Champagne Interaction on a Beer Budget

Transnational Ed until now has been conducted either as 100% asynchronous e-learning, which is not popular in the undergraduate degree programs currently driving the field -- or classroom-style, accomplished through travel (expensive), by sub-contracting direct instruction to local faculty, or both. Videoconferencing is used in some high profile graduate programs, but unless they're doing it in stealth mode, no one is using streaming technologies on a regular basis in international education.

This situation is about to change. We believe that two-way audio and video transmission over the free public Internet has come of age and is now a viable proposition for use on a routine basis.

Just this week we conducted another test of a low-cost system, which gave us a rock solid connection between Utah State University in Logan, UT and a site in Singapore. Using room lighting and an ad hoc microphone set-up, we had a great talking head image, easily understandable audio, and perfect lip sync. It is clear that this configuration is workable for delivering lectures across the Pacific Ocean and enabling two-way interaction, such as Q&A. Here's some details:

1) Time of Day: It was 7PM in the Mountain time zone, 9AM in Singapore. This is when most of the live lectures will take place -- early evening in the U.S., early morning in east Asia. Local Internet traffic at these times was not a problem.

2) Hardware: Polycom ViewStation SP 128, the low end of Polycom's videoconferencing product line. It supports 15 fps at 128 kbps max, which works just fine for this application.

3) Internet Connections: T-1 out of our university, ADSL into the Singapore site. This turns out to be important. When we try to connect directly to the local network at our partner's campus, there is too much else going on and the system fails. With a dedicated ADSL line going right into a classroom, the system works like a charm.

Of course we will be upping the ante on hardware very shortly. Products like the Viewmaster SP are designed to go point-to-point. We will be needing multi-point capabilities soon, but for now, we're happy to crawl before we walk.

During the Fall '03 semester, we intend to use this approach for several hours every day, five days per week.

Synchronous videoconferencing is not a panacea, however -- it needs to be part of an overall teaching and learning model which also includes asynchronous techniques as well as non-mediated face-to-face interaction.

Informal Learning and Transnational Education II

I was pleased to find a comment attached to yesterday's post by none other than Jay Cross, responding to my thoughts on his "Informal Learning - the other 80%" article. I don't want to overstate this -- but it's a great thing being responded to. It's that way on lists and discussion forums too. You post something with something of yourself embedded in it. Someone responds. You feel noticed. Listened to.

The reverse is true as well. Sometimes you work up a nice thought provoking post and nada. Whistling in the wind. It's embarrassing. Doesn't make you want to do it again anytime real soon. With blogs, the archives and permalinks take away that sting a little. It can always happen.

The fact that it was a Jay Cross comment helped me to another realization: The way to get someone's attention these days is to publish an inbound link to their blog. Email is all spam and too many opt-in newsletters and is losing its charm. But with web services like technorati, emails, logs, and RSS feeds can keep you up to date on everyone whose train of thought crosses your tracks. Frankly, this rocks.

It's a feel-good experience when you're doing it, which doesn't mean that's all it is. The comment which has precipitated this post was substantive, not a mere, "interesting ideas" reply. What he actually said was:

I don't look at formal/informal learning as an either/or situation. Both have a role to play. When learners are after structured experience and credentials as proof of learning, the formal component better be larger.

As I've pondered what "informal" learning means, I've realized that it's really unauthorized learning. It's figuring things out as one wishes. It's self-determination.

Self-determination works if you know what you're after and have some ideas about how to get it. While I'm no expert in TNE, it strikes me that students need formal learning in order to appreciate the what and how-to prerequisite to self-sufficiency. You gotta start somewhere.

Now that's what I call advancing the conversation.

The focus of most Transnational Ed at this time is undergraduate degree programs. Much "What" and "How-To" is still needed. Still, informal learning cannot be dismissed from this context. In fact, undergraduate education is the best place to start building adult self-sufficiency muscles.

To this point in its less than illustrious history, TNE has not become famous for its sophisticated pedagogy. With free public Internet videoconferencing, and asynchronous technologies galore -- plus an awareness of The Other 80% -- maybe its time to change the basic TNE teaching model.

