In accordance with the research plan for the granted 2023 individual special research subsidy, this study involved two bilingual, cross-cultural COIL courses between students at KGU and those studying in North America, from April 2023 to January 2024. The 13 participating students in Japan were enrolled in an intercultural communication class in their second language (L2) of English, while the students in Canada and the United States were studying intermediate Japanese as their L2. Drawing on (a) data from pre- and post-intervention surveys, (b) journals following five different COIL tasks, and (c) post-intervention reflective interviews, the researcher employed a transcendental phenomenological research design (Moustakas, 1994) to identify the participants’ essence of experience during COIL and how this may have impacted attitudes towards study abroad.

By employing Moustakas’s (1994) modified version of descriptive phenomenology, four themes emerged composing the participants’ essence of experience: safety, unexpectedness, authenticity, and intercultural competences. Students benefited from the COIL experience through improved intercultural competences and increased knowledge of the target culture, even when the L2 learning goals between institutions differed. Students also reported that COIL provided an authentic international experience, which is especially valuable for students in Japan, who may be restricted from study abroad due to financial and academic-related constraints.

During the 2023 academic year, the researcher made multiple presentations at international conferences to disseminate my findings, including the 28th NELTA conference in Kathmandu, Nepal, and the 2024 Thai TESOL conference, in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Also, an article has been submitted and accepted to a peer-reviewed journal – The Kobe JALT Journal – and this issue should be officially published before the end of 2024.