THE LEARNER DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
学習者ディベロップメント研究部会誌
ISSN: 2433-5401
https://ldjournal.ld-sig.org

The Learner Development Journal Issue 6:
Learner Development Beyond The Classroom
Author: Chika Hayashi
Title: A Case Study of Collaborative Online International Learning Between Finnish and Japanese
University Students: Learning and Using English Beyond the Classroom
Date of publication online: 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.LDJ6-5
Author contact: <c-hayashi(at)bus(dot)seikei(dot)ac(dot)jp>
Published by the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Learner Development Special Interest Group, Tokyo
https://ld-sig.org/
Copyright 2022 each respective author
This article can be cited as:
Hayashi, C. (2022). A case study of collaborative online international learning between
Finnish and Japanese university students: Learning and using English beyond theclassroom. The Learner Development Journal, 6, 67–81. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTSIG.
LDJ6-5This article is part of a collection of practitioner research on the theme of “Learner
Development Beyond the Classroom” for Issue 6 of the Learner Development Journal (LDJ6),
edited by Isra Wongsarnpigoon, Dominique Vola Ambinintsoa, Phillip A. Bennett, and André
Parsons. Published once a year, each issue of the Learner Development Journal follows a
Community of ractices approach over a period of approximately 18 months in which
contributors work together, under the guidance of the editors, to share, respond to, anddevelop their research and writing.
Articles are published in the Learner Development Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY), of which CC BY 4.0 is the most recent version. Under this agreement, authors
grant users the right to unrestricted dissemination and re-use of the work. They ask only thatproper attribution is given to the work.

PAPERA Case Study of Collaborative Online
International Learning Between Finnish andJapanese University Students: Learning andUsing English Beyond the Classroom
Chika Hayashi, Seikei University, Japan<c-hayashi(at)bus(dot)seikei(dot)ac(dot)jp>
This paper aims to examine how a pair of Japanese and Finnish university students collaborate through an
original Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project which was introduced as a completely
out-of-class activity. Using a case study approach, I focus on the Japanese student’s reflection for an
in-depth understanding of her experience of the COIL project over 4 months. The analysis is based on thedata collected through an interview and her actual interchange of email messages and letters with her
Finnish partner student. The results show (a) that the Japanese student embarked on the project with both
expectations of intercultural communication and anxieties about her English proficiency, and (b) that thetwo students co-constructed their own communication styles as they shared personal information anddeveloped empathy and rapport with each other. I also found (c) that the Japanese student’s obsession
with formality and accuracy as well as recognition of her lack of communicative English contributed to thegradual decrease in the number of email messages. However, (d) this helped her to realize her needs andmaintain, even enhance, her motivation to study English. The study also sheds light on the necessity ofproviding well-balanced opportunities for students to learn and use both formal and informal English inorder to encourage better communication.

本稿は、授業外活動として独自に導入した「国際協働オンライン学習プロジェクト」に於ける日本とフィンランドの大学生ペアの協働の過程を探究する。
ケーススタディの手法を用いて、同プロジェクトに4ヵ月間参加した日本の学生のインタビューと実際のやりとり（eメ－ルと手紙）を分析した結果、(a)日本の学生は異文化交流への期待とともに、自身の英語力に対する不安も抱きながらプロジ
ェクトに参加し、(b)日本とフィンランドの学生はお互いに個人情報を共有し、心を通わせ信頼関係を築きながら自分たちのコミュニ
ケーションの形式を協働的に創り上げた。
また、(c)日本の学生の形式と正確さへの執着および英語力の不安により、eメールや手紙の送信回数が徐々に減る傾向が見られたが、(d)同時にそれにより自身のニーズを認識し、英語学習のモチベーションの維持ひいては向上に結びついたと認識していることが明らかになった。
さらに本研究の結果、より良いコミュニケーションを促すために、
フォーマルに加えてカジュアルな英語表現の学習および使用の機会の必要性も示された。

