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Copyright © 2010. Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated. All rights reserved. The Impact of E-Learning Programs on the Internationalization of the University, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated,

EDUCATION IN A COMPETITIVE AND GLOBALIZING WORLD

THE IMPACT OF E-LEARNING PROGRAMS ON THE

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INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE UNIVERSITY

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EDUCATION IN A COMPETITIVE AND GLOBALIZING WORLD Additional books in this series can be found on Nova’s website under the Series tab.

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The Impact of E-Learning Programs on the Internationalization of the University, Nova Science Publishers, Incorporated,

EDUCATION IN A COMPETITIVE AND GLOBALIZING WORLD

THE IMPACT OF E-LEARNING PROGRAMS ON THE

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INTERNATIONALIZATION OF THE UNIVERSITY

RAY J. AMIRAULT AND

YUSRA L. VISSER EDITORS

Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York

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Copyright © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers’ use of, or reliance upon, this material.

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1. Virtual reality in education--Cross-cultural studies. 2. Internet in education--Cross-cultural studies. 3. Distance education--Computer-assisted instruction--Cross-cultural studies. 4. Multicultural education--Computer-assisted instruction. I. Visser, Yusra Laila. II. Title. LB1044.87.A48 2010 378.1'7344678--dc22 2010016730

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CONTENTS Preface Introduction Chapter 1

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Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Conclusion References Index

vii ix University Internationalization as a Subject of Research Defining "Internationalization" Post-Medieval University Internationalization The Technology Revolution: A Key Event in University History Embrace of Web Based E-Learning in Tertiary Contexts Characteristics of Web Based E-Learning Potentially Affecting Internationalization Discussion

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1 3 15 17 21 23 39 47 49 55

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PREFACE The University, a 13th century medieval educational construct initially developed in France, Italy, and England, but later exported to virtually every part of the globe, has from its inception possessed an integrated international character. Even in medieval times when students travelled long distances to attend University courses in Paris, London, and Bologna, their membership within the Institution was divided into “nations,” an organizational scheme which first helped establish, and then permanently affix, the Institution’s international character. As the University grew in those early years, internationalization was strengthened by the Institution’s implementation of universally recognized, transportable “degrees” which allowed graduating scholars from one institution to later teach at another. This “cross-seeding” approach of degree awarding within the medieval University was a fully developed feature of the Institution within the first generation of its founding, and this essential characteristic has remained unchanged within the Institution for some 800 years. The University is still widely regarded to this day as an inherently “international” institution, drawing together both faculty and students from all parts of the world to gather at a single location to carry on the university's mission of learning and research. The emergence of web based-based e-learning in the late 20th century brought about a historic potential for internationalization within the University. It seems apparent, and perhaps obvious, that the ability for students and teachers from multiple geographic locations to simultaneously participate in university courses clearly increases the level of international interaction within the institution. But has this historic shift towards web based e-learning actually increased internationalization within the University by allowing greater cross national student and faculty participation, or has it

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rather decreased internationalization by eliminating the traditional requirement for face to face meetings within classrooms, where the effects of direct human interaction might be most keenly felt? In this chapter, the author examine the impact of web based e-learning on university internationalization. The author discuss the historic origins of internationalization within the medieval University, and describe how this model of student and teacher participation was spread throughout and beyond Europe. The author then examine the historic shift in University student structures by describing the emergence and impact of web based e-learning technology. The author close by describing the issues and questions surrounding how web based e-learning may affect internationalization of the University as it exists in the 21st century.

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INTRODUCTION The "University" as it is known today was largely a creation of 13th century medieval Europe, where the Institution arose as a truly unique educational innovation designed to address perceived shortcomings in existing educational bodies1. Though at that time a novel concept in how education was to be perceived and structured, the University incorporated and blended into its system many previous educational developments2 to arrive at its singular approach to the training of European students. By establishing a fixed course of study that spanned multiple knowledge domains, a faculty of renowned scholars to deliver the curriculum, and a system of standardized degree conferral, the University quickly differentiated itself among its 13th century rivals as a significant and viable educational system. The Institution's subsequent success as an innovative educational concept can be measured both by its longevity (presently exceeding some 800 continuous years) and also the export of its model (which can currently be seen in virtually every country of the world). The University today is generally viewed as the penultimate form of education for all learning domains, including scientific, technical, artistic, and naturalistic, and is arguably one of Europe's most significant and enduring achievements. 1 Note that, for purposes of this article, the term "University" (capitalized form) refers to the structural concept of the University as an idea, whereas the term "university" (non capitalized form) refers to specific incarnations of universities in a specific of locale.) 2 The list is somewhat long and almost universally contested, but earlier institutions which either lay claim to "university" status or which may have informed medieval European efforts at establishing the Institution include: the University of Constantinople (9th century); the Carolingian Palatine School (9th century); Aix-la-Chapelle (9th century); the University of Al Karauine, Morocco (9th century); and the Al-Azhar University, Cairo (10th century), among others. The question as to the "first" or "oldest" university remains disputed to this day (cf. Rüegg 1996).

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Chapter 1

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UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONALIZATION AS A SUBJECT OF RESEARCH The University's success as an educational Institution perhaps made it inevitable that the Institution would itself become the focus of research for those seeking to develop a deeper understanding of the mechanisms mediating its long term viability. Among many others, the topic of "internationalization" within the University, and the role internationalization processes have played within the Institution, has in recent years become the focus of strong interest within the higher educational community. This interest is no doubt correlated to the increasingly interconnected world of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, where technology has strengthened the global "reach" of universities wishing to compete for students in a global marketplace of students and teachers. When examining issues of internationalization within today's technology enabled University, it is important to remember that internationalization, which can easily be considered one of the key mechanisms mediating the University’s durable achievement, has been central to the Institution as far back as its medieval origins. It is true that the historical record argues that the extent of internationalization within the Institution has varied by specific historical period, but the overall record on the matter is quite clear: the University has always largely been based on the assumption of internationalization, and much of the Institution's long term success can be largely correlated to the extent such internationalization has been manifested within its constituent members during its long and variegated history. It is difficult to conceive of the Institution's enormous success without assenting to the underlying assumption of internationalization that has always been inherent within the University's structure.

