Educational Resources

Explore a range of educational resources created by the Online Intercultural Exchange (OIE) Research Cluster to support students and staff  in building essential skills for online collaboration. This page provides tools, insights, and examples of unit designs that incorporate OIE activities, enabling students and staff to engage meaningfully across cultures and develop competencies for effective global communication and teamwork..

Educational Resources 

OIE Practices

Master of Interpreting and Translation Studies COIL program with the University of Leeds

Dr Shani Tobias, Lecturer in the MITS program at Monash, and Dr Martin Ward, Associate Professor of Chinese and Japanese Translation at the University of Leeds, have organised a regular COIL/OIE program for their Masters students since 2021. Students from the two universities who are studying Japanese-English translation engage in a joint activity for two weeks. In the initial tutorial class, students are divided into mixed Monash-Leeds groups and are set a collaborative translation task, simulating a real-life assignment. They work together in their groups synchronously and asynchronously over the fortnight and present their project in a final joint session at the end, reflecting on the task content and insights, the collaborative process, and the challenges of working in international teams across time zones. The results of pedagogical research conducted by Shani and Martin into this COIL program indicate that it has been beneficial in enhancing students’ translator competences, particularly regarding the professional skills and soft skills (such as project management, communication, teamwork, intercultural and organizational skills) necessary to interact with stakeholders in an online environment.

ATS1142/2142 Japanese Introductory 2: Japanese-English OIE with Tsudajuku University

Since 2020, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, ATS1142/2142 students have had the opportunity to participate in voluntary Japanese-English Zoom chat sessions with students from Tsudajuku University in Tokyo. This extra-curricular initiative enables participants to practice language skills, build confidence in Japanese and form meaningful intercultural connections, all while enhancing their language competence and expanding their networks. 

ATS3089 Social Institutions and Power in Asia COIL Project with Hitotsubashi University

Associate Professor Jeremy Breaden has been collaborating since 2019 with partners in Japan to deliver COIL modules in ATS3089, a capstone unit in the Global Asia major. In 2023 a new collaboration was established with Hitotsubashi University, a Monash University exchange partner, to deliver a six-week COIL program on the theme of 'liveability' for students in ATS3089 and a Hitotsubashi University course on Global, Regional, and Local Perspectives in Asian Society. Monash and Hitotsubashi students work together in teams to identify and investigate a liveability problem connected with their own living circumstances, culminating in a team presentation and peer review exercise in the final joint session. Students then reflect individually on what they have learned in terms of both subject matter and the collaborative process. Read an interview with a 2023 participant here.

Monash-Waseda Online Exchange Program with Waseda University

Since 2015, Dr Shimako Iwasaki, senior lecturer in the Japanese Studies program at Monash, has been collaborating with the Intercultural Communication Center at Waseda University in Japan to support international learning and to improve  intercultural competence. The twice annual extracurricular online exchanges facilitate language and communication skill-building.

Social Entrepreneurship Challenge in the Indo-Pacific (SECIP)

SECIP is an intensive two-week COIL program in which students collaborate to develop social enterprises that help address our region’s most pressing challenges. Through this program, students learn the practical innovation and design skills / know-how to develop and pitch solutions to real-world problems, develop virtual collaboration skills between disciplines, cultures and nations, expand social and professional skills, networks and horizons, make meaningful connections with peers in other nations in a dynamic online environment. 

The program is managed by a multi-university Steering Committee headed by Associate Professor Jeremy Breaden and involving academics at Monash University Malaysia and four Monash partner universities across the Indo-Pacific region. The program is delivered in collaboration with Maker’s Asylum, a makerspace in Goa, India, and also involves mentors working in a wide variety of social enterprises, government and international development settings.