Internationalization at home: a collaborative strategy in the teaching-learning process at UDEM Business School in Mexico

Nowadays one of the main problems for students is the lack of international experience. For address this problem emerges the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a tool of internationalization at home (IatH) developed for State University of New York (SUNY). COIL is a group of activities through technology that develop intercultural competences without travel to another country. The COIL project was carried out in Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) in Mexico as strategy of internationalization. In this study we will focus on UDEM Business School. It is a qualitative research with an exploratory-descriptive scope. The data collection techniques include literature review of secondary sources and interviews. The main finding suggests that the essence of experiential learning is “learning by doing” and with COIL it is possible to take advantage of experiential learning benefits without physical presence in a foreign country, increasing the international exposure of the students and professors. Also, COIL project has two important characteristics: is easily replicable and innovative. The main contribution of COIL in UDEM is pedagogical in two senses: first, students use the technology in international tasks and second, COIL improve the pedagogical capabilities of professors.

Key Words: internationalization at home, COIL, experiential learning, UDEM.