Defining the Challenges of International Education (Transnational Education)
The initial TNE planning meeting took place at the Internet2 Global Summit in Washington DC, USA.
Defining the Challenges of International Education workshop will be dedicated for defining the key challenges for four specific audiences, from the perspectives of 'sending' NRENs, recipient NRENs, emerging NRENs and University staff.
During this meeting, the community prepared for the first SIG-TNE meeting, to take place in May 2017.
Introduction - TNE and objectives for meeting
Esther Wilkinson, Jisc
Jisc (Esther Wilkinson and Baoyu Wang) are leading this work on behalf of GÉANT, who are funding this work with a recognition that this is an important area to develop, both in terms of technology (connectivity and developing services) but also the policies and procedures for NRENs working together in this area. This is a truly international endeavor.
This is also an area of interest to the Global REN CEO Forum, who have recently discussed this and will be discussing TNE in more depth at their next meeting in July, in Reykjavik.
In events such as this over the last two years a number of us have explained some of the challenges in supporting TNE by sharing information, experiences and case studies, and initiating collaborations. Now we want to move this area forward more proactively.
GÉANT have agreed to support a TNE Special Interest Group (SIG-TNE) which we are in the process of setting up. The Steering Committee has been set up and we will have the first SIG-TNE meeting at TNC in May/June. A number of you in the audience have been involved in these sessions.
The purpose of this meeting therefore is to identify priority areas for the SIG and its members to tackle.
So I intend to give a brief overview of what we are talking about, then William will give CERNET’s perspective, and then we’ll enter a workshop type session.
It is good to see a stronger and growing focus on supporting education at most of the events such as this that I attend. It is clear that global politics is playing a pivotal role in driving international education up the agenda, so for example countries such as the UK and US, in my view, currently look less appealing to international students, students which have been an incredible asset whilst studying in our countries, but also a form of income for our education sector and economies. Also the loss of opportunity, soft power, collaboration and skills for all countries is significant. Whilst we can’t alter the politics we can ensure we adapt to and support this new, growing area of international education as it takes shape.
I thought I’d start with a definition of TNE to make sure we all know what we are talking about. This is the standard definition (see slide).
‘Transnational education is the provision of education for students based in a country other than the one in which the awarding institution is located’
By and large TNE is a complex combination of two or three types of these activities, in a ‘blended learning’ approach.
So for example in the UK, TNE in higher education is growing at a rate of 13%, this is five times faster than inward recruitment to our universities. We are already starting to see a fall in numbers of students coming to the UK to study from specific countries, such as India. Through our TNE programme at Jisc, set up in direct response to demand from our members we have discussed requirements with over 70 UK universities (we have 150 in the UK, so about half).
This is a similar situation across Europe and GÉANT, through the SIG-TNE is starting to collect data on TNE activities across European countries.
However, not only do many countries not recognise the term transnational education, for example the US refers to international education. The term TNE I don’t believe is valid for a number of reasons. The language of the TNE definition here describes a situation of ‘we export, you import’ – which does not respect the mutuality of the partnerships and collaborations we are developing and reciprocity of our relationships between countries. TNE is not just about exporting education and meeting government targets, we are developing global citizens.
I prefer to think of this area as mobility between countries. So for example where we have established ‘TNE’ partnerships, we are seeing more two way mobility between both countries’ host and sending institutions. So for example University of Nottingham students from campuses in China and Malaysia can study part of their education programmes in the UK, and similarly UK students can go to either campus.
We also see the importance of supporting other establishments such as overseas recruitment offices, which is not ‘TNE’ but is still promoting the mobility of students. And the lines are also blurring between education and research, TNE/mobility is very much seen as a pipeline to research and studies have shown research partnerships are born through TNE.
