Exporting Higher Education: Promising Pedagogy

From the US perspective, Transnational Education is limited by problematic pedagogy. By releasing online course material for free to world, MIT has clearly registered its opinion on entirely asynchronous independent study. There is value in it, the university is implicitly stating through its actions, or else why spend millions making the material available? But it is not the experience that an MIT degree represents. So much for Mode 1(Cross Border Supply), in and of itself.

The most obvious forms of Commercial Presence also present problems, as noted above. Local stand-ins, no matter how qualified, are not faculty members of the degree granting institution. To an American educator, outsourcing the delivery of lesson plans and overall course curriculum feels like a strategy motivated solely by monetary gain. To an Asian student raised in an exam-based educational culture, the model does not feel strange at all. In fact, the local stand-in may be better qualified to deliver the course content than a foreign faculty member steeped in a different set of assumptions about teaching and learning.

Nevertheless, American universities are committed to an educational policy of interaction and engagement. As the MIT example shows, the meaning of a university's degree lies in the multidimensional experience of being physically present in its learning environment, in the interactions that take place, not simply with course content – but with faculty, other students, and the university itself. As an instructional technologist, I might like to believe that videoconferencing and virtual classrooms could duplicate that experience, but I know that they cannot. The right technology, however, in conjunction with several non-traditional uses of faculty may produce not a duplicate, but a rich and engaging learning environment of a very different nature.

Exporting Higher Education: Speaking From Experience

I am employed as a Transnational Education Administrator. My actual title is, "Director of International Programs for University Extension," and I oversee operations in Singapore, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

I have presented at large Educational Expos; spoken to students and advising staff in high schools, junior colleges and polytechnics. I have seen the Australian model in action; I have spoken to students and faculty. Very few US universities are active in Singapore, and those which are operating on any basis are attempting to utilize Mode 1 almost without exception. Predictably, their sign-up rates range from disappointingly low to non-existent.

A closer look at the market helps explain why this is so. The vital career asset in most Asian countries is a bachelors degree; advanced degrees are useful, but a BA or a BS is a far more distinguishing feature there than it is in the US. Thus, undergraduate degree programs can be expected to generate the greatest market response. A large part, but not all, of this market is comprised of young people roughly between the ages of 17-21. These are the students who have the greatest need for close supervision and direction, and whose parents, helping to pay the tuition, want their children in a traditional classroom and off the streets.

Any Transnational program aimed at the heart of the market must take these expectations into account. Mode 1(Consumption Abroad), with its obvious economies of scale, is much more attractive to the educational service provider – but not necessarily to the students (and their parents). One Mode 3 (Commercial Presence) solution has been the "Franchising" approach described earlier – let a local organization provide the direct classroom instruction utilizing a syllabus and lesson plans specified by the degree granting institution, which provides the exams and grades them. Due to the lack of direct contact with faculty, US universities have not embraced this approach, while universities throughout Australia and the UK have. For the next few days, I will be describing a teaching model which attempts to balance economic advantages, cultural realities – and US standards for post-secondary education.

Exporting Higher Education: Learner Expectations

The main variable which distinguishes the nature of service delivery between the different GATS modes is student autonomy. In Mode 1 services (Cross Border Supply), there is no physically present teacher/authority figure to legitimize and provide detailed specifications for the experience. Students must be self-directed and determine when, where and how fast they want to study. Based on the initial expectation of teacher-centered learning, Mode 1 would not appear to be an attractive starting point for a Transnational program of study. In the five case studies in different transnational formats reviewed by Ziguras (2001), "students expected to be provided with large volumes of information and expected that recall of this information would be assessed in examinations, " and when their expectations were not met, they were resistant to change.

Learner expectations are a more significant factor in Transnational Education than in traditional Mode 2, (Consumption Abroad). The latter is an immersion experience, and consciously chosen as such. In Transnational Education, however, the students never leave their home culture. Characterizing his experience as a distance educator, Eveland (2001) emphasized the fact that, "learners were explicitly not in my world but in theirs, with all its reinforcing cues. I didn’t have the power of the group to help me change their behavior."

And yet, a change of behavior may be precisely what the educational and political leadership of many South-East Asian nations has in mind. Educational Master Plans devised by the government of Singapore rely heavily on instructional technology to help bring about greater creativity and independent thinking by university students. Malaysian higher education policy features similar themes. The ability to work autonomously and behave proactively are seen as essential skills in the new networked, knowledge-based economy. Just as one's repertoire of learning styles can expand, so can broader cultural standards of behavior.

Exporting Higher Education: Teaching and Learning in Asia

Cultural values and their relationship to how people think, behave – and learn – is a subject of enduring debate. There is general agreement that the notion of Confucian Heritage Cultures defines something meaningful and distinctive, and that it is pervasive throughout South-East Asia. To some scholars, this Heritage has produced a learning style which some believe sufficiently definitive that teaching styles and activities should be adjusted to match it. Zhenhui (2001) identifies teacher-centric expectations as a dominant characteristic of East Asians, enough to warrant the advice that "teachers change their own styles and strategies and provide a variety of activities to meet the needs of different learning styles."

Others see the such generalizations and prescriptions as dangerously simplistic. Jones (1999) claims that the "deficit model of the Chinese learner as one who is unable to adjust to Western academic patterns both spoken and written is flawed."

The key word is "adjust." It suggests adaptation and change over time, which is the crucial aspect. The strategic resolution to the debate is simply to assume that prior experience of learning within an Asian culture will tend shape student expectations in certain directions – but not to assume that those directions are so deeply fixed as to be unchangeable. In fact, with the right activities and the right support, comfort levels with a new learning style may grow rapidly. For Transnational instructional design, the implications are clear: Acknowledge the culturally-related expectations and proceed from there, providing scaffolding for unfamiliar modes of learning.

Exporting Higher Education: Public and Private Providers

At its heart, Transnational Education is market-driven. It is a corporate, not an academic, impulse to take the service to the customer, instead of forcing customers into the service provider's preferred situation. Not surprisingly, the first international association dedicated to Transnational Education was established by the founder of the first accredited, private for-profit university in the US – Glenn Jones of Jones International University.

Enabled by GATS, modes 1 and 3 are certain to attract corporate education providers from North America, Australia, and the European Union. Through the use of ePaks and other eLearning formats, Mode 1 is almost infinitely scalable, making the interaction-lite approach extremely attractive to content owners and other private providers. Mode 3 would seem to represent more of an investment and thus a higher risk. Still, it is not yet clear what form the market itself prefers.

Nor is it clear what role, if any, traditional institutions of Higher Education will play. Will Transnational Education be largely ceded to private corporations, or will major US Universities compete in this arena? The anwers to questions of market preference and competitive involvement are intertwined. Mode 1 unquestionably plays to the strengths of the private sector. If attractively produced content and associated examinations meet the needs of Asian hiring managers, we will see multinational publishing companies leading the way, as is the case with Thompson Learning Corporation and the Universitas 21 association it is attempting to direct. On the other hand, teaching and learning is clearly enhanced, it is possible that not-for-profit colleges and universities may have unique advantages of their own.