Practices to improve collaboration by reconfiguring boundaries in transnational education

This paper investigates quality assurance as boundary-making practices that establish and re-establish boundaries of a transnational education (TNE) partnership between an Australian and a Malaysian higher education institution. Drawing on practice theory we offer a conception of boundaries as enacted, shifting and performed by the multiple actors involved in the partnership. We employ a relational, practice-based approach and a participatory action research methodology to investigate how quality assurance could be re-configured to enhance relationships and collaboration, and support on-going dialogue, co-developed curriculum and context–sensitive quality measures. This paper re-casts boundaries and borders as collective performances, offering an expanded conception of boundaries from the dualistic home-host, pre-given conceptions common in the TNE literature. Our case study demonstrates how participatory action learning (PAL) is useful for expanding and re-shaping the boundaries in TNE in ways that support the creation of transnational teaching teams and intercultural communities of practice. We show how stretching the boundaries from a dyadic relationship between quality assuror and subject coordinator to include sessional academics and enacting PAL projects using communal media generates the conditions of possibility for developing teaching teams that are transnational in practice as well as in name. The move towards joint responsibility for the development of curriculum, teaching and learning contributes to more equitable partnership approaches and creates possibilities for intercultural engagement between academics and students in different geographical and cultural contexts

Transnational teaching teams: Professional development for quality enhancement of teaching and learning-Final Report

The Transnational Teaching Teams: professional development for quality enhancement of learning and teaching project was a two-year Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT)-funded project that targeted professional-practice development for transnational teaching teams to enhance quality learning and teaching in transnational education programs. Five partner universities were involved: the University of Wollongong (lead), INTI International University and Colleges (Malaysia), RMIT International University (Vietnam), RMIT University and La Trobe University

“Investigating the use and perceived effectiveness of social media for Informatics Programs in the Malaysian Higher Education Context.”

The trend in the use of digital technologies in learning in higher education has been driven by a number of underlying assumptions about the affordances of technology in learning. This trend has not only been advocated by educationalists, who argue for digital technologies as a catalyst for pedagogical change, but also by students themselves as they adopt new ways of collaborating and communicating with their worlds. A significant amount of literature is now appearing arguing that technology is changing learners with terms like \u27digital natives\u27 (Prensky 2001) gaining prominence and authors such as Coates (2007) arguing that these ‘millennial learners’ learn in different ways to their predecessors. Most young people in modern societies, both Western and Eastern, make routine use of the Internet and email, text messaging and social software and we are seeing evidence that Web 2.0 is allowing student participation in online communities that define and share information in educational contexts. This study seeks to investigate the learning settings being used in Malaysia to teach the Millennium generation, what is the digital status of these learners and how this generation is responding to the learning settings both being offered and being generated by them. The study specifically investigates the use of social media technologies by institutions to engage with their students and facilitate effective technology supported learning environments. The findings based on survey, interview, observational and policy analysis data show that the use of social media technologies are heavily embedded in the students own learning processes, and individual academics are leveraging from these practices to engage and motivate students in their learning. The study also found that the institutions themselves are poorly prepared for these changes to pedagogical processes and are not, as a matter of strategy or policy, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by social media technologies

The engagement of social media technologies by undergraduate informatics students for academic purpose in Malaysia

The increase usage and employment of Social Media Technologies (SMTs) in personal, business and education activities is credited to the advancement of Internet broadband services, mobile devices, smart phones and web-based technologies. Informatics programs are technological-oriented in nature, hence students and academics themselves would arguably be quite adept at using SMTs. Students undertaking Informatics programs are trained to thrive in challenging, advanced technical environments as manifestations of the fast-paced world of Information Technology. Students must be able to think logically and learn “how to learn” as “knowledge upon demand” is one of the expected capabilities of Informatics graduates. This rapid change in knowledge and skill sets requires learners to not only be lifelong learners, but to be constantly connected to the field of computing science. SMTs may be the conduit that supports these needs. Despite being an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) hub and having advanced ICT Infrastructure nationally, the use of social media beyond young people in Malaysia for education purposes is still relatively new and little is known about the user experience, intentions, perceptions and acceptance of these technologies by students. This paper reports on a work-in-progress that investigates the perceptions, acceptance, usage and access to social media by undergraduate Informatics students in higher education institutions in Malaysia. Preliminary findings from 331 responses collected from an online questionnaires administered to students, academics and administrators from Informatics and Non-Informatics programs show that whilst students reported SMTs use mainly for personal social activities, the data from online questionnaires show that many students and instructors have started to explore and accept the use of SMTs as a tool for engaging with their Institution and their peers as well as for teaching and learning purposes. The paper also presents a conceptual model based on Connectivism and Communities of Practice (CoP) that has been developed to inform the study in terms of the role SMTs can play in building virtual learning communities. The intended outcome from this study is the development of a design framework for implementing SMTs as supporting tools for student engagement and to inform future practice

\u27I like the people I work with. Maybe I\u27ll get to meet them in person one day\u27: teaching and learning practice development with transnational teaching teams

Significant changes have occurred in the international education landscape driven by the need for access to higher education in developing countries. One response to this situation has been the provision of higher education in the developing country via partnership arrangements with overseas institutions. Rapid growth in transnational programmes has resulted in many opportunities for nations seeking to build their capacity, for institutions and for staff and student learning, as well as significant challenges. This research contributes to addressing some of these challenges by focusing attention on teaching and learning practice development with transnational teaching teams. This paper is grounded empirically in an international collaboration between three Australian, one Malaysian and one Vietnamese university. Employing a practice-based approach using multi-site participatory action research, the researchers investigated the professional development needs of transnational teaching teams and their experience working in transnational programmes. The study suggests that for professional development to be effective in transnational education it needs to be collaboratively designed and negotiated, context-sensitive and specific, practice-based and involve teams engaging and learning together in their daily work contexts. Such an approach harnesses the diversity of transnational teaching teams and enhances dialogue and relationships amongst team members

Teaching and learning practice development with transnational teaching teams

Significant changes have occurred in international education in the last 20 years. Some of these changes have been driven by the need for developing countries to access higher education in excess of their capacity to provide opportunities to study. A common response to this situation has been student mobility in which international students travel to other countries for their higher education. More recently the trend has been \u27programme mobility\u27 (Knight 2012), in which it is the higher education programmes that move as they are delivered locally in the developing country via partnership arrangements with overseas institutions. A rapid growth in transnational programmes has resulted in many opportunities for nations seeking to build their capacity, for institutions and for staff and student learning. However, a number of challenges for transnational academics and their students, often related to differing cultural expectations, inequalities in power relations and ensuring quality standards across partner institutions have also been identified (Hicks and Jarrett 2008; McBurnie and Ziguras 2007; Pyvis 2011)