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"Internationalization” within the University, therefore, is a subject worthy of investigation. Ideally, any such exploration of internationalization within the University must take care to develop an understanding of the phenomenon from a holistic perspective, taking into account not only the current manifestations of internationalization, but also internationalization's historic background relative to the Institution. This implies that such investigations must ideally focus on two distinct, yet nevertheless interconnected, elements: the role of University internationalization from a historical viewpoint, and the current character of internationalization as it is witnessed within the Institution today. Understanding something about the history of the Institution helps us understand the role internationalization has played within University structures over time, but examining the current institutional climate in light of that history also assists in developing informed conclusions about the future role of internationalization within the Institution. Neither the past record nor today's manifestation of internationalization should be treated as though they stand in isolation from one another. It is important to recognize that the examination of internationalization within the University is of particular interest when the context is a significant historical event that might threaten in some way to substantively alter the extent and character of the phenomenon within the Institution. Such seismic events in the history of the University (e.g., the Protestant Reformation, the invention of moveable type printing, the decolonization movements of the 20th century, and so on) can be shown to have forced the University to adjust, and sometimes, reinvent itself (Amirault and Visser 2009) in order to maintain relevancy and effectiveness within a new political or technological climate. Such changes may in turn either directly or indirectly impact the extent and character of internationalization within the University, making such periods a fruitful area to focus research efforts on internationalization's role within the Institution. This chapter, for example, attempts to examine from both the historical and the current vantage point how one of most significant events in the University's history – the advent of web based e-learning following the Technology Revolution of the late 20th century – may potentially impact University internationalization, and draws conclusions based on findings from both analyses.

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Chapter 2

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DEFINING "INTERNATIONALIZATION" It is helpful as we begin this review to first establish how "internationalization" in the University context might be defined so that a more precise analysis of the phenomenon might be undertaken for the educational context. Like many other terms within the social sciences, the term "internationalization" has evolved over time, and is subject to some level of divergence among authors. The idea itself has certainly been a focus of geopolitical concerns for centuries, but in recent decades has experienced renewed interest from educational researchers. Indeed, it can be established that University internationalization began to be more carefully scrutinized within the same time frame as the emergence of the 20th century technological and web based e-learning revolution, a correlation which should be noted with interest by anyone wishing to more fully understand internationalization’s meaning and implications for the University. The International Association of Universities, for example, has defined the term “internationalize” in the university context as the attempt to “integrate an international/intercultural dimension into teaching, research and community service … in order to enhance their academic excellence and the relevance of their contribution to societies” (International Association of Universities 2005). Ebuchi (1990) has defined “internationalization” as “a process by which the teaching, research and service functions of a higher education system becoming internationally and cross-culturally compatible.” A third proposed definition for "internationalization" was provided by Knight (1994) as “the process of integrating an international/intercultural dimension into the teaching, research, and service functions of the institution.” These three definitions demonstrate that there are differences in how the concept of

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internationalization may be viewed by different authorities, but within a generally uniform descriptive range. The International Association of Universities (2007) makes note that the Knight 1994 definition is broad enough to encompass many aspects of what are typically thought to make up internationalization: academic mobility, research collaboration, international development, and curricular concerns. de Wit, a co-writer with Knight, further emphasized (de Wit 1998) three salient elements contained within this early definition:

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1. Internationalization is a process, not an activity with well defined start and end points 2. Internationalization is not equivalent to globalization 3. Internationalization includes both local and international components de Wit drew these observations to extend the meaning of "internationalization" within the higher education context as something different and broader than "international education," where the focal point is often only one or two activities (e.g., study abroad, academic mobility, etc.) designed to achieve a specific end. In de Wit’s mind, "internationalization" is a much broader and more inclusive term that is more integral to the overall nature and character of the Institution than simple numeric data on student and faculty mobility. The subsequent work of Knight and de Wit after development of these early definitions of internationalization prompted a revisiting and adjustment of their definition (Knight 2003) to read "Internationalization at the national, sector, and institutional levels is defined as the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post secondary education." This revision incorporates a more refined description of the processes subsumed within University internationalization, and also helps more precisely to distinguish the components of internationalization (“international,” “intercultural,” and “global”) within the University context. For purposes of this article, we can establish the Knight, 2003 wording as a working definition. It bears emphasizing, as well, that for many authorities, internationalization and globalization are not synonymous terms. Globalization is often used in reference to the global reach of goods, services, and capital across nations, not processes strictly related to higher education, a definition that the European Commission (European Commission 2003) has taken. If globalization is therefore largely understood as a political and economic

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concept, internationalization within the University can similarly be viewed as an educational process occurring within University structures. In recent years, Altbach and Knight (2007) have attempted to more closely distinguish between internationalization and globalization by defining globalization as primarily economic, political and societal in nature, and internationalization as primarily policies and practices within higher educational institutions that are used, at least in part, to address globalization pressures on educational institutions. Although this chapter does not focus on globalization, it is important to keep in mind that the two terms have a somewhat codependent relationship in today’s context, and that one process is informed by the other. Beyond establishing a definition for the term, Knight (1999) has further proposed four approaches to internationalization that operationalize areas of emphasis which higher education institutions might take towards the concept. These include: 1. The Activity Approach – the earliest interpretation of internationalization, focusing on curriculum, academic exchange, and international students 2. The Competency Approach - the development of skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values in a higher education student body 3. The Ethos Approach - the development of a culture or climate that supports internationalization 4. The Process Approach - integration of international elements into teaching, research, and service for purposes of strengthening internationalization We might therefore envision firstly the Activity approach to internationalization as perhaps the most traditional view of internationalization, where the focus of interest lies in the physical interchange of students and faculty within higher education institutions for purposes of increasing “international” aspects of the institution. Second, the Competency approach to internationalization would focus on knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA’s) appropriate to internationalization, and would shift the approach a bit more towards an educational outcomes view than the Activity approach. Third, the Ethos approach to internationalization would focus on how a higher education institution’s culture or climate is changed through the confluence of a wide variety of formal and informal faculty and student exchange, leading the institution to a new, internationally oriented understanding that is the product of such exchanges. And fourth, the Process

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approach to internationalization would involve the purposeful design of “international” elements into the three main functional areas of higher education (teaching, research, and service) for purposes of achieving desired goals relative to internationalization. Knight’s four approaches towards internationalization provide a useful mechanism for identifying and evaluating internationalization processes within the University from its medieval origins to the present context.

