Innovation in Language Learning
Designing for Participation in a Japan–Australia COIL Project: Perspectives from Japanese Students
Sachiyo Sekiguchi, Meiji Gakuin University (Japan)
Kyoko Kawasaki, The University of Western Australia (Australia)
Abstract
This study examines student participation in a sustained Japan–Australia COIL project from the perspective of learning environment design, drawing on experiences reported by students at the Japanese university.The project connected university students in Japan who were learning English with learners of Japanese at an Australian university. Although COIL is intended to promote reciprocal learning, providing opportunities for interaction does not necessarily ensure meaningful participation. Rather than being organized as a one-off exchange, the project unfolded over six to eight weeks through a shared digital hub, recurring meetings, staged collaborative tasks, and weekly records that enabled instructors to monitor the collaborative process. Students could use Japanese and English flexibly during interaction, while project outputs were produced in the language each group was learning. The activities also positioned students as contributors of locally grounded knowledge and required them to create shared outputs. One project, for example, involved developing sustainable travel proposals for visitors to Japan. This study focuses specifically on the experiences of the students in Japan, drawing on self-reported questionnaire data collected from 75 Japanese participants between 2023 and 2025, when the questionnaire structure and project design remained broadly consistent. Descriptive results show that 84% of participants rated the group activity positively, while 60 of the 75 students reported perceived improvement in their language ability. A preliminary thematic review of open-ended responses identified recurring accounts of coordinating meetings, conducting research, explaining cultural and local knowledge, proposing ideas, negotiating meaning, providing language support, and producing shared materials. Participants also described linguistic and intercultural difficulties, but their responses indicated that such difficulties prompted clarification, reformulation, confirmation, and adjustment during collaboration. From an ecological perspective on language learning[1], these findings suggest that sustained interaction, shared digital spaces, task roles, visible collaborative processes, and shared outputs can provide affordances for contribution and target-language use. From the perspective of the Japanese participants, meaningful participation in COIL involved more than interaction: it included opportunities to explain their knowledge, propose ideas, coordinate collaborative work, and support their partners within a shared learning environment.
Keywords: COIL, learning environment design, student participation, virtual exchange, collaborative learning, affordances
REFERENCES
[1] Van Lier, L. (2004) The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston.