Informal Learning and Transnational Education

The focus of Jay Cross' article on "Informal Learning - the other 80%," posted in his Internet Time blog last week, is learning within organizations. As such, it has tremendous relevance to Transnational Ed (TNE) as it relates to corporate training in developing countries which are attempting to join the global knowledge economy. This is only one aspect of TNE, however, and not the main force driving the current growth of the field. Even though it is "Old School" in every sense of the word -- what is really pushing cross-border higher education is the demand for accredited undergraduate degrees in countries which have a vastly inadequate supply of tertiary education slots to meet that demand. In other words, 18 year olds in Asia, Africa and Latin America want a college education, and the domestic providers are not able to accommodate them.

Ever since Stephen Downes linked to "The Other 80%" in OLDaily a few days ago and stated that informal learning, "rather than classroom-based learning - is where we should be focussing our efforts," I have been pondering the applicability of Cross' article to the more traditional dimension of TNE. At first it seems simple and straighforward -- e-learning! Put together a degree program consisting of a relevant set of courses, all contained within some handy-dandy CMS like WebCT or Blackboard, and let students experience the joys of independent, self-directed study. No classroom. No instructor-centered paradigm. Just projects, problem-based learning, and even group collaboration in semester-based courses. A perfect recipe for facilitating Informal Learning.

Except for one thing. That's not what they want. In "Future Directions in International Online Education" (2001), Ziguras and Rizvi argue that, "fully-online global delivery has failed to capture the imagination of students and teachers in the same as it has excited senior administrators. Fully-online global education may be technologically feasible and offer huge return on investment to some providers, but we suggest that there are very important educational and cultural factors that will hamper the development fully-online programs in international education." Ziguras has conducted as much empirical research on this issue as anyone, and has determined that Asian students are simply unprepared for self-directed learning.

John Biggam of Glasgow Caledonian University echos this concern: "Yet, this expectation of greater freedom for students may in itself present a barrier to students. Students familiar with face-to-face support mechanisms, where the teacher is a regular source of support, may not know how to cope with a different type of support infrastructure. For example, in Asia, a market that has been identified as a possible lucrative area for distance learning, the students are from a culture that is not used to such academic freedom and prefer regular teacher guidance and contact."

Things change. Whatever cultural traditions make Asian undergraduate students in transnational degree programs poor candidates for self-directed learning are probably not that much different from traditions in elementary and secondary in most of the world. With time and patience and the proper scaffolding, most students will no doubt be able to adapt. But at the present time, to be successful and avoid the alarming drop-out rates associated with Open University-style e-learning, transnational programs will need to be classroom-based. This means that Transnational providers will be forced to develop full-blown branch campuses, or at the very least establish partnerships with local providers offering a local teaching staff. This level of commitment shifts TNE out of what the WTO calls "Cross Border Supply," (mode 1) and into "Commercial Presence" (mode 3) -- a far more serious undertaking.

And what about "The Other 80%"? Does this important set of insights into how learning really happens have to wait for several years and a major paradigm shift before it can inform TNE? Not necessarily. Education does not have to be an either/or proposition, even though it is often presented that way. Undergraduates in the developing nations of the world want a structured classroom experience, (and their parents want them in a supervised environment as well). So be it. But elements of "The Other 80%" can still be introduced into that context. Students can be assigned group projects that call for activities outside of the classroom. They can interact informally with other students in other countries, registered for the same course, in online discussion forums, where they can compare and reflect on their experiences. After a few semesters of progress toward a degree, they might even sign up for one course on an independent study basis, within a complement of courses that is still primarily classroom-based.

Most Transnational Ed programs are not ready for a total shift into Informal Learning. They can, however, begin by taking small steps in that direction. It may well be that the transformation of traditional classroom learning into strong support for Informal Learning in transnational programs is not an event, but a gradual process.

International Students Pay for Australian Universities to Recruit More International Students

Public higher education in the U.S. has been steadily replacing government funding with tuition and fee increases to students for the past several years. College Affordability in Jeopardy, released in February 2003 by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, shows that public colleges continue to become more expensive for students and families: "The states are responding to the budget crisis by passing major cuts on to colleges and universities-and colleges and universities are responding to these reductions by passing on the cost to students and families," said Patrick M. Callan, President of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "This is all happening at a time when student financial aid is not keeping pace with increases in tuition."