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ORIGINS OF INTERNATIONALIZATION WITHIN THE EARLY UNIVERSITY The University with its unique model of education can be viewed, even from its earliest years, as a uniquely international Institution1. “Internationalization” within the University was not simply an abstract concept: this emergent characteristic of the Institution can be viewed as the result of a series of deliberate steps taken in the early 13th century as the fledgling Institution took its first steps as an educational entity. Many of these approaches can also be arguably viewed as keys to the Institution’s subsequent long term success as an educational Institution. These components include the University’s: urban setting; choice of instructional methodology; student body organizational structure; use of Latin for instruction; and finally, method for certifying students upon completion of study. The combination and interaction of these factors not only helped sustain the University through some eight centuries, but also established the Institution as a quintessentially international organization.

1

Note that, in the context of the medieval University, the term "international" would not carry a meaning equivalent to today's usage. In the 13th century, the term "nation" was more a local concept, not used in reference to a fully autonomous geographical domain under the control of a governmental apparatus. Much of the concept of "nation," and thus the term, "international," would not be fully delineated until the Treaty of Westphalia (1648AD) established the principle of national state sovereignty. As the historian Norman Davies has pointed out in Europe: A History (Davies, 1996), it is an all too common practice for modern readers of history to inappropriately read the concept of "nation" backwards into time, when the term had no real meaning as defined today. In relation to this section of the chapter here, we use the term "international" simply to refer to the interaction of people and institutions from a wide variety of different locations within the European context where those people and institutions would themselves perceive such interactions as "foreign," and somehow removed from their local context.

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URBAN SETTING OF THE EARLY UNIVERSITY The medieval European University emerged almost exclusively within the cities of Europe, where the setting was often regarded as necessary to such a revolutionary educational concept (Bender 1991). Early examples, including the University of Paris, Oxford University, and the University of Bologna all demonstrate that the setting that gave birth to the medieval University greatly contrasted from that of the existing Monastic Schools, where small teaching centers had previously been established within local monasteries in often rural and remote locations that did not easily compete with the emerging schools movement (Graves 1915; Furruolo 1985). Quite the contrary, the medieval University was in no small part a direct descendant of the Cathedral Schools movement of Europe, and because only the largest or most wealthy towns could afford to build the types of cathedrals necessary to support such schools (e.g., York, Reims, Paris, Orléans, etc.), the University was almost of necessity a child of the city. The University can therefore be considered an urban phenomenon, with much of the Institution's early history directly influenced by the city context and setting. One initial advantage the city setting offered the early University was in its ability to provide a pool of potential teachers from which University faculty members could be drawn (Grant 2007). The newly established universities had great need for high quality instructors who were versed in the Seven Liberal Arts, the ancient curriculum that initially arose within the Roman education scheme of the previous millennium (Cross and Livingstone 1997), as well as fluent in the Latin language, and the University could have had no better recruiting ground for such instructors than Europe’s major cities. Capitalizing on the recruitment of Europe’s “wandering scholars” (individuals from a wide range of locales across the continent who were already travelling from city to city to teach in the cathedral schools), the University by necessity commenced its earliest years with a strong international flavor. These “foreign” University instructors established, both directly and indirectly, the premise of internationalization within the University's first classrooms. Perhaps no other environment would have been able to supply so rich and copious a set of skilled teachers at this time in history. To illustrate how the “foreign” scholar established and enriched the medieval University with an international element, one need go no further than the case of the controversial, yet brilliant, Peter Abelard, a Breton who moved to Paris in the mid 11th century in order to further his teaching career. Abelard’s labor in the cathedral school of Paris, later to evolve into the

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University of Paris, makes his life forever and intimately tied to the birth of the University (Compayré 1893). Abelard's accomplishments (and failures) are the thing of legend (Abelard and Radice 1977), and it is rare to find the person who cannot become engrossed with the stories surrounding his unusual and often acerbic behavior in the classroom. Abelard made his way over time from his native Brittany up the Loire river in a variety of teaching assignments, eventually to capture the coveted position of instructor at the cathedral school in Paris, always attempting to intellectually “wrestle” with anyone he chose as a worthy of his efforts (Clanchy 1999). And although Abelard's case is perhaps the most well known, he simply epitomizes the entire generation of scholars surrounding the Cathedral Schools and the birth of the medieval University, including among many others, Fulbert of Chartres, Peter the Lombard, Manegold of Germany, John of Salisbury, Anselm of Laon, William of Champeaux, and Stanislaus of Szczepanów (cf. Graves 1915; Radding and Clark 1992). Oxford University, for example, recognized as a corporation in 1231, could claim to instructors such as Emo of Friesland, the first known foreign scholar, as well as lecturers such as Gerald of Wales, neither of which were not from the local area of Oxford (Catto 1984). The recruitment of faculty from such a wide range of locales typified by these examples was likely as much a function of necessity as it was design; nevertheless, the early University viewed the ability to recruit faculty of renown from all over Europe a higher priority than any parochial pride, and the use of such “foreign” instructors therefore almost unconsciously assigned an international element to the makeup of the University. The recruitment of “foreign” teachers in the early University had an additional secondary effect when it came to internationalization. The collection of acclaimed faculty at various universities led to the development of specific institutional reputations based on the specialties such faculty represented (Amirault and Branson 2006). For example, the University of Paris, following Abelard's lead, quickly became known as the premier institution for the study of theology (a term which Abelard himself coined), while Cambridge University developed a reputation for both natural philosophy and theology, and Bologna for law (Jordan 2003). These institutional reputations had a deepening impact on internationalization, as students from all over Europe were now drawn to universities outside of their

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region of birth to study under the most renowned scholars of the day by field2. With the combination of “foreign” instructors (drawn to teach disciplines by area of expertise) and “foreign” students (drawn to universities by choice of discipline), the University easily and early on assumed an international character.