Keywords
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), out-of-class learning, Japanese and Finnish university
students, learner autonomy, case study
国際協働オンライン学習、授業外学習、日本とフィンランドの大学生、学習者の自律、
ケーススタディThe importance of collaboration has been emphasized in the field of education, andvarious types of collaborative learning have been widely introduced in the classroom at
different institutional levels (e.g., Ashwell et al., 2014; Hmelo-Silver et al., 2013). Regardlessof disciplinary subject area, a majority of the collaborative activities are carried out locally,
mainly within the same class (e.g., Shibley & Zimmaro, 2002) and between or among
several classes (e.g., Hayashi & Banno, 2019), while others are designed to integrate global
perspectives enabling students to interact with peers in different countries (Takeda etal., 2022). Although tandem learning has been widely used in language teaching andlearning for a long time (e.g., Menard-Warwick et al., 2013; Wakisaka, 2018), Collaborative
Online International Learning (COIL) is a new pedagogical approach that connects students
in different countries and provides opportunities for them to interact with peers. COIL
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is generally embedded in the formal curriculum and has been introduced mainly at theuniversity level (Ikeda, 2020). In Japan, an increasing number of universities (e.g., Kansai
University, Nanzan University, and Sophia University) have introduced the COIL approach,and those universities have embarked on this global-oriented project. Many informationand communication technology (ICT) tools such as Skype, Flipgrid, and email can be used
for different purposes within COIL projects, but the primary purpose of COIL is to enhanceintercultural competencies and digital skills while students are engaged in project-basedlearning. In many cases, COIL has been integrated as part of course activities in the formal
learning environment, but it is seldom introduced beyond the classroom. In this researchstudy, I focus on the introduction of COIL project in out-of-class settings. Using a casestudy approach, I examine how a Japanese university student and her Finnish partner
collaborated over 4 months. I also analyze the Japanese student’s reflection on her
experience of the COIL project.

Defining Collaborative Online International Learning

COIL employs various types of ICT tools and enables learners to engage in collaborative
learning across countries. It was first introduced at the State University of New York in
2004. In Japan, Kansai University was the first to participate in the COIL global network in2014 and has since been appointed as the leader of COIL projects in Japan, where a totalof 13 universities have been selected to introduce COIL to classes at their own institutions.
A number of research studies on COIL have been conducted in recent years.
Kodama (2018) reports on her work with a COIL project at San Jose State University,
California, where she incorporated a COIL approach into her Japanese course to provide
opportunities for students to collaborate internationally with Japanese students in
Kagoshima University to learn about Japanese culture. What was unique about this projectis that it included synchronous sessions and was carefully designed so that students
could develop their critical thinking skills as well. At the end of the project, the reflectionsof the students from San Jose State University were overall positive, and some students
maintained close relationships with Japanese students even after the course ended�
Kato et al. (2020) conducted a project-based foreign language learning project between
Shizuoka University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. They had students
communicate via Skype and collaboratively create their own homepages. Likewise,
Sawasaki and Yokono (2020) introduced a similar project for their Japanese and American
university students to give presentations in English (Japanese students) and in Japanese(U.S. students) based on the information they exchanged about their universities anduniversity life. These two studies used both the students’ output performance andquestionnaires to analyze and compare student cognitive and affective variables before
and after the project. The results showed that the students improved their speaking andwriting skills (cognitive aspects), and their intrinsic motivation (affective component) was
also enhanced.
Although various benefits of COIL have been identified in previous research, many ofthese studies have been conducted only in formal learning environments, and few studies
have focused on out-of-class settings. Moreover, previous accounts have tended not to
examine in detail the processes of interaction for pairs and groups of students. To fill thisgap, the current research study was carried out within an original COIL project that wascompletely based on out-of-class activity. In this study, I examine closely the processes of68

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interaction between a pair of Japanese and Finnish university students who took part in
the project.

Narrative Inquiry

This study looks in detail at the narrative of a Japanese university student (Yuki) together
with her actual exchanges of email messages, a physical card, and a letter with her Finnish
partner (Judy) to explore the following issues (both names are pseudonyms):
1.
2�
3.
4.

How did Yuki reflect on the feelings she had before joining the project?
How did Yuki and Judy collaborate on their mutual out-of-class learning?
What problems and challenges did Yuki face during the project?
What kind of change did the project bring about for Yuki, if any?