So for delivering any type of TNE or mobility, technology is critical. At the most basic level, good connectivity with low latency, consistent performance and minimal packet loss is essential. By the very nature of where education is being delivered, in many cases this is in areas where connectivity may be poor. And that’s what we have been trying to initially achieve at Jisc. Mobile students and staff want access to good connectivity and their applications – seamlessly across borders - wherever they may be in the world, whether that’s access to the VLE or Netflix. So a student will want to make sure eduroam, one of the essential ingredients for survival, will work when you walk through the doors of a campus, whether in the UK or in Dubai. We need not only to develop a suite of TNE support services, including for example VC and lecture capture, security, performance monitoring, shared data services, E2E performance monitoring, identity management, but looking to the future, exploring how areas such as developing digital skills and capabilities and the use learning analytics can be advantageous for internationally mobile students and staff.
One of the critical factors in supporting ‘mobility’ is the student experience. Students are now paying substantially for their education and rightly are demanding quality of provision. In TNE partnerships, this equates to a parity of experience – so a student studying in a Mauritian branch campus will expect at least an equivalent experience to those studying in the home UK campus on the same course. This means not only access to the VLE in the home country, but also access to the content for the course such as library materials and e-learning resources. This again is where technology is essential, as well as being able to address issues such as international licensing.
So, delivering education internationally is complex, and through whatever mode requires reliable and flexible infrastructure, with good IT support, which inevitably requires investment (both £ and staff time).
Introduction - CERNET's perspective
William Wan, CERNET
Almost 2000 TNE projects are currently happening in China, around 350 universities involved
Various types of TNE activities, including Campus Site (Nottingham, DKU, NYU), Campus-in-Campus, Office-only
New trend - Chinese universities opening campuses abroad (for example Cambridge)
Group discussions
The next part of the session participants were asked questions about what they see as the main opportunities and challenges, and what can be done to provide support in terms of information, tools, dialogue and opportunities, both now and in the future through the SIG-TNE or otherwise.
Recognising that participants may be at very different stages in supporting international education and mobility, with different perspectives, participants joined one of four discussions for their specific requirements depending on their situation in the following way:
- Sending NREN
- Receiving/host NREN
- NREN developing TNE support
- Education establishment (university, college)
The questions for the discussions:
- What are the main barriers and challenges for you now? In the future (both in terms of technology and strategic)?
- What do you need to know from the other three audiences to help you?
- What do you need to know now?
- What issues would you like GÉANT SIG-TNE to address?
- What supporting materials would be helpful for you (toolkits, case studies, etc)
Additionally, the following questions were included on each table to prompt discussion:
Home institution NREN (Sending) | Host NREN (Receiving) | NREN developing TNE support | Education institution (university, college, etc) |
|---|---|---|---|
- Who are your customers – universities, colleges, schools? Is this profile changing? - Types of TNE (Campuses, partnerships, online) require different support. Just connectivity? What other support? - Is your work led by customer demand? How are you prioritising the countries you are working with? What are the emerging markets in your view? - What information is required before entering new markets? - Do you have specific resources internally to support this work? How difficult is it to make a business case internally? How resource intensive are these activities? - What services do/could you provide? What are your customers asking for? - What business models do/could they use? Do you charge your customers/members for such support services? - How do you operate in other countries? Through strategic alliances and agreements with partners? Do these have service level agreements? - How do you obtain in-country knowledge? Do you have contacts at local ISPs and NRENs? How do you assess the quality of connectivity in that country? - Are there challenges with local NREN connecting policies? What could we do about them? - What arrangements are there for ‘reverse TNE’? i.e. when institutions from overseas want to connect in your country? Are the arrangements reciprocal? - Are your customers collaborative or competitive (i.e. do they offer peer to peer advice?) | Issues may include: - Who are your customers? Overseas/sending institutions or domestic institutions with overseas activities - What services do/could you provide? - What business models do/could they use? - How do you take a proactive approach to link up with sending NRENs? What arrangements are there for ‘reverse TNE’? i.e. you’re your institutions overseas want to connect in a predominantly sending country? Are the arrangements reciprocal?