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INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS OF THE EARLY UNIVERSITY Internationalization within the early University was also affected by the Institution's choice of instructional method. Under Abelard's influence, and drawing from the earlier Cathedral School movement, the University of Paris began to implement within its classrooms an instructional methodology now called Scholasticism, an approach which eventually became a primary feature within most all medieval European universities until the Humanist Movement (McGrath 1999). A syllogistic teaching and learning methodology that sought to classify, interpret, and finally, organize theological knowledge via a predefined questioning technique (Saettler 1968; Kibler and Zinn 1995; DeWulf 2003), the Scholastic Method made use of grammar, Aristotelian logic, and rhetoric (all part of the ancient curriculum of the Seven Liberal Arts) to arrive at defensible conclusions to theoretical questions3.

2 Simultaneously, the competing Cathedral Schools movement experienced a declining role in education over time when faced with the ascendant University. To cite but one example, the cathedral school at Chartres, though one of the most highly regarded institutions for theology in the 11th and 12th centuries, was never able to make the transition into a university (Haskins 1957), and was eventually supplanted by the University of Paris. Indeed, there was migration of faculty from the cathedral schools into the universities, and the scene was now set for the eventual dominance of the University in European education. 3 Scholasticism’s approach can be categorized as argumentative, in contrast to approaches typically used in both the rural Monastic and Cathedral School settings that were primarily associative or meditative in nature (Daileader 2001). Scholasticism required students to master both the skills of logical analysis and rhetorical argumentation in order to successfully complete their course of study. In the method, students would be asked to review what appeared to be contradictory statements from revered texts, such as the Church Fathers or ancient writers such as Aristotle, and apply, in a predefined order, a series of logical and grammatical analyses in order to develop a sustainable argument as to why the seemingly contradictory statements were not actually in contradiction. Although Scholasticism came under intense criticism during the Humanist period of the 14th and 15th centuries, the method, perfected under the guidance of teachers such as Peter Abelard and Thomas Aquinas, was doubtless one of the reasons why the early University was so successful in establishing and maintaining its presence as an educational Institution.

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Scholasticism has been categorized as a uniquely urban phenomenon due to its connection with the urban cathedral schools (Lohr 2003). With the method's dependence upon interaction, debate, and quasi-legal argument, Scholasticism, like the early University itself, can be tied to the urban environment in which it existed, for only in such high population contexts where people from all parts of Europe came to live and study could the approach be sustained. Much of the Scholastic approach, for example, required use of the public debate, where individuals from the city, including non-university members, were encouraged to attend to achieve the greatest debate experience, called a quodlibetal (cf. Kenny and Pinborg 1982). It is inconceivable that Scholasticism could have been established, say, in the isolated, rural settings of the Monastic Schools of the period. It was this urban setting, too, which allowed for easier student recruitment within the new universities. Students would need food and lodging, and the cities of Europe provided the greatest number of choices for such via means of rentals by local owners. Indeed, the city context offered many advantages to migrating students, for food, lodging, transportation, and communication were most easily available in the cities, and thus the city almost subliminally became the natural partner of the University4. So great was this migration of students to university cities that issues of crime and social unrest5 frequently arose (Noreña 1970). Nevertheless, the movement of large groups of students throughout Europe made the universities a home to a diverse, multi-national population, one which certainly impacted the nature and character of the Institution.

ORGANIZATION OF STUDENT BODIES IN THE MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY The manner in which the Institution organized its student bodies also played a significant role in the internationalization of the early University. Because the early University drew many students from a wide variety of 4

So intimately connected was the migration of students to the urban context that in some modern European cities the memory of such migrations is permanently ensconced in name. In Paris, for example, students massed on the left bank of the Seine River in the area adjacent to ancient Lutèce, and is to this day called le Quartier Latin, the “Latin Quarter” (Gieysztor 2003). Few visitors to Paris today realize the actual origin of the name. 5 Note that in the 13th century University context, students were assigned clerical status, and were therefore immune from prosecution by local juridical courts of the regal government, doubtless a significant factor in such social issues (Janin 2008; Rait 2009).

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locales, students were organized into proto-fraternal groups, called "nations" (Smith 1882), a schema which helped create a sense of comradeship and also generally facilitated student life. The term "nations" might seem to connote a division of students by nation of origin, but the actual criterion was not so: rather, the native language which students spoke, a characteristic which often overlapped "national" boundaries, was the criterion for placement in a “nation.” The University of Paris student body, for example, was originally divided into nations named France, Norman, Picard, and England-Germany (Cobban 1975). (Although less definitive information is known about student groupings in early Oxford and Cambridge, they may have loosely followed the Parisian grouping model.) The decision to organize students into such groups strengthened internationalization aspects of the early University, but also simply reflected the strong international makeup of the Institution6. Two final factors were perhaps the most significant in establishing the early University’s international character. The first, a decision to implement all instruction in the Latin language, had to do with a student’s progression through his course of study. The second, degree conferral upon graduation, had to do with a student's matriculation into a recognized class of scholars after completing the course of study.

USE OF LATIN FOR INSTRUCTION The use of Latin for all instruction within the medieval University was a decision made early in the Institution's history, and was most likely a reflection of the fact that Latin was the source language for the “Romance” languages (Haskins 1927; cf. Nadeau and Barlow 2006), as well as its use in most ecclesiastical writings. This choice of a single, universally recognized language of instruction, however, made it possible for anyone throughout Europe to attend such classes so long as this language had been mastered7. Because it was possible to learn Latin in most areas of Europe, this factor 6 In some cases, national differences were played out through university "nations.” For example, the Hussite Rebellion of 1431-4, carried out in association with the University of Prague in what is now the Czech Republic, provided powerful witness that, although internationalization within the university was always present, it was not always free of issues (Rashdall 1895; Daileader 2007). 7 In fact, there were few, if any, formal entry requirements for students in the medieval University (Schwinges 1992), although a good working knowledge of Latin would be required in order to successfully function in the classroom (Gieysztor 2003).

