Collaborative online international learning: an Australian and Canadian intercultural nursing education partnership (E)

The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily impacted the international healthcare education landscape and has created many challenges for the global healthcare workforce. The value of building and sustaining international connections has never been more important. Collaborative online international learning (COIL) using digital technologies, offers meaningful and rewarding opportunities to develop and sustain international partnerships between nurses from other countries, without economic, organisational, or geographical barriers. In this presentation we will share how we developed a COIL program between a Holmesglen institute in Melbourne, Australia and a Northwestern Polytechnic in Alberta, Canada. We will present three educational interventions that we designed for nursing students including (i) an online virtual community for social connection and the sharing of resources; (ii) five virtual reality immersive simulation scenarios, and (iii) a virtual global classroom to promote collaborative, intercultural learning. For teachers, a virtual community of practice provided a platform for faculty to share education and research ideas and to participate in ongoing collaborate research opportunities.Our COIL program has been highly motivating for students and teachers. They have valued the opportunity to collaborate with a different culture to learn about global health issues, cultural safety for indigenous populations and other perspectives of nursing care. Teachers have enthusiastically engaged in collaborative research teams and are preparing six publications to international journals.We will demonstrate how our experience of COIL has strengthened our international partnership and has provided an evidence-based template for the design and delivery of future COIL partnerships and other international collaborative research projects.