also mentioned.

The experiences from this bilingual COIL project highlighted several key  factors: excellent working relationship between the course leaders is a must! + Close supervision of the groups during the work phases + Quick troubleshooting of technical problems + Provide several communication channels + Be aware of time differences! + Do not place too high demands on language skills – Avoid being overwhelmed by too many different tools