Methods
A Finnish and Japanese COIL Project

An original COIL project was designed by a Finnish colleague at the University of
Helsinki and myself and introduced as a completely out-of-class activity in October
2019. The project’s primary purpose was to provide both Finnish and Japanese students
opportunities to interact with each other through whatever communication tools theychose. My colleague and I could easily imagine that students have different interests andexpectations about these kinds of projects, so the purpose of the interaction was not
specified at the beginning. Each instructor told the students about the COIL project, andthose who wanted to participate in the project signed up for it. Students were encouraged
to choose whatever activity they thought was best, such as book discussions, English chattime, or a pen-pal program. Participation in the project was voluntary, and 20 students(10 Finnish and 10 Japanese) showed interest. The students were paired based on theirEnglish proficiency levels and their preferred means of communication and activities.
They were later informed of their partners’ names and email addresses� Throughout
the process, the instructors did not intervene in any of the communication between thestudent pairs, in order to understand whether and how students collaborate on theirmutual out-of-class learning without scaffolding from instructors.

Participants

Purposive sampling was selected to examine the Finnish and Japanese COIL project. Outof the 10 pairs, the pair of Yuki and Judy, her Finnish partner, was selected because theysuccessfully exchanged messages and engaged in the project over 4 months. Yuki was athird-year Japanese student majoring in economics. When she was a second-year student,
she had enrolled in a special English program that the university offers exclusively forstudents who have high English proficiency levels as well as a strong desire to develop
their English language skills and intercultural understanding. As a representative of theuniversity, Yuki was also sent to Malaysia and stayed there for 1 week to participate in aninternship program in summer 2019. Similarly, Judy was a third-year university student,
and her majors were mathematics and biology. Although both of them were in the same
year, Judy was 2 years older than Yuki.
In this study, my particular focus was on Yuki, who took my elective English course
for one semester. Through looking closely at her interactions with Judy, I expected that
I would examine the details of her out-of-class learning experiences� I also hoped to
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understand better the relationship between her in-class and out-of-class learning throughanalyzing her reflections in the COIL project.

Communication Timeline

Their interaction started with Judy’s email message to Yuki on October 21, 2019, and both
Yuki and Judy communicated regularly until February 5, 2020. Their communication tools
varied, but their primary means of communication was email. They also exchanged aphysical card and a letter, and they had 14 exchanges in total (see Table 1 for details).
Table 1. Interchange Between Yuki and Judy (October, 2019–February, 2020)
No. Date
Sender Communication Tool
Word Count
1
October 21 2019 Judy
Email message
114
2
October 24
Yuki
Email message
161
3
October 30
Judy
Email message
215
4
November 21
Yuki
Email message
134
5
November 27
Judy
Email message
255
6
December 2
Yuki
Email message
134
7
December 3
Judy
Email message
83
8
December 5
Yuki
Email message with a photo of51
a Christmas light display
9
December 11
Judy
Email message with a photo of84
a Christmas light display
10 December 17
Yuki
Email message
52
11
December 20
Yuki
Letter81
12 December 25
Judy
Email message with a photo of202
animals
13 January 8 2020 Yuki
Email message
118
14 February 5
Judy
Letter227

Data Collection

This research was exploratory in nature and employed a case study approach. Morespecifically, it was designed as a single-case study “to gain in-depth understanding repletewith meaning for the subject, focusing on process rather than outcome, on discovery
rather than confirmation” (Burns, 2000, p. 460). With written consent from both Yuki andJudy, all of their actual exchanges through email messages, cards, and letters were used
for the analysis�
In addition to the data from the exchanges between the two, in May 2021 I conducted
an interview with Yuki to serve as a reflection point on her thinking and decision-making(see Appendix for the interview guide). There was a possibility that Yuki had continuously
engaged in the COIL project with Judy even after the English course was over. Theinterview with Yuki was held online on May 8, 2021, one and a half years after the project
had ended. By that time, she had already graduated from the university, and about twomonths had passed since she had started out her career path� The semi-structured
45-minute interview with open-ended questions was conducted in Japanese, and the70

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transcript of the data was translated into English by the author. With Yuki’s agreement, theinterview was video-recorded for further analysis�

Results

In this section, the results obtained regarding the narrative inquiries are explained with
Yuki’s comments extracted from the interview, as well as from her and her partner’s actualinterchanges�

