Case Study of a COIL Project Collaboration Between Universities in Costa Rica and Mexico

This work was a case study on the application of an international education project using the COIL method between two universities located in Costa Rica and Mexico. In the case study, students were asked to diagnose problems related to responsible tourism and develop proposals to solve the identified issues according to the regional context of the universities. The research objective was to measure student satisfaction with the COIL experience and understand the relationship between social constructivism (SC) and project-based learning (PBL), considered pillars of the method, and the level of student satisfaction. In the case study, 36 public university students in Costa Rica and 29 private university students in Mexico participated, comprising nine mixed work teams of the Costa Rican and Mexican students. The research results showed differentiated satisfaction between the students of the two universities. Additionally, the SC and PBL constructs had a positive, statistically significant correlation at a 95% confidence level, explaining 54% of the variance in student satisfaction in the COIL experience.