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greatly reduced matriculation issues for foreign students. Had regional languages or dialects been instead used for instruction in the classrooms, significant barriers to internationalization would have been established. (It was possible, for example, for nearly anyone in any part of Europe to learn Latin, but only few people outside the royal domain of France would have access to instruction in early French.) With all students and faculty speaking Latin in the classroom, a single and attainable entry requirement was in place for anyone desiring a University education, and faculty and students from throughout Europe aggregated at the new schools using this single communication medium.

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DEGREE CONFERRAL A final key aspect accounting for internationalization in the early University lay in the method by which the Institution certified successful completion of students' courses of study. Although now taken for granted as an integral part of University education, the notion of "degrees" conferred by a committee of faculty upon students who have successfully completed a course of study was an innovation of the early University8. A conferred degree was universally recognized by all universities as a certification of completion; therefore, degree conferral in this early context (as it is today) became recognized as a "transportable" item, where the degree awarded by one university was accepted by all others (Verger 1992b). This "transportable" feature of university degrees made possible the ability for a student to train at one institution but later, after degree conferral, to teach at another, resulting in a system of scholarship that integrally connected all such institutions into a greater educational network. This interconnected system of educational institutions greatly increased internationalization over time, for it was degree conferral, not the training at any one specific institution, which was the critical criteria for gaining a faculty position at a university. Although taken for granted today, transportable degree conferral almost alone guaranteed that the Institution would become increasingly internationalized over time, for it facilitated the migration of scholars from one local institution to another. 8

The early University’s degree award of the licentia docendi (i.e., the right to teach) to students broke from the ancient tradition of attaching and assessing a student via single teacher: now students would have to achieve a degree through the vote of academic colleagues, who would then recommend a student to the chancellor for final approval of degree award (Rüegg 1996).

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Defining "Internationalization"

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In summary, the early University made a series of strategic decisions that helped establish internationalization as an integral characteristic of the Institution. The city was an international setting, providing a pool of both teachers and learners from all parts of Europe. The city, too, provided the fledgling University a place to thrive, for it was in the urban context where the Scholastic Method found its greatest forum for growth. The Latin language served as the unifying component for faculty and students from all areas of Europe, and finally, universally accepted, transportable "degrees" made possible the cross seeding of faculty members within universities all across Europe.

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Chapter 3

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POST-MEDIEVAL UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONALIZATION The University began its life as an international Institution, but it had in those medieval days seen only the beginnings of just how significant its internationalization processes would become as the Institution matured over time. The actual strength of internationalization within the University varied primarily as a function of historical timeframe, but was also impacted by the specific location of the institution. From its early establishment in but a handful of 13th century European cities, the Institution soon demonstrated a universal appeal, and was easily recognized as one of the most desirous educational institutions a student could attend, including the cathedral schools (Haskins 1957). During the 14thand 15th centuries, an early pivotal period in the University’s history, the Institution experienced ever-increasing growth throughout the European continent: seven new universities were formed in the late 14th century, approximately 20 in the first half of the 15th century, and some 22 in the last half of the 15th century (Verger 1992a). By 1500, as many as perhaps 80 – 100 European locations sported a university. Many of these institutions were founded and financed by local rulers, but these universities continued to have student bodies consisting of members from a wide variety of locations and also continued to attract teachers of renown (Verger 1992a). The international character of the University throughout the 14th century therefore could still be viewed as an assumptive feature of the Institution in terms of both its student and faculty membership. With the emergence of the Protestant Reformation (1517–1648AD), however, an emphasis on “nation” began to occur within Europe, and the focus of many organizational bodies, including the University, changed to

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Ray J. Amirault and Yusra L. Visser

accommodate this new paradigm. As a result, the University in this period took a decidedly inward turn (Altbach and Knight 2007), and the level of internationalization within its European schools markedly decreased. As de Wit has commented, the University in this period often came to serve national interests, particularly in regards to establishing national identities, and "The scholar [i.e., the medieval university teacher] became from a wanderer a citizen" (de Wit 1998). By 1648AD, the Treaty of Westphalia helped to more fully operationalize the concept of the "nation," and Europe would continue to expand its emphasis on national boundaries, national governments, and national goals emerging from its constituent countries (Murphy 1996). The University, still very much an active educational Institution, nevertheless now often saw itself become more of a political tool to extend these national interests than its original, medieval mission as a "pure" source of teaching and learning. The University's history would now record more strongly than ever the unique and often co-dependent nature of the Institution with its host countries. The University would have to make the changes necessary to reinvent itself if the Institution was to survive as an integral educational structure into the Late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond. Moving forward to the 20th century, that survival could now claim to an astounding seven centuries of history. The 20th century also brought with it a number of key events which arguably, some might say, almost ironically, shifted the University more towards its original, medieval character concerning internationalization. The passage of two world wars and the resultant post-colonial national movements had deeply affected the growth of the University, and new universities began to appear for the first time in many newly established countries (Altbach and Knight 2007). The University during this period began to reconsider and strategically reinvigorated internationalization efforts, specifically in the area of teaching and research (de Wit 1998). The University was slowly shifting back towards its earliest form of internationalization, and the Institution incrementally witnessed the emergence of a more international feel within its members. But perhaps the greatest and most significant event as it concerned University internationalization would be one that caught most by surprise, and would leave much of the world forever changed in its wake: the technology revolution of the late 20th century.

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Chapter 4

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THE TECHNOLOGY REVOLUTION: A KEY EVENT IN UNIVERSITY HISTORY The impact the technology revolution would have on the world of education would have been virtually impossible to predict. The advent of electronic computers in the 1940's was largely a result of governmental investment via national laboratories (such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico) with the primary goal of being able to quickly compute the trajectories of ballistic weapons (Norman 2005). The development of physically huge, monolithic computer systems such as ENIAC (the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, 1946) would have led no one, even those working directly on these projects, to ever conceive of the computer as anything other than computational machines for military or governmental purposes. And although analogue computers were nothing new, the development of digital electronic computing machines during World War II opened up a new world of computing power, and the first components necessary for the emergence of the Technology Revolution of the late 20th century were set in place. The development of digital electronic computers in the mid 20th century was simply the start of what the Technology Revolution was to accomplish through a series of inventions and innovations characteristic of the period. The invention of the transistor in 1947, an effort spearheaded by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain (the three shared a Nobel Prize in 1956 for their invention) was the tipping point that would eventually help move the computer from the physically massive, power consuming behemoth of the national laboratory to a home office desktop device (Hochheiser 2008).

