This paper examines the role of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) as a tool for critical consciousness-raising and student empowerment. Specifically, drawing on student reflections of surveys, this paper examines the outcomes of a 6-week cross-cultural virtual exchange between American and Palestinian students centered on topics including how young people can affect change in society, and promoting equitable access to high quality education. For Palestinian students, this project provided an opportunity to share their lived experiences and engage in rights-based advocacy in English, using language as a tool to challenge misperceptions and reshape dominant narratives about Palestine. American students, on the other hand, found engagement with their Palestinian peers to be inspiring and eye-opening, offering them perspectives that are often missing from mainstream media portrayals. Both Palestinian and American students reported high levels of confidence in offering their own nuanced perspectives and personal experiences on Palestine and other contentious political issues. In other words, beyond helping students to develop their language abilities and intercultural communication skills, the project helped them shift their perspective and find their voice. Finally, both Palestinian and American students reported on the long-term friendships that emerged from this project, transforming distant others into peers and equals, thus requiring careful consideration of one’s ethical obligations toward these newfound friends. 

Adopting a Freirian perspective on COIL as a critical pedagogy, this research highlights the transformative potential of virtual exchange in fostering critical dialogue and perspective-taking. Likewise, this paper also draws on decolonial theory, particularly Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s (2018) concept of epistemic freedom, to explore how COIL can move beyond surface-level intercultural competence to challenge global coloniality in knowledge production, resist extractive learning practices, and center marginalized narratives in pursuit of mutual liberation. In doing so, this paper seeks to contribute to the burgeoning literature on critical COIL by expanding conceptions of global engagement beyond neoliberal ideologies of global citizenship, which often position students in the global north as globally mobile active agents of positive change, rendering people in the global south as static recipients of benevolence or pity (Chapman 2020). Critiquing the power asymmetries that frame such intercultural encounters, this research instead explores COIL as a potential site for relational, justice-oriented learning that acknowledges interconnectedness. In engaging critically with the concept of intercultural competence, this paper seeks to contribute to conversations relating to the use of COIL as a tool for promoting intercultural dialogue, peacebuilding, justice, and equality in African and global south contexts.

عنوان المؤتمر

UNESCO Chair on Intercultural Competences Conference

دولة المؤتمر

المغرب

تاريخ المؤتمر

29 سبتمبر، 2025 - 2 أكتوبر، 2025

راعي المؤتمر

UNESCO Chair

معلومات إضافية

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