| Issues may include: - Understanding of structure and function of an ‘Established’ NREN. What is your desired end state? How do they find out more about other NRENs? - Understand which stakeholders (governments departments) need to engage? What is their commitment to support TNE? - Where do you find out information on your countries international education/TNE activities? Does the data exist? - Do you have specific resources internally to develop/support this work? How difficult is it to make a business case internally? What type of support would be helpful from NRENs with established TNE support (letter of support etc.) | Issues may include: - What does an equitable student experience look like? What information do you collect on student experience? - What do you need to think about in terms of connectivity between campuses to ensure TNE students can access same resources? - What sorts of applications need to be supported e.g. lecture capture, VLE, off campus support? What about for the future? E.g. Customised learning experiences? Remote assessment and identity/recognition? - Who operates the local campus infrastructure? - What about staff delivering TNE? What are their issues? - How do services commonly offered to domestic students respond when delivered/managed overseas? - Will TNE students have same access to learning and library resources as domestic students? - How do systems integrate and talk to each other? - How and when are you engaged in the planning and delivery of TNE in your institution? - What are the common issues - Data protection? Licensing? Connecting back to administrative systems? - Do you have quality assurance processes? Do these include technology? How can you/have you supported peer organisations in your own country? |
Group discussions feedback
| Group 1 | Group 2 | Group 3 | Group 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
Licensing for online/digital/e-resources - institution in one country have a license, but does that mean that it can be used by students at other campuses? Interoperability issues e.g. IPv6 and other technological mismatches between home and receiving campus. Access and identity issues. International relations - national NRENs are sovereign and regional networks provide connectivity - what engagement is there locally that could support the local environment; being a responsible local partner as well as national | People working in NRENs do not know the establishments (or people) in other countries - need to get the right information from NRENs; the sending NRENs should provide critical and accurate information (something that SIG-TNE could facilitate) For small establishments the administrative overhead can be huge, collaboration can save time and money Political/tech barriers in different countries - i.e. government restrictions in China (e.g. IPv6 and firewall). In-country knowledge is key Identity management and authorisation issues. To be authorised the user in some cases needs to be physically in the country. eduGAIN needs to be explored. Language/culture/working practice differences across both countries/institutions Sharing best practice on TNE
| Knowing who is out there –we know there is an increasing demand, but which institutions we need to serve? Who has the demand for a remote campus? (e.g. Georgia) Political barriers in different countries - institutes from abroad might not be allowed to settle in a country (e.g. Hungary) Connection policies differ, some countries do not allow connecting institutions that are not financed by the government, overseas institutions are classed as ‘private’ e.g. Spain Networks built for research purposes and not educational institutions (e.g. Africa) Language/culture/working practice differences across both countries/institutions | Licensing for online/digital/e-resources - institution in one country have a license, but does that mean that it can be used by students at other campuses? Needs negotiation, expertise, time, effort. Political/tech barriers in different countries - i.e. government restrictions in China (e.g. IPv6, Google and firewall). In-country knowledge is key Institutions might not have the right peering policies and use commercial connections (which may be less stable) Communications - time zone differences, language barriers - additional time is needed for international work Sending hardware equipment across to different countries can be expensive and incur delays e.g. customs Defining relationships between the home and overseas campus/partnership is essential, for example accountabilities, roles and responsibilities, and any hierarchies in the relationship. It is advised that leadership at the home campus and branch campus is at the same level for decision making |
Wrap up and next steps
The group discussions identified some synergies, and the main issues identified were:
- Overseas licensing
- Obtaining national data and information on TNE activities
- Internal communications and relationships, culture, language, resources
- Interoperability
- Connection policies and (collective) use of commercial suppliers
- Logistics for transporting hardware abroad
- Quality of international connectivity and high costs in some countries
This has been a starting point to tease out the important issues, and reassuringly there is nothing that has raised concerns outside the known challenges. The next discussion as the SIG-TNE will prioritise the activities, whilst being realistic about what we can achieve
It is helpful to identify some of the things that are currently being worked on through GÉANT and Jisc:
- Developing interactive global connectivity map for TNE, bringing together information such as regulatory frameworks and policies, country specific information
- Jisc TNE toolkit for education institutions
- Case studies
- Developing online registration form (collecting info from home institutions)
- Support for overseas licensing