Creating Projects

For many of us, our first step on this CO[I]IL jour­ney will be reflect­ing on what it means for us per­son­al­ly to ‘walk in a good way.’  We’ll then explore how we can braid togeth­er Indige­nous and inter­cul­tur­al ways of being and know­ing as they relate to our spe­cif­ic local con­texts and com­mu­ni­ties. In this sec­tion, we con­sid­er what we need to think about when cre­at­ing a project, includ­ing:

• how to work with local Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties to iden­ti­fy a project
• how to choose an inter­na­tion­al part­ner
• con­sid­er­ing the prac­ti­cal impli­ca­tions of CO[I]IL projects

You can down­load more infor­ma­tion by click­ing on a sum­ma­ry of this page via a PDF: Cre­at­ing Projects, or con­tin­ue to read on.

How to Work Well with local Indigenous Communities to Identify a Project

A guid­ing prin­ci­ple of the CO[I]IL Path­way is for projects to be co-cre­at­ed with at least one Indige­nous instruc­tor who lives in and / or works very close­ly with the local Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty. For exam­ple, a non-Indige­nous NIC instruc­tor would choose to do a project with an Indige­nous instruc­tor at a part­ner insti­tu­tion. An Indige­nous NIC instruc­tor could decide to do a project with either a non-Indige­nous or an Indige­nous instruc­tor at a part­ner insti­tu­tion. Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties must remain at the heart of the project. ALL instruc­tors would con­nect with the Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty (ies) con­nect­ed to their insti­tu­tion.

What ‘con­nec­tion’ entails will vary accord­ing to:

• our posi­tion­ing — how we are ‘in rela­tion to’ the com­mu­ni­ty and our iden­ti­ty (e.g., Are we a com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber? Were we born local­ly and not a mem­ber of the local Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty? Are we a new­com­er to Cana­da? etc.)
• the needs of our local Indige­nous community(ies)
• Indige­nous insti­tu­tion­al resources avail­able (e.g. at NIC, the Elders in Res­i­dence, the Indige­nous Edu­ca­tion Nav­i­ga­tors, NIC’s Indige­nous Edu­ca­tion News web­site, the Work­ing Togeth­er Work­ing Group, and the Indige­nous Edu­ca­tion Coun­cil)

It’s impor­tant we do our research, and find out what we can about our local Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ty (ies) and their needs and inter­ests. Find­ing out as much as we can from read­i­ly avail­able sources (e.g., the Inter­net, local orga­ni­za­tions, our insti­tu­tion­al resources and con­nec­tions, etc.) ensures that when we do reach out per­son­al­ly, we are doing so respect­ful­ly and appro­pri­ate­ly.

Choosing an International Partner

There are sev­er­al fac­tors to con­sid­er when iden­ti­fy­ing which inter­na­tion­al part­ners might be a good fit for you and your class, includ­ing:

• do you already have over­seas con­nec­tions / estab­lished rela­tion­ships that would be suit­able for your project? Have you researched a cur­rent list of insti­tu­tion­al part­ners?
• do you speak any lan­guages in addi­tion to Eng­lish (again, not nec­es­sary), that could help when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with a pos­si­ble project part­ner?
• how flex­i­ble (e.g. in terms of lan­guage, time zones, etc.) are you in how you con­nect with your part­ner insti­tu­tion?
• how com­fort­able are you in nav­i­gat­ing cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences in a class­room con­text?
• would you be inter­est­ed in con­nect­ing with a class from a dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline?

Get­ting clear on your respons­es to the above ques­tions will help you nar­row down, how best to iden­ti­fy poten­tial inter­na­tion­al project part­ners for your CO[I]IL project.

CO[I]Il Logistics – Getting Practical

When plan­ning a CO[I]IL project, it’s impor­tant to con­sid­er var­i­ous logis­tics. These will influ­ence what can eas­i­ly be achieved, when, and how. Think­ing about the fol­low­ing before start­ing project design is a good idea.

Language

In inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tions, not all par­tic­i­pants (instruc­tors and stu­dents) will like­ly have Eng­lish as their first lan­guage. It’s impor­tant to con­sid­er what the main lan­guage of com­mu­ni­ca­tion will be dur­ing project plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion if trans­la­tion will be need­ed, and how you plan to help stu­dents nav­i­gate any lan­guage dif­fer­ences.

Time zones

In addi­tion to class sched­ules, whether or not stu­dents (and instruc­tors) can meet ‘live online’ dur­ing class time will also depend on whether or not project part­ners share the same or sim­i­lar time zones (e.g., only a few hours dif­fer­ence).

Technology

Insti­tu­tions, instruc­tors, and stu­dents may use dif­fer­ent edu­ca­tion­al plat­forms and tech­no­log­i­cal tools. We also need to con­sid­er our own and our stu­dents’ famil­iar­i­ty and com­fort lev­el with tech­nol­o­gy, as well as that of our project part­ner and stu­dents. While we may not know who is using what at the ini­tial project plan­ning stage, reflect­ing on what tools we’d like to use and being open to learn­ing new ones, is an impor­tant part of plan­ning a CO[I]IL.

Collaborative Tools

While the list of pos­si­ble tools is end­less, it’s okay to choose one or two that will work best for us, bear­ing in mind:

• avail­abil­i­ty and expe­ri­ence using the tool
• acces­si­ble and inclu­sion
• pri­va­cy con­cerns (ide­al­ly stu­dents should not have to pro­vide any per­son­al iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion to use a tool and if they do, they need to be aware of this and have alter­na­tives if they aren’t com­fort­able pro­vid­ing their infor­ma­tion

Learning Outcomes

While we can’t assume oth­er insti­tu­tions require cours­es to have learn­ing out­comes (LOs), think­ing about how our pro­posed CO[I]IL will help stu­dents meet one or more learn­ing out­comes is worth con­sid­er­ing at the plan­ning stage, espe­cial­ly if you’re look­ing for project ideas that con­nect com­mu­ni­ty needs and the course into which you plan to incor­po­rate your CO[I]IL project.

Assessment

Assess­ment require­ments, cri­te­ria, and prac­tices may vary across part­ner insti­tu­tions. It will be impor­tant to have a con­ver­sa­tion about assess­ment right at the begin­ning, espe­cial­ly where a CO[I]IL project is includ­ed in a course that has exter­nal­ly man­dat­ed eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria.

Project Implementation

Every project will be unique. That said, there are two impor­tant ele­ments that every CO[I]IL project will include.

Connecting through kinship: engaging in the project

This step of the CO[I]IL is what peo­ple some­times see as the main part of the project, although in fact, it is a step on a much larg­er and longer jour­ney.

A project can last one class, one week or sev­er­al weeks across a term. It involves stu­dents across insti­tu­tions work­ing togeth­er in diverse groups to explore a giv­en top­ic or prob­lem. The tra­di­tion­al COIL ‘ice-break­er’ is replaced with ‘Sto­ries of who I am,’ fos­ter­ing com­mu­ni­ty and con­nec­tion before stu­dents embark on their joint explo­ration.

Reflecting and reciprocity — moving forward in reflective circles

A key aspect of a CO[I]IL is reflec­tion, not only for stu­dents but also for instruc­tors. Reflec­tion is impor­tant at every stage along the Path­way, and most espe­cial­ly at the end, before embark­ing on a new project.