I facilitated a collaborative online international learning (COIL) project between 116 hospitality students doing a labour law module at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) and 46 Venezuelan students who were in a General Theory of Law 11 module at the Andres Bello Catholic University (UCAB) in Venezuela. COIL is a digital mediated pedagogy which aims to develop intercultural competence, digital literacies and team work (Wimpenny et al., 2022). This COIL project enabled undergraduate students to develop an understanding of research and to practice the skills through an authentic learning experience. Authentic tasks have real world relevance and mimic professional practice; they are ill defined so students need to decide how to address them; they are complex and require investigation over a sustained period of time; they give students the opportunity to look at the activity from different perspectives using a variety of resources; authentic activities involve collaboration and reflection; they foster interdisciplinary perspectives; the tasks are readily integrated with the assessment and result in a refined output (Herrington et al., 2006). COIL involves the engagement of students in collaborative online learning across geographical areas which by definition includes cultures, language groups and often professional disciplines (O`Dowd, 2021). This methodology is a useful strategy, to infuse research skills through an authentic learning experience, into undergraduate students. The COIL project between the DUT hospitality students and the UCAB students doing a General Theory of Law II module enabled them to critically engage with the topical issue of the effects of COVID-19 on the employment of women through the lens of human rights and labour law, across geographical regions, using research skills. The aim of this project, which was structured around research skills, was to give students an authentic learning experience conducting research and developing the skills requisite of a COIL project. The choice of COIL enabled students to collaborate across lingua cultural borders, using different digital technologies which facilitated the achievement of the module outcomes. I used a number of teaching strategies to facilitate this for example structured tasks, prompts, and synchronous sessions. This project, despite a number of challenges experienced by students, achieved favourable outcomes through my continuous support. As the facilitator, I needed to keep my hand on the tiller in order to steer the students on a forward trajectory. I have developed a number of teaching strengths through offering COIL to my students, across many disciplines and collaborations with both global north and global south universities. I am able to speak Portuguese which assisted me with my Spanish speaking partners. Despite this I have a lack of confidence and feelings of insecurity when dealing with partners of another language in respect of students meeting the project goals. This collaboration was a complex project and challenging for students in a linguistically difficult context, with limited time. In future projects, I have restructured the tasks to make them less challenging and more manageable in a short space of time. COIL projects typically run between 4 and 8 weeks. My reflection concluded that the aims of the COIL project were met and I developed skills which have enhanced my teaching practice. The aim of this presentation is to share a structured reflection, from the model of pedagogical reasoning and action of Shulman (2005) with a view to improving future iterations of the project. The nine characteristics of authentic e-learning as described by (Herrington et al., 2010; 29), were clearly illustrated in this COIL project.