Humanitarian Engineering: Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) for young students of higher education, to develop skills and social consciousness

The interest of some young people in studying engineering arises when they recognize it to address issues that affect their communities and the world. In this context, Humanitarian Engineering (HE) has demonstrated that, through in-person international collaboration projects of Service-Learning and Community Engagement (SLCE), higher education students develop their social consciousness and skills when they execute projects in the field and offer appropriate solutions to the problems that affect humanity. However, it is not always possible to carry out academic experiences abroad due to circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic or other reasons, which may keep some students marginalized from these types of experiences. Higher education institutions in the world have adopted new educational strategies and tools mediated by technology, such as the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) methodology to carry out projects together. This longitudinal study presents the comparative analysis between two HE events, one face-to-face (17 students) and the other one COIL modality (32 students), in which a structured questionnaire was applied to higher education students to determine significant differences between their perceptions before and after each event and between modalities, in relation to their service-learning, skills, social consciousness and knowledge. Subsequently, the perception of 166 students was analyzed before and after a second HE event in COIL modality. The findings demonstrate significant differences in both modalities for the before and after the experiences. Positive correlations were also found for most of the variables measured, but the development of skills and social consciousness metrics showed an especially pronounced increase in the service-learning approach than in the face-to-face modality over the COIL approach. Moreover, the effectiveness of HE projects presented through COIL is demonstrated. This is significant in that it allows access to an international experience through online engineering events in higher education institutions for students who are limited to participating in person.