Yuki’s Reasons for Joining the COIL Project

Yuki had mainly two reasons to participate in the COIL project. One is that she wanted to
go to Finland. She had had a chance to go to North European countries with her motherwhen she was a second-year high school student. However, the tour did not include
Finland, but she had hoped to go there. The other reason was to improve her English
skills. According to Yuki, she had started online English conversation lessons on her own
and had taken the lessons on a regular basis for 1 year, but she had decided to quit in
October 2019, which was exactly when the COIL project was announced:
I could not enjoy the online English conversation lessons and was not motivated either,although I took the lesson only once or twice a week. I was about to hate English. I was
about to be bad at and dislike English. . . . I had mixed feelings. I didn’t want to quit,
but the booking system for the online English conversation lessons was troublesome.
Every time I took a lesson, I had to book in advance. The online English conversation
lessons were conducted on a one-on-one basis, but it was like what we call a “formalclass,” and I followed a set of materials with a teacher.
In the above excerpt Yuki expresses her mixed feelings that she had motivation to learn
English but was bothered with the booking system. Moreover, the lesson style, which she
defines as a “formal class,” indicates that it was not flexible nor open to improvisation, andit was set up as originally planned. Coincidentally, it was in October 2019 that I announced
the COIL project between Finnish and Japanese students in some of my classes. It seems
to have been good timing for Yuki, who was reluctant to continue the online conversation
lessons that she had been taking.

Yuki’s Expectations

Yuki acknowledges that her primary expectation was to make friends with her Finnish
partner. When she talked about that, Yuki immediately referred to an international
student from Indonesia that she met in her high school days:
When I was a second-year high school student, one Indonesian student came to myhigh school as an exchange student. We got to know each other and I even went tovisit her in Indonesia. . . . Also, I joined an internship program in Malaysia in summer
2019. Although I stayed there for just one week, I met many Malaysian people andeven took a Malaysian couple I had met there around when they visited Japan for theirhoneymoon.
Given her intercultural experiences, it could be said that Yuki is confident wheninteracting with foreigners and can adjust herself to a new environment. She commented
that she wanted to visit Finland and invite her Finnish partner from the project to Japan.
She had a very clear expectation and could easily visualize that she would be able tomaintain a close relationship with her Finnish partner even after the project, as she was
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A Case Study of Collaborative Online International Learningable to do with her other international friends. At the end of the interview, she briefly
mentioned that she had wanted to improve her English skills through the project as well.
However, her detailed explanation of intercultural communication clearly demonstrates
that her expectations were focused more on the social aspects rather than the cognitiveor linguistic ones. Thus, the COIL project would have been another chance for her to meetand get to know an international student from Finland.

Effect of the Lack of Confidence on Yuki’s Formality

Yuki also had a concern that was based on her lack of confidence in her English skills:
My main concern was about grammar, and I wondered if I could communicate with mypartner with my limited knowledge of grammar. . . . As we had email exchange mainly, I
focused on formality and tried my best to write messages formally.
Email messages are both formal and informal, and they are used differently according to
the purposes and recipients. However, for Yuki, it is obvious that email writing is strongly
associated with formality. Figures 1 and 2 show Yuki and Judy’s interchanges in the firstfew exchanges�
As Yuki explains, the use of the title “Ms.” and full name in the first few messages
exemplify the formality that she was eager to seek. Although all the messages include
emoticons, both the style and content of the messages demonstrate the formality thatYuki emphasized in the interview.
In the very first message, Judy took the initiative and started to negotiate with Yuki
about how to proceed with the project by asking some questions. In response to this, Yuki
answered the questions and also added her self-introduction at the end of her message�
The inclusion of the self-introduction might have worked as an icebreaker for them, andtheir communication style gradually became less formal and more friendly. The formality
was lessened in the fourth exchange when Yuki suggested that Judy address Yuki by her
first name, and from the fifth exchange onwards, they were on a first-name basis witheach other�Moreover, another change is observed in Yuki’s response to Judy’s questions. Yuki
separated her answers in a question-and-answer format rather than answering inparagraph form. Yuki clearly has considered her own answers as a formal and suitable
way to answer Judy’s questions, while in usual practice, this style would be considered to
be awkward and unsuitable for an informal friendly manner.
According to Yuki, their initial contact started with the premise that they would
send letters to each other� They had already had a mutual agreement and exchanged
their home addresses at the early stage of their interchange, in the third and fourth
entries respectively. Moreover, their questions became more personalized, and theirinteraction was intensified as their interaction continued. In the fourth entry, Yuki asked
follow-up questions about Judy’s future dream to be a teacher, and in response, Judy also
connected Helsinki to Tokyo in the fifth entry. In this way, both Yuki and Judy graduallyco-constructed their own communication style as they shared personal information,
showed empathy, and their different life experiences resonated with each other.

