Effectiveness and Usefulness Sense of Collaborations Applying COIL Methodology with Mexican and Ecuadorian University Students

Six collaborations were carried out using the COIL methodology between university students from Tecnologico de Monterrey in Mexico and Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. The workgroups were interdisciplinary and joined students from engineering, social sciences, and humanities colleges. The results showed the main issues faced by students in carrying out a satisfactory work collaboration are to establish close communication among the members, mainly between students from different countries. Despite this drawback, they highly recommend this type of collaboration to learn about other ways of working, thinking, and acting to solve real-world problems, allowing them to broaden their vision and expose them to remote teamwork situations that students will surely experience in their professional careers. Also, personal attributes were found to be appreciated as determinants to achieving a successful COIL collaboration, even above academic and social ones. The teamwork skills of the students, in their own opinion, were improved by this international, multidisciplinary, and virtual collaboration.