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Following shortly thereafter, the invention of the integrated circuit, a transistor-based electronic device1 created within the substrate of a single piece of semiconductor material made the promise of miniaturized transistor circuits a reality, and a new world of electronic devices became possible from both a size and cost point of view (Winston 1998). In terms of the history of the University, the event would eventually become nothing less than massive in its impact, for it was this shift of the computer into a small, portable device that allowed it to be used, no longer just as a computational device, but as a communications hub. This transformation of the computational machine into a computer enabled communications device was perhaps one of the most unexpected, but significant events of the 20th century in terms of its impact on education. Concurrent with the development of hardware such as the transistor and integrated circuits, researchers began working through government entities such as ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency) on a method for connecting computer devices together into a "network," i.e., a linkage of computers via a telecommunications system where each computer served as a node, and where all nodes could simultaneously communicate with one another (Clark 2003). The eventual result of this effort was the "Internet," a series of electronically linked computer nodes separated over vast physical distances using an overlaid communications protocol called “TCP/IP.” Following on this development, Tim Berners Lee, a computer scientist working at CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, the European Council for Nuclear Research), developed an Internet based communications specification called "the World Wide Web," a combination of hypertext linking, the Internet’s TCP/IP communication protocol, and an addressing scheme called “the domain name system.” The coupling of these advances with the invention of a small, mechanical pointing device called the “mouse” eventually made the use of the Internet simple, even for non technical individuals (Gillies and Cailliau 2000). It was the sum of these technological advances – the transistor, the integrated circuit, the personal computer, the Internet, and the World Wide Web – which made possible, and some might argue, inevitable, the emergence of Web based e-learning. Computers had increased in power and shrunk in 1

The original idea for the integrated circuit came from the British scientist Geoffery Drummer, but the actual earliest development of the device is credited to Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Electronics. In 2000, Kilby won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention.

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The Technology Revolution: A Key Event in University History

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size and price to the point where the devices were showing up in homes across the world. The Internet was now operational, and continued to spread its reach to the most remote parts of the world. The World Wide Web, a hypertext linking system sitting on "top" of the TCP/IP-based Internet network, made accessing the Internet simple for virtually anyone, even those without a technology background. It could not be long until institutions of higher education, including the University, would be forced to wrestle with the implications such a system made on the educational world. The notion of distance education could now be shifted away from postal delivery services to instantaneous, electronic synchronous and asynchronous communication enabled by these new, interlinked and hypertext driven "personal" computers. All institutions of higher learning, and even many primary and secondary educational systems, would be forced to make decisions concerning the extent to which they should utilize the technology for educational purposes, if at all2.

2

This is an odd notion, for universities themselves played a key role in the development of Internet technology. It was the UCLA School of Engineering that was one of the first two "nodes" to be connected via ARPANET, the precursor to today's Internet. The first fully described TCP Protocol, the communications protocol to eventually be used on today's worldwide Internet, was described by three individuals at Stanford University in the mid 1970's (Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine). In the mid 1980's, NSFNET (the precursor Internet backbone, connecting five universities for purposes of academic research) was developed, and the system quickly expanded, often through university-based auspices, to the Internet as it is known today. The hand of the University in the development of the Internet is unmistakable to any reviewer of technological and educational history.

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Chapter 5

EMBRACE OF WEB BASED E-LEARNING IN TERTIARY CONTEXTS

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.

Although distance learning was not a new concept, the notion of computer-based distance learning using the World Wide Web as a vehicle for the approach challenged most all higher education institutions to fundamentally rethink the design, delivery, and assessment of instruction. The University once again began to consider how best to reinvent itself in the face of this massive societal and technological upheaval in order to preclude any possibility of educational obsolescence brought about by this paradigmatic shift. With a somewhat sporadic start, by the early years of the 21st century, data was being collected on the use of web based e-learning, and the numbers tell a story of a wholesale embrace of the new paradigm. In reports by Allen and Seaman in 2007 and 2008, the researchers reported that: By 2006, approximately 3.5 million students in the United States were studying at least part time in an online environment, double the enrollment rate of 2002 (Allen and Seaman 2007). For the period covering 2002 through 2006, online enrollments increased at a compound annual rate of between approximately 18 and 25 percent, depending on school size (Alan and Seaman, 2007). More than two-thirds of all higher education institutions in the United States offered some form of online learning in 2006, the majority of which offered fully online programs (Allen and Seaman 2007). Online enrollment rates have continued to grow at levels greatly exceeding total higher education student population, with 3.9 million

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Ray J. Amirault and Yusra L. Visser students taking at least one online course in the U.S. in fall, 2007. The Sloan Consortium itself reports that this 12 percent increase in online enrollment from the previous year is so large as to be "unsustainable” (Allen and Seaman 2008) . Some 11,200 U.S. based higher education programs could be completed fully online in 2008 (Allen and Seaman 2008).

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This data confirms what is essentially a wholesale acceptance of the web based e-learning paradigm in tertiary education settings, with no evidence that the shift towards web based e-learning will slow in the near future.

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Chapter 6

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CHARACTERISTICS OF WEB BASED ELEARNING POTENTIALLY AFFECTING INTERNATIONALIZATION The dramatic shift towards web based distance learning within the University in the early 21st century presented a true challenge to how educational processes are conceived, delivered, and assessed. The ability to offer entire university degree programs via online means not only opened up a much wider potential pool of students, but also brought with it a series of challenging questions regarding how universities could both verify and certify all stages of the educational process1. It might be a natural to assume that the acceptance and use of web based e-learning within the University curriculum could do nothing but increase the levels of internationalization within the Institution. No longer restricted by the requirement to make an expensive relocation to a new area, give up local employment, and sometimes, dislocate an entire family, potential students could now select from a variety of distance based educational providers and could, assuming acceptance into a program, complete entire degree programs from a home location. This facility also implied an increasingly “borderless” system of education, because students from any part of the world (assuming 1 Particularly difficult has been the issue of academic assessment. How can a university ensure that its assessment procedures and approaches for online students actually measure the true performance of learners? How can assessment procedures guarantee valid findings when students are not physically located with an instructor during assessment procedures? What forms should assessment take in the online context? These questions represent but a few of the issues surrounding the implementation of web based distance learning programs for the University context.

