Introduction

We launched an experiential activity in the Winter semester of 2024 to promote cross-cultural communications and understandings, reflections on sustainability through creating linkages between the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and business innovations found and published through the AIM2Flourish global platform which in itself is a repository of student-led interviews of global businesses and their sustainable innovations.

This book is a collection of reflections from students in seven institutions of higher learning about their experiences and learnings during their 6-week Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) experiential activity in the Winter semester of 2024 (February-April). The students were placed in virtual teams of 5-6 students per team with 1-2 students from 3 institutions in each team. This resulted in 46 multi-cultural teams in total from the University of Guelph in Canada, the University of Navarra in Spain, Kenyatta University in Kenya, the University of Mpumalanga in South Africa, Koya University in Iraq, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Saudi Arabia, and IPMI International Business School in Indonesia.

The COIL activity was launched in Week 1 in February with a joint meeting through a live web-based meeting that involved all 250 students, 7 instructors, 2 co-instructors, 2 COIL coaches, and the Director at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agenet of World Benefit at Case Western (home of the AIM2Flourish experience). Six weeks later in April we celebrated the conclusion of the activity through another live web-based meeting. We shared with everyone their Certificates of Completion, recognizing the best posters, and sharing in our collective memories of our weeks together. (Access to the poster room is available by accessing this website: https://www.spatial.io/s/COIL-W2024-by-Ruben-660c706f0e05a7d0b8073644?share=8584630391812703164 .) In between the start and end of the activity, students met weekly, virtually and synchronously to discuss and reflect on the relationships and linkages between their assigned Sustainable Development Goals and a selection of recent global business innovations chosen from the pool of AIM2Flourish stories provided by the Fowler Centre at Case Western University (see https://aim2flourish.com/).

The local instructors guided their students when dealing with virtual team communications and cross-cultural challenges while the COIL coaches provided instructional material on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, on the AIM2Flourish business innovations, and guidance on a weekly basis through graded assessment, and final poster and final reflection assignments.

As a COIL coach, I had the pleasure of interacting with all teams together with my co-coach, Merhnaz Ahmadian. The intention of getting to students to work together globally, gaining better understanding of themselves, each other and of the importance of integrating responsible management into business innovations was well received and achieved. This can be evidenced by reading through the reflections in this book.

The book is organized into the five main categories that the United Nations describes for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Each category will have several student groups showcasing their posters, their group critical reflections, and individual reflections. As this publication is published with a Creative Commons Attribution (CCA) non-commercial 4.0 International License and is widely available for public access, we requested students to consent to the publication of their work. Each student who consented to publication of their reflection is named and their personal reflections are retained whilst those who did not agree or did not submit a consent form for the release of their name had their name on the group authorship listed as anonymous and had their personal reflection removed. We are thankful that the majority of students provided their approval to participate and be celebrated in this book.
We are also thankful for all the instructors, and co-instructors from the seven participating institutions for allowing this activity to form part of the learning experiences of their students. They provide their individual perspectives and reflections at the end of this book in the Conclusion section of the book.

Enjoy the reflections found in this book.

Ruben Burga, Coach and Assistant Professor – University of Guelph, Canada.