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Figure 1. First and Second Exchanges

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A Case Study of Collaborative Online International Learning

Figure 2. Third and Fourth Exchanges

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Yuki’s Concern: Obsession With Accuracy

Both Yuki and Judy’s first few interchanges demonstrate that they responded to eachother within a few days and actively participated in the project. However, Yuki confesses
that her obsession with accuracy remained strongly in her mind:
It took time to write messages because I had to carefully check my English sentences
again and again. I thought I should write proper English. . . . I felt sorry for Judy because
I couldn’t respond to her immediately. I even felt pressed.
The excitement and enjoyment that Yuki had at the beginning of the project were
gradually transformed to pressure, and this affected the length of her messages, as canbe seen in the eighth and ninth entries.
In the eighth entry, Yuki included a photo of a Christmas light display in Tokyo. In thesame manner, Judy shared a photo of Christmas lights in Helsinki in the next exchange.
Both of them seemed to increase a feeling of closeness by responding and even sharing
the photos that they took; however, the length of their messages, especially Yuki’s, started
getting shorter from the seventh exchange onwards (see Table 1). It should note that Yuki
wrote less than Judy in general, but Yuki’s word count was 143 words on average from thefirst to sixth exchange. On the other hand, she wrote about 50 words in her eighth and10th exchanges, which were the email exchanges. Yuki reflected on the interchange:
I was getting busier because of job hunting. I was tempted to stop writing to [Judy]. . . . I
said that the contributory factor was job hunting, but I might have been trying to makeexcuses for not writing to her due to job hunting. Because these were email messages,
I thought I should write long messages. I have to respond to each question formallywithout any mistakes. That’s why I took such an attitude.
As she talked through her COIL experiences, she admitted that she intentionally tried
to attribute her infrequent contact with Judy to job hunting. However, her explanation
revealed that she had a fixed image that her email messages should always be formal,
lengthy, and error-free. Her strong consciousness of formality gradually forced her to lose
enjoyment in communication, and her enthusiasm changed to pressure instead, resulting
in her writing becoming shorter.

Yuki’s Desire to Learn Casual Expressions

In spite of her strict consciousness towards accuracy, Yuki clearly said that she wanted touse casual English expressions that she had learned in class�
I was thinking of using some expressions I learned in Prof. Hayashi’s class [the author’sclass] like “It is freezing.” I wanted to know those casual expressions. I didn’t want towrite each sentence carefully by checking, “What is the subject in this sentence?” and“What is a verb in that sentence?” every time I wrote the messages. . . . I looked for somesites on the Internet to learn some casual expressions because what I learned in theschool is English for entrance examinations.
Yuki had the intention and willingness to use casual expressions that she had
previously learned in a class that she took with me in the 2019 academic year. Theinterview demonstrates that Yuki still remembered some expressions that she hadlearned 2 years earlier. However, her exchanges did not include any expressions that
she had learned in the class. In Figure 3, both Yuki and Judy wrote about winter in eachcountry, so Yuki could have included “It is freezing” or other expressions related to
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A Case Study of Collaborative Online International Learning

weather or seasons that she had learned in the class� Given the fact that no expressions
were included in her own writings, it could be said that she had not fully developed her
skills to apply what she had learned to a new context. Alternatively, her strong obsession
with accuracy was overwhelming, and this might have prevented her from using theexpressions in a different context.