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the technological infrastructure, political freedoms, and functional literacy in the language of instruction) could now interact within any online University academic program. The result is that universities now potentially have “global reach,” drawing students to their programs from widely different parts geographical regions. How could such a change do anything but increase internationalization within the University? The assumption of an “automatic” increase in University internationalization via means of online learning programs is not necessarily borne out in real life, however. While it is correct that the technological advancements behind web based e-learning makes possible a greater diversity in student population, this particular result, arguably a subset of internationalization, may not always actually occur in all institutions. A recent report by Sloan, for example, reported that “The belief that online education extends the geographic boundaries of institutions is not borne out when we look at where, geographically, the online students reside. For all types of institutions, Carnegie Classifications, and size of institutions, the current geographic reach of schools is predominately local with over 85 percent of all online students coming from the within 50 miles of campus (local) or from within the state or surrounding states (regional). Institutions believe that online will open up their enrollments to more students from outside of their normal service area; however, the reality is that this has not yet occurred in any large numbers” (Allen and Seaman 2008).

The implication from the Sloan report is that, for the majority of online students, the choice to take an online course is motivated by a desire to supplement traditional instruction while remaining in their physical locale (most likely to complete graduation requirements), and not for purposes of achieving an “international” educational experience. This is an early indicator that the simple presence of a web based e-learning program does not automatically imply an increase of internationalization within the institution. The initial assumption that web based e-learning necessarily increases an institution’s internationalization can also be more fundamentally examined by again reviewing what “internationalization” means in the University context, and to what extent, if any, web based e-learning potentially impacts the processes subsumed in that definition. At the start of this chapter, we accepted the Knight, 2003 wording as the working definition of internationalization: "Internationalization at the national, sector, and institutional levels is defined as the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global

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Characteristics of Web Based E-Learning…

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dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post secondary education." We further listed the four approaches towards internationalization that could be taken according to Knight (1999): 1. The Activity Approach - curriculum, academic exchange, and international students 2. The Competency Approach - skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values development 3. The Ethos Approach - culture or climate development that supports internationalization 4. The Process Approach - integration of international elements into teaching, research, and service

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Keeping these four approaches in mind, we now examine some select factors surrounding the use of web based e-learning that might potentially impact internationalization within the University. Although the potential list for the web based e-learning setting is quite large, for purposes of this chapter we choose to focus on seven such factors: faculty role; student role; student and faculty migration; community and cultural context; availability of knowledge and information; educational access; and instructional strategies.

FACULTY ROLE As the e-learning revolution got underway, faculty serving for the first time as online instructors quickly found that their role has significantly changed from anything experienced in their past teaching assignments. The traditional role of the university instructor has always been that of the deliverer and assessor of instructional content, and with the entire classroom membership physically meeting together in a single location, the faculty instructor was easily the central focal point of these processes. (The tremendous control, too, such an approach provided over content delivery and assessment also introduced great variability in student learning and educational experience across identical course sections.) In the online setting, however, the instructor found that he or she is no longer in this traditional role, but has rather moved towards a facilitation role, assisting students in the development of cognitive and metacognitive skills as they work their way through instructional requirements (Visser 2005).

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In addition, instructors new to online teaching quickly realized that subject matter knowledge alone would no longer be the sole determinant of a successful classroom experience. Instructors would now need to spend significantly greater amounts of “up-front” time designing courses using specific instructional strategies for maximum educational results specific to the e-learning environment (Mansour 2006). In some reviews, as many as eight unique competences have been identified for the instructor role in webbased e-learning: content facilitator; technologist; designer; manager; process facilitator; counselor; assessor; and researcher (Goodyear, Salmon et al. 2001). The online instructor also quickly found that other new expectations were part of the online teaching experience. New online technologies would need to be learned and then leveraged to maximize educational outcomes. Communication expectations – in the form of written, electronic e-mail and discussion board posts – would be greatly increased. Students would also need to be afforded different instructional strategies and assessment approaches in order to capitalize on the online environment. In many ways, the emergence of web based e-learning provided what might be the single greatest change from an instructor standpoint, and much of these changes have implications for University internationalization processes. The manner in which the changing role of the instructor in the online setting may affect internationalization processes can be illustrated in part by the single example of the requirements for written communication in web based courses. It is known, for example, that the interpretation of written communication is based on words, the semantic meaning of those words, and the syntax of word arrangement (Betts 2009). In the case of an instructor teaching in a face-to-face setting with a culturally homogenous group of students, many culturally determined “understandings” are automatically present that pertain to all three of these categories. In such a homogenous setting, idioms, patterns of speech, communication styles, and even gestures and allusions are easily understood and shared by all class members. In the case of the online course where members come from a wide variety of differing cultural contexts, however, such assumptions will likely not hold true, and word choice, semantic meaning, and grammar of written communication may not be an understanding shared by all. This implies that the requirement for precise and clear written communication will be accentuated in the online setting. If an instructor is not careful to craft all written communication in a clear and precise manner – including everything from Syllabi to written assignment instructions to class announcements –

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Characteristics of Web Based E-Learning…

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great potential for misunderstanding and cultural difficulties may be present. The facilitation role of the instructor, then, in the online environment carries with it numerous issues pertinent to university internationalization, and only careful and thoughtful consideration of such issues will permit successful improvement in university internationalization.