According to PURE, a project based in Finland focusing on educational funding, the private funding of higher education is dramatically increasing all over the world, a strategy supported by the World Bank. Private funding is another word, in this context, for tuition and fees. The increased financial burden which students are forced to bear to financed by a growing public credit market offering student loans.

More than 60 countries now offer some form of student loan program, with Australia's Higher Education Contributions System (HECS) considered among the most innovative. Introduced in 1989, HECS was the first large-scale Contingent Loan System in the world. This means, according to Jamil Salmi, an education sector manager for the World Bank, "that loan repayments are a fixed proportion of a graduate’s annual income. The administration of income-contingent loan systems is generally simpler and cheaper than with other systems, because loan repayment and recovery is handled through existing collection mechanisms (e.g., tax administration, the social security system). Income-contingent loans are also more equitable, since graduates’ payments are in direct proportion to their income."

HECS and higher education funding in Australia is in the spotlight today based on the Treasurer's Speech on the upcoming federal budget. Special forces were the big winners in the proposed Budget with $157 million being set aside to build a Special Operations Command to combat terrorism, while students were, in some ways, the big losers. They will face up to 30% increases, with only a higher contingent-income target to ease the pain; that is, as of 2005 students will not have to start repaying their loans until their income reaches $30,000 a year, (the current level is $24,365).

What is also striking in the higher education section of the newly unveiled budget is the treatment of international students. Over 200,000 foreign students (80% are Asian) study at Australian universities, generating $5B in export earnings. Well, they are about to be thanked for their contributions to the economy with extra charges totaling $113M, which will be used to promote Australian higher education abroad. The Straits Times reports that foreign students represent 18% of the total student population down under, but contribute more than 30% of some university budgets. Apparently the discrepancy is about to become even more pronounced.


How price sensitive is the demand for studying abroad? Will student fee increases, with an extra dose for international students, drive stay-at-home transnational ed programs? I would think so.

If We Build Barriers, Will They Still Come?

It is well-known that foreign students have had a more difficult time obtaining visas which allow them to enter the U.S. since the 9-11 attacks. What is not fully understood is (a) have these difficulties actually resulted in a down-turn in international enrollments at U.S. campuses, and (b) what will the long-term effect be?

NAFSA: The Association of International Educators and the Association of American Universities (AAU) have conducted the most comprehensive research on the first question, and based on their October 2002 survey they have determined that U.S. institutions experienced an 8% drop in foreign student enrollments between Fall 2001 and Fall 2002. This is a significant but not precipitous decline. The NAFSA/AAU interpretation of the data is that, "the steady growth in foreign student numbers witnessed during the last several years leveled off in 2002."

However, several other factors could be considered which might lead to a less benign view of the drop-off between 2001-2002. First, though absolute enrollment numbers have increased in recent years, the U.S. share of this market has steadily decreased for decades. Again according to NAFSA: "The U.S. share of the internationally mobile student market has declined from 40% in 1982 to 30% today. In other words, U.S. anti-terrorism actions are not the only factors affecting student choices -- the entire field is increasingly competitive, and the main competitors are not all operating under the same constraints."

Furthermore, the Fall 2002 semester was the end of Year One of the new U.S. student visa restrictions. Many students caught in that process had made their decisions before the new climate was well established. This Summer, that will not be the case. Students all over the world are well aware of how difficult it will be to obtain entry and re-entry visas. The International English Center in Boulder, CO, an English-prep feeder for many U.S. universities, claims that, "More than 90 students were enrolled in fall 2001, but that number had been cut in half by the first session of this year, which had the lowest number of students since the school opened in 1975."

NAFSA's response to the situation is contained in a set of public policy recommendations presented on May 2, 2003 to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary for Homeland Security Thomas Ridge, which begins with an urgent request, "to ensure that the visa screening process is streamlined in time to avoid a recurrence of last year’s crisis, when hundreds of students and scholars were unable to enter or return for the fall semester." The statement then goes on to describe five specific recommendations for making the screening process more efficient.

If they are adopted, the changes may have a positive effect. But the application season is well underway, and for students who have already made other, non-U.S. choices for continuing their education any new procedures designed to alleviate the situation will be irrelevant. My guess is that they will not be put in place on a timely basis, and that this year's visa season will be just as problematic as last year's, if not more. In fact, due to the worldwide economic downturn, the competition from other nations providing higher education services to foreign students, and the U.S. restrictions on in-coming students -- it seems safe to predict that enrollment numbers will be down even more this year.