Figure 3. Eighth and Ninth Exchanges
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Moreover, Yuki refers to the impact of university entrance examinations on English
classes. In general, in their senior high school years, students in Japan have to study hardfor university entrance exams, and this has major impacts on how both teachers andstudents approach English in class. Excessive emphasis on exam preparation can deprive
students of chances to learn casual expressions. In light of this, Yuki’s effort to search for
informal expressions on the Internet showed her strong desire to learn and use thoseexpressions in her writing�Yuki’s Changes and Her Ongoing Motivation After the COIL Project
Yuki reflected on changes that she had felt through the COIL project:

Unlike TOEIC scores, there are no visible results, but I was happy with the fact that I
could use English and communicate with [Judy] in English. The communication with
[Judy] was different from that of online English conversation lessons. When it comesto online English conversation lessons, a partner is an adult and someone I do not
know. Moreover, he or she is a teacher. However, my partner and I are in the same agegroup, and we have more things in common.
Comparing and contrasting online English conversation lessons and the COIL project,her focus was not on the product but the process, and she concluded that there was aconsiderable difference in enjoyment. As Yuki explains, she might not have expressed
what she wanted to say or made herself understood as clearly as she wished, but the factthat she herself was using English enhanced her self-esteem�
Together with her pure enjoyment in the communication with Judy, Yuki’s realizationof her insufficient knowledge of English and her strong desire to learn casual expressions
in English still helped her to maintain her motivation to study English and boost her
determination to study English, and more specifically, casual English expressions.
Yuki: I still continue to study casual expressions on my own even after the project.
Author: Oh, you continue to study English at your own pace. That is great.
Yuki: I’ve just started to work and cannot spare time as much as I want, though.
Author: By the way, Yuki, if you had another chance to engage in a COIL project, is there
anything that you would like to change?
Yuki: I would like to communicate with my partner through Instagram, LINE, or Zoom.
I thought I had to write a long message in email and letters and respond to eachquestion that Judy asked me one by one. I put myself on guard, and it felt like a chore.
But if I used, say, LINE, it would be easy to communicate.
Reflecting on her regret and frustration that she was unable to respond to Judy
immediately, she came up later with the idea of using Instagram, LINE (a social media
application widely used in Japan), or Zoom. Although Zoom involves video-conferencing,both Instagram and LINE are applications that would enable her to leave a message injust one or a few lines more quickly and casually without the pressure to respond to
her partner. More importantly, she would be able to increase her knowledge of casual
expressions by reading and responding to casual messages, which would consequently
lead her to achieve her ultimate goal of enjoying intercultural communication.

Implications

The Finnish and Japanese COIL project was introduced as a completely out-of-classactivity for two groups of university students. Holding both expectations of intercultural
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communication and anxieties about her English language skills, Yuki embarked on the
project with Judy and mutually engaged in the collaborative activity over 4 months.
Their interaction started in a formal way, but they gradually changed their interaction
pattern as they negotiated, responded, and related to each other. Without the teachers’
guidance and intervention, both of them took responsibility for developing the process ofcommunication between themselves.
Throughout the project, there were three challenges that Yuki had faced. Her desire
to communicate with Judy, her lack of confidence in English, especially regarding casual
expressions, and her obsession with formality and accuracy were intertwined intricately
and gave a huge impact not only on the number of exchanges but also on the length,
content, and format of her messages. Reflecting on my learning and teaching experiencesin junior and senior high school as well as university in Japan (Hayashi et al., 2014),
a majority of students face similar dilemmas and search for ways to overcome suchdifficulties. In order to maximize positive feelings, such as enthusiasm for interculturalcommunication, and minimize negative feelings that students tend to have in learning andusing English, it is desirable to provide opportunities for them to learn casual expressions
and to be aware that there are some differences between spoken and written English. As
Yuki pointed out in the interview, informal English is less emphasized in formal educationin Japan; students have few opportunities to learn and use casual expressions in aformal learning setting. Therefore, it is important to provide lessons or workshops forstudents to learn the difference between formal and informal email writing as an initialstep. As for formal email writing, students tend to learn a specific format together withsome formal expressions commonly used in a formal email message, such as “Dear,”“Best regards,” and “Would you please . . . ?” On the other hand, shortened forms, such as“face-2-face,” “BTW” [by the way], and “SMT” [sucking my teeth], that people use in daily
digital communication can be dealt with as informal email writing. In this way, students
would be able to maintain their awareness of both formality and informality and hopefully
use them properly according to the situation� This would consequently enhance theircommunicative competence�
Another issue to consider is continuity. In this project, Yuki and Judy were considered tobe the most successful pair of all the participants. However, as discussed previously, Yuki’s
written communication gradually decreased. In the interview, she said, “If there werean opportunity for an interim report, our interchange would have lasted much longer.”
For some pairs, intervention or monitoring by teachers could be effective, and it could
work as a motivator, as some students work much better within a framework set up byteachers. On the other hand, others might prefer to construct their own project together
as they establish their own communication styles with their partners. It is important forteachers to judge whether to intervene or not in a project by carefully examining students’personalities and motivation in order to maximize the possibilities for exchanges among
students�
In addition, the results of this case study imply a potential for the COIL project as analternative to conventional study abroad programs. Due to the unprecedented COVID-19
pandemic that started in 2020, most universities around the world were unable to send
their students to their affiliated universities in other countries or to welcome international
students from overseas. In many cases, students who had planned to study abroad before
the pandemic started to postpone or change their plans, and in the worst case, theyeven had to completely give up their long-standing dreams. However, COIL projects can
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enable students to experience intercultural communication even if they stay in their homecountries�
Overall, this study was successful in filling the research gap by exploring in detail theprocess by which Yuki and Judy collaborated in an out-of-class setting. Given the natureof the case study, the results cannot be generalized, but they help us to understandYuki’s experiences and perceptions through her reflection. For further study, it would beinteresting to have Judy reflect on her own experiences through interviews and analyze
her reflections together with those of Yuki to fully understand the experiences that bothof them jointly shared. Moreover, identifying both successful and unsuccessful factorsthat encouraged or discouraged the pairs of students who engaged in the project would
help to identify the necessary support and appropriate guidance for future programs thatprioritize out-of-class student activity and communication.