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STUDENT ROLE The changing student role within web based e-learning settings may also potentially impact University internationalization processes. Like faculty working in the online environment, students quickly realize that attendance and test taking, long the hallmarks of tertiary education, are no longer the sole indicators of a successful educational experience. Rather, students working in the online environment find that a much greater emphasis is placed on competencies associated with collaborative engagement and learning mediated through effective written and online communication via the use of computer based technologies (Birch 2002; Visser 2005). In addition, in the absence of physical meetings in the classroom, students also discover that a much greater emphasis on self-directive and metacognitive skills, including scheduling, interpretation of assignments, and collaboration with peers, is required than in the more traditional setting (Birch 2002). As students in the online class environment are required to collaborate to a greater degree with other students to complete assignments, the opportunity for interaction between individuals from greatly different backgrounds increases. The online setting provides the ability to “group” such students in ways that might not normally be available for the local brick and mortar university. Such collaboration clearly can increase internationalization by facilitating the communication of individuals from diverse backgrounds, and even though the common language of instruction tends to mitigate the impact of cultural differences, these differences will never be totally erased, even when utilizing electronic communication. Further, as a greater weighting in class assessment is given to collaboration and collaborative learning, a greater impetus to overcome cultural barriers and differences can be present. In the best of cases, these differences can actually be viewed as strengths on which to capitalize in the online environment, and students can come to develop a new appreciation for the international elements of their educational experience. Although true for most aspects of internationalization, the student’s internationalization role is largely determined by what the student actually

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makes of the opportunity afforded through the web based e-learning context. The cross-cultural aspects can be both emphasized and leveraged to mutual advantage, or they can be de-emphasized and left as unfulfilled opportunities. There are specific strategies which faculty can implement to help achieve internationalization, but in the end, when it comes to the role of the student in internationalization, it lays primarily in students’ control how they wish to pursue or ignore such opportunities. The question, then, is not just Do we have international participants?, but rather, Do we have internationalized learning environments?

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FACULTY AND STUDENT MIGRATION Faculty and student migration, i.e., the movement of students and teachers from home to school locations, or from school to school locations, can easily be seen as part of the internationalization processes the University has always enjoyed (Gürüz 2008). As described earlier in this chapter, the traditional paradigm of the University from its very earliest days has been that of the physical relocation of students and teachers to a single geographic location for face-to-face teaching and learning. Students selected a university based on an institution’s reputation in a specific field, and that reputation was established primarily by the presence of faculty of renown at the institution (Cobban 1992). It was the unique and often idiosyncratic nature of the real life, twoway interaction between student and faculty member that embodied a “University education,” and it was this aspect of University life which made cost and the difficulties of physical relocation a price that students were willing to pay. This direct connection between faculty and students often also played a lasting role in the graduate’s future work: many graduates not only depended on employment recommendations from faculty for which they had established a relationship, but many graduates also followed in the academic footsteps of selected faculty members to carry on the work of scholarship, including teaching in a university. Web based e-learning has turned this traditional paradigm on its side by removing the requirement for physical relocation of faculty and students to meet at a central location. In addition, since the vast majority of web based elearning has been carried out in asynchronous mode (Hrastinski 2008), the other ancient feature of University education, students meeting with a faculty member at a fixed point in time, has been eliminated; students are now free to complete the requirements of a course largely at a schedule of their own

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Characteristics of Web Based E-Learning…

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choosing. This has created a phenomenon quite opposite to the traditional University paradigm of physical relocation, i.e., a “non” migration of students to the university campus. This phenomenon extends to faculty, as well, because it is a far less expensive proposition for universities to hire faculty “remotely” and not incur the great cost of physical relocation. Web based elearning can also therefore be seen to result in faculty non-migration, with faculty members teaching courses for a given university from locations around the world. The impact on university internationalization by student “non” migration is apparent. When an individual enrolls in a university and makes the often challenging decision to physically relocate to that university in order to embark on a long program of study, a deeply internationalized effect takes place, for this student will bring with him or her the culture, history, and language of the home country to the university. This student will interact with others at the university in both academic and social activities, and over time will exchange thoughts, ideas and viewpoints with each other that often challenge the sometimes parochial views that each context may possess. Though not always an easy exercise, these interactions, often which become the basis for lifelong friendships, impact more than just the individuals in direct contact: they help shape the ongoing cultural context of the university itself, and give the institution a character for which it can become more widely known. The reduction of traditional migration weakens these processes, and can potentially negatively impact University internationalization. In spite of the pressure that web based e-learning applies to reduce migration, the approach in some ways can also potentially positively impact internationalization. Online learning does indeed allow for some level of interpersonal contact between individuals from all parts of the world. Even in this technology mediated format, it is this ability for students and faculty to interact with individuals from all parts of the world that forms the basis for ongoing collaborations between institutions, which may eventually result in internationalization processes. Increased interdisciplinary opportunities, as well as inter-institutional opportunities, may be the eventual result, and these individuals may then participate in collaborations across institutions around the world. These programs would then experience an increasing level of potential internationalization, this time enabled by the affordances of advanced communication technology, similar to the manner in which the medieval University experienced such interchange via traditional migration patterns.

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COMMUNITY AND CULTURAL CONTEXT No discussion of internationalization within the University could be complete without a discussion of cultural context. Cultural context within the University must be considered from two vantage points: the cultural context of the university at which a student chooses to study, and the cultural context of the student’s place of origin. To examine how community and cultural context may affect internationalization, we must briefly look at how most web based e-learning courses are conducted in today’s University. In order to prepare a university course for online delivery, the course must be somehow “housed” online so that students and faculty can access the course from any location. To do so, most web based e-learning courses make use of a software based system called a learning management system (LMS). The LMS is a web based, database enabled computer system that provides a single web location to house instructional materials, assessment items, communication linkages, and any other elements deemed necessary for the educational experience of an online class. Most LMS systems require a username and password login for both students and instructors, and these systems are often run on servers residing at the university’s technology support department. Since these systems have a significant impact on teaching approaches and how students engage with the university experience (Coates, James et al. 2005), Learning Management Systems, and the manner in which they are leveraged, shape the “cultural context” for the online learning experience. Like all online education, a common language is a necessary component for successful management of the LMS-enabled course, for all students and faculty will need to be fluent in the language of choice in order to read course materials, understand assignments, and communicate with other class members. The dominance of the English language in much of online education, partly a result of England’s historical presence around the world, continues to be a factor in distance education, and most LMS systems are run primarily in English2. Because languages are vehicles for the expression of culture and cultural heritage (UNESCO 2003), this choice of language for 2

In 2009, ICANN, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a not for profit international organization designed in 1998 to “keep the Internet secure, stable, and interoperable,” