[1][2] CoLang has been described as part of a modern collaborative model in community-based methodologies of language revitalization and documentation.
[1][3][4][5][6][7] The institute happens in even-numbered summers (opposite the Linguistic Society of America Summer Institute) at various American universities,[8] but it has drawn participants and instructors from around the world, including Australia, Canada, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
[6][9][10] The first part of the institute consists of two weeks of workshops on topics like community archiving, linguistics, audio and video recording, language teaching, and activism.
[15][16][17][18][19] The first InField in 2008 resulted in ongoing collaboration between Kennedy Bosire and Carlos Nash for the completion of the Ekegusii encyclopedia[6][9] and a dissertation on tone in Ekegusii,[20] while the fifth CoLang in 2016 resulted in the development of a thirty-year revitalization plan for Kristang in Singapore.
CoLang was founded in 2008 as InField, the Institute on Field Linguistics and Language Documentation, by Carol Genetti.
The practicum languages were Han, Miyako, and Unangam Tunuu[30] CoLang 2018 was held at the University of Florida.