Students of the Bachelor of law program at the University of Stavanger (UiS) have from 2024 taken part in an innovative teaching and learning experience: the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project. Through a digital partnership with the University of Antwerp in Belgium, our students explored the topic of transgender rights in a comparative context.



This project isn’t just about learning legal facts—it is about building connections across borders, gaining insight into a foreign legal system, and developing a cross-cultural understanding that’s increasingly important in today’s legal world.

It also allows students to develop other valuable future proof skills such as teamwork, time management, and digital communication – all necessary for functioning in a complex, professional context in a globalized society.

What Is COIL?

COIL is a teaching model that enables students in different countries to work together on academic tasks online. It’s a way of internationalizing the classroom without requiring travel, making it a sustainable way of teaching comparative law, and at the same time offering opportunity to gain broader perspectives on various legal issues.

At University of Stavanger, we decided to introduce the project as a mandatory assignment in the course BRV330 - Legal culture and comparative law. This is a mandatory 5 ECTS course, offered in the spring semester. The goal is to offer varied assignments in the program, in order to train a broader range of skills and encourage deeper learning over plain memorization.

The students from Stavanger and Antwerp are divided in small groups of 6-8 students. Over two structured online sessions, they get to know each other’s legal traditions and discuss how their respective legal systems approach a chosen topic - transgender rights. The first session starts with an ice-breaker activity, where students get to know each-other. Afterwords they discuss general features of each other’s legal systems. In the second session, they use guiding questions prepared by the course teacher to structure their discussions.

It is important to emphasize that the student’s engagement is crucial for the success of this project, as teachers serve primarily as facilitators rather than direct instructors. During COIL, students take responsibility for their educational experience, deepening their understanding, and contributing to the overall success of the project.

Student feedback: reflections on the experience

After the course was completed for the first time in 2024, the students gave their feedback in the anonymous course evaluation. The project sparked mixed reactions, as is often the case with new and ambitious educational formats.

On the positive side, students appreciated the opportunity to present and discuss Norwegian legal culture with peers from another country. The interactive format, especially the ice-breaker activities and guided questions, created a space for exchange that extended beyond the typical classroom experience.

However, since Belgian legal culture was not included in the curriculum, several students felt that the COIL sessions were disconnected from the rest of the course—as Belgian legal system was not directly relevant to the exam. Additionally, time pressure from other courses, especially the concurrent 25 ECTS obligations law course in the same semester, made it difficult to fully engage with the project, as students naturally prioritized the other course. Some students also felt that replacing the written assignment with the COIL activity deprived them of valuable feedback from the teacher that would have helped them prepare for the exam. Some students also expressed that the workload associated with this project was disproportionate for a 5-ECTS course. Others pointed to challenges in organizing the group work and navigating communication tools.

Lessons learned and the way forward

COIL is a powerful model for international learning, but like any educational innovation, it benefits from ongoing refinement. Taking into account the student’s feedback, we plan to introduce some changes to the future editions of the course and COIL assignment.

Although we believe that activities in the course do not necessarily need to be exam related as students learn for life, not only exam, we will better align COIL content with the learning goals and exam topics. This will be done by introducing Belgian legal culture to the list of legal cultures that are studied in the course. Second, we will run the courses legal cultures and law of obligations parallel throughout the semester, not consecutive as was the case in 2024, so that students have more time to prepare and focus on this project. The course teacher will also be more explicit in informing students about the purpose of the project and why the skills they gain are important for their future work perspectives. They should also be made aware that the groups they are assigned are the groups they have to work with, as this is also the case in a real-world work life, and that this too is a part of learning experience.

As for the objection of being deprived of the opportunity to get written feedback by the course teacher because this was replaced by COIL, UiS has hired student assistants, which will provide feedback on written work in preparation for the exam on a voluntary basis.

We are aware that the first few iterations are often filled with trial and error, unexpected challenges, and moments of doubt. But eventually, things tend to get easier as students develop clear expectations and instructors learn and adapt over time.

Despite the challenges, the COIL project represents a bold step toward more globally engaged legal education at the University of Stavanger. It encourages our students to be curious, collaborative, and culturally aware—qualities that will serve them well as future legal professionals in an interconnected world.