Exporting higher education services is an important part of the U.S. economy. Does the expected decrease in foreign students mean that the U.S. can expect lose ground in this lucrative service sector? Maybe. But there also may be ways to compensate. If it has become too difficult for the students to come to the service providers -- why not let the service providers go to where the students are? Foreign student revenues are categorized under GATS as Mode 2, "Consumption Abroad." Mode 1, "Cross Border Supply,": (ie, "Distance Ed) and Mode 3, "Commercial Presence" could conceivably make up for what is being lost in Mode 2. Modes 1 and 3 comprise the emerging field of Transnational Ed, the primary topic of this blog. Although we wish that all higher education export modes could grow and prosper, it may be that what hurts Study Abroad helps Transnational Ed.

Free Trade -- The Middle East Solution?

I am an instructional technologist, not an economist.

I only started keeping up on the Free Trade movement because higher education services are a "trade liberalization" target -- and Transnational Ed (TNE) is what I do. For newcomers to this blog (it's only been going for one week, so that means just about everyone) -- TNE refers to modes of higher education service delivery in which the degree granting institution is in one country and the students are in others. In GATS-speak, that means Mode 1 (Cross Border Supply) and Mode 3 (Commercial Presence).

I commented on the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (FTA) when it was signed a few days ago because the strong DMCA-like component made me aware of the kind of overhead which comes along with free trade. The trade might be free; i.e., tariffs get reduced (although Singapore had almost none anyway) -- but there are other costs. Fair Use, for example, allows educators to break copyrights under certain circumstances without permission. However, in a DRM/DMCA World in which computers might only display educational resources on a pay per view basis, a new set of unimaginable costs emerges.

Now, Free Trade is being proposed by President Bush as an incentive to follow his Middle East Road Map. This is clearly one powerful concept. Consistent with its non-multilateral inclinations, Washington is not pushing its newest panacea (tax cuts for domestic problems, FTAs for international ones) through world initiatives such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). A 146-member body not wholly identified with U.S. interests is just a bit too cumbersome and unmanageable for current tastes. So instead, the strategy seems to be a series of bi-lateral deals, rewarding friends (like Singapore and Australia) and punishing non-supporters (like Chile and New Zealand).

Punishment can take the form of long-term delays on FTA negotiations, no invitations to Free Trade conferences, or most stinging of all -- sanctions; that is, tariffs and other barriers to a B-List country entering the lucrative U.S. market. But, attempting now to turn this discussion to my main interest -- exporting higher education services -- it is worth pointing out few if any countries have a chance at entering the U.S. higher education marketplace anyway. Philip G. Altbach of the Boston College Center for International Higher Education puts it this way: Americans happily buy automobiles made in other countries, but they do not like foreign educational products. While most of the half million foreign students in the United States are studying for degrees, few of the 143,000 American students who go overseas are studying for degrees--they typically spend a semester or even less abroad. Foreign universities would not find a receptive audience among American students.

Easy access to the U.S. in the higher education service sector is probably no great prize. But how about the flip side? If countries with the temerity to oppose U.S. policies receive trade sanctions as a spanking from Washington, aren't those countries likely to respond in kind, with sanctions of their own? And wouldn't higher education services be a logical target? Higher education is a lucrative business, the fifth largest service sector export in the U.S. economy. There are serious competitors, though, including the European Union and Australia. Will bi-lateral sanctions work against U.S. universities in important emerging markets? Suppose Malaysia, whose outgoing Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad sees Malaysia as a candidate for regime change by Western powers, instead finds itself on the receiving end of punitive sanctions. I find it hard to believe that such actions would help put the transnational ed program I now direct on an equal footing with universities from less hostile nations.

The issue here is not me and my little program. It's the idea of higher education getting tangled up in support for national policies that is a frightening but logical outcome of the current U.S. predilection for regional and bilateral FTAs. I am involved in Transnational Ed in the hope that, through the appropriate use of technology, life-long learning will cross national boundaries and help bring people together. It wasn't until I discovered "Free Trade" that I saw a way it could drive us apart.