When the online Ethnic Studies (ES) 213 class, “Race & Popular Culture,” meets for the first time in Fall 2026, 40 students will log in. But they won’t share the same classroom or even the same continent. Half will be College of Social Sciences students at UH Mānoa in Honolulu, while the other 20 students will join from Meiji Gakuin University (MGU) in Tokyo.
The collaboration is a prime example of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a growing global educational model in which CSS is an established leader. COIL links classrooms from higher education institutions in different countries to facilitate cross-cultural learning. Students who complete three COIL courses — ES 101 (Introduction to Ethnic Studies), ES 213 (Race, Class, Gender and Popular Culture), and ES 422 (Mixed Race Identities) – earn an Identities and Global Citizenship micro-credential.
The ES 213 Fall online class is taught by Roderick Labrador, CSS Director of Student Academic Services. It is strategically timed to take place at 2:15 p.m. Mondays in Hawaiʻi, which corresponds to 19 hours later on Tuesday mornings in Japan. It gives students in both countries a means to interact and explore ES, a subject not commonly taught in Japan. “COIL is called virtual student mobility in Japan,” said Labrador, “because it’s basically studying abroad without traveling.”
Two UH Mānoa students can attest to the life-changing effect of COIL on their future studies. CSS alumni Mamaylia Soungie and William “Liam” Burke were profoundly impacted by the lessons learned in Spring 2026, when they enrolled in ES 422, “Mixed Race Identities,” taught by Associate Professor Ethan Caldwell.
“What I enjoyed most were the smaller discussion groups made up of both UH Mānoa and MGU students,” said Soungie, who earned her BA in ES and Psychology, and is now preparing for the Graduate Record Exam. “During the first couple of classes, many Japanese students seemed a bit nervous about differences in language proficiency during classroom discussions. But as we progressed through the course, they became much more comfortable about either speaking on camera or participating through the chat.”
Burke, who is pursuing a doctorate in Sociology, said he found the learning experience of an interactive online class with students in a different country to be fascinating. He said it threw into sharp relief the assumptions and ideas he took for granted in Hawaiʻi, where a large part of the population consider themselves to be mixed race compared to homogenous Japan. “Taking a COIL class helped me to engage with students from different countries and to learn how to surmout cultural and linguistic differences,” said Burke. “It’s broadened my perspective and given me new questions to ask, which is what I think we all look for in the social sciences.”
For the instructors involved, the lessons across the Pacific were equally revelatory.
For example, Associate Professor Caldwell recalled a lesson about mixed races in popular U.S. culture through the lens of Hollywood. When MGU students shared the cosmetic trend in Japan of whitening skin tones or making eyes and other body parts more prominent, that helped UH Mānoa students better connect with the overarching lesson of legacies of race, ethnicity and identity, and its intersection with body image and colorism.
In another example, Instructor Ruben Campos, who has taught ES 101: Introduction to Ethnic Studies for several years and most recently via COIL, noted that Okinawa has been a major eye-opener for both sides each semeter. “In Hawaiʻi, Okinawan heritage is celebrated with deep pride but, in Japan, Okinawans have faced longstanding discrimination,” said Campos. “Comparing those two realities helped students see how different cultural lenses shape the same history.”
The College’s COIL program received international recognition in 2024 for innovative use of educational technology to create impactful educational experiences.
For more information on the COIL-based micro-credential in CSS, send an email to academic advisor A.J. Simpao at ajsimpao@hawaii.edu or visit the program page.
