Defining the Challenges of International Education (Transnational Education)
Time 04/25/17 04:30PM-05:45PM
Room Meeting Room 10/11
Transnational Education (TNE) is an area of significant growth across the globe, providing education developed in one country and delivered in another. Whilst the principles and reasons for engaging in TNE tend to be relatively consistent, the area presents many challenges including variance of national education systems and the changing political climate, the diverse models of TNE delivery and fundamentally, the technology to support and access such education systems between both sending and receiving countries.
Many NRENs have been addressing the technological challenges in the delivery of international education and have identified this as an area of best practice and information sharing. A number of NRENS have previously presented at several events (including TNC, APAN and the Internet2 Global Summit all in 2016). Areas of interest include basic connectivity approaches for campuses in other countries, establishing relationships with local partners (ISPs and NRENs), connecting policies and end-to-end network performance, monitoring and international support.
This workshop will therefore be a culmination and consolidation of numerous areas of work from NRENs across the globe where experiences have already been shared and issues identified, including:
- Addressing basic issues of communication (within institutions and countries) to enable a global network of expertise to be built
- NREN policy and approaches to working together on TNE (i.e. does the host country allow connection to TNE partners from the host)
- The roles of sending and receiving NRENs
Approaches to network connectivity in specific countries, e.g. China
- How do we help NRENs who are developing their TNE support, or help countries establish NRENs to be able to provide such support?
- What are the sustainable business models for NRENs to support TNE? How do we work in a more ‘business like’ capacity?
- What is the next level support once connectivity is in place, for example end-to-end, 24/7 support (can we work collectively?), monitoring and SLAs
- Licensing of journals / other resources / library access (linked to IT) / software licensing
- QA issues
- Context and strategic development of TNE, globally
- How do we provide supporting materials, such as toolkits, for both NRENs and their education communities?
This workshop will differ from those delivered previously through defining the key challenges for four specific audiences, from the perspectives of:
- A ‘Sending’ NREN e.g. Internet2, describing the ‘data’ challenges to map out the national TNE landscape
- A Recipient NREN e.g. CERNET, describing how an NREN’s services can be developed to support TNE and introducing CERNET’s offering
- An Emerging NREN e.g. Africa (Mauritius )/CS America describing how support from an established NREN can persuade national thinking and investment
- And University staff e.g. Malaysia, describing the technological challenges between sending and recipient countries
GÉANT and CERNET will jointly lead the workshop. On behalf of the GÉANT project will be Jisc, who at national level have been working on TNE for over two years with a national TNE Special Interest Group of UK universities already established. Jisc is the world’s largest ‘sending’ country of TNE which is growing at a rate of 13%. CERNET, the NREN with the largest ‘receiving’ number of TNE activities in China, has realigned its business to better support TNE, creating a virtual team, service models, technical solutions and communication protocols. This workshop therefore aims to consolidate this experience, cultivating an environment for the development and collaboration of future TNE through our global NREN network.
Key NRENs for the workshop will include those NRENs/alliances engaged in previous discussions: Internet 2, Uninett, Surfnet, HEAnet, GARR, ASREN, CERNET and Jisc. Invitations are also extended to those NRENs with a developing interest in this area, such as KoREN, AARNet, MyREN, WACREN, TEINcc, UbuntuNet Alliance and those European NRENs as part of GÉANT who are not yet engaged.
Through capturing the challenges from the four perspectives, a key outcome will be an agreed work plan for GÉANT, Internet2 and CERNET to address identified issues in a prioritised manner from 2017.
This workshop is open to all attendees with an interest in transnational education.
Primary track Research and Education