On April 30, 2026, Fast Forward teachers in the Foreign Languages, ESL, and Speech (FLES) Department attended an on-campus workshop on Collaborative Online International Learning.
Workshop facilitators, on campus and via Zoom, included SUNY Broome’s Myriam Stanton and Kathleen McKenna, Hope Windle (SUNY COIL Director), Kier Palmer (Spanish teacher in Bainbridge-Guilford, whose classes collaborate with Mexico and Taiwan), Nancy Noice and Courtney Dayhuff (of Banyan Global Learning), and Maria Paulina Ruiz Cabanas Quiroga and Ana Bonilla (of LaSalle University in Mexico).
The workshop began with an icebreaker asking participants to use their phones to answer Mentimeter questions about their work and their work-life balance.
It proceeded to a discussion of the synchronous and asynchronous international collaborative work of the workshop facilitators and their students–opening up for participants new possibilities for intercultural learning and growth in their classrooms. They heard about middle and high school students sharing their hobbies and their towns with one another.
They also heard about college students in the US and Mexico sharing their driving test experiences with one another. In Mexico, the test is administered on a simulator, which offers some interesting challenges for students, some of whom would prefer to be tested on the road. US students shared some of their 1st and 2nd and 3rd test experiences on the road.
The facilitators offered themselves and their students as resources for fast forward teachers interested in bringing to their classrooms the hands-on, real-world connections and learning opportunities that COIL makes possible.
Submitted by: FLES and Fast Forward
Tags: Diversity