Conclusion

The original COIL project was introduced and carried out between two groups ofuniversity students in Finland and Japan. The focus in this case study on one Japanese
student’s communication with her Finnish partner student has let us understand thebenefits of introducing a COIL project as an out-of-class learning activity to encouragelearning beyond the classroom. Throughout the project, both Yuki and Judy took initiativeand collaborated without intervention from the instructors; they jointly took ownershipand responsibility for their mutual out-of-class learning. In short, the COIL project helped
to foster collaborative learner autonomy across countries.
In addition, this case study sheds light on the necessity of learning and using bothformal and informal English to foster better communication. In this project, Yuki’s
preoccupation with being formal and accurate in her writing, and her desire to be able
to express her ideas fluently swung like a pendulum within herself. Yuki’s realization ofher insufficient knowledge of English gradually made her lose her enthusiasm for the
project, which was consequently reflected in her increasingly infrequent participation andshorter messages. However, her strong determination to study casual English expressions
increased, and this did not demotivate her or keep her away from English. Rather, it
worked positively and drove her to make an effort to develop her English skills, whichlasted for a further one and a half years after the project was over. Voluntary participationin the COIL project enabled her not only to be aware of her strengths and weaknesses but
also to specify her needs in terms of English skills. Looking to the future, this will hopefully
have long-lasting benefits for her continuing autonomous and lifelong learning.

Author Bio

Chika Hayashi is a professor at Seikei University in Tokyo. She holds a PhD from the
School of Education, University of Nottingham. Her research interests include motivation,
learner/teacher autonomy, teacher education, cultural influences on classroom language
learning, and psychological aspects of second language learning in the classroom. Chika
is particularly interested in exploring learners’ affective components through visual
narratives as well as different methods of scaffolding learner autonomy.

Review ProcessThis paper was open-reviewed by Alice Chik and Donna Fujimoto of the Learner
Development Journal Review Network and by the Journal Steering Group. (Contributors havethe option of open or blind review.)
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A Case Study of Collaborative Online International Learning

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Appendix

Interview Guide

1.
2�
3.
4.
5�
6�

Tell me exactly why you decided to participate in this project.
How long have you been communicating with your paired partner?
How many times in total?
How did the exchanges take place?
Tell me the details of your interactions�
Are there any expectations that you had before participating in the project? If so,
what are they?
7� Did you have any concerns before participating? If so, what are they?
8� Was there anything that left an impression on you during the project? If so, pleasetell me about it.
9. Did you have any concerns during the project?
10. Did you experience any changes as a result of the project?
11. Did you try to use or apply what you learned in class during the project?
12. What were your impressions of the project?
13. Is there any reason why you ended the project after 4 months?
14. If you were to resume, how would you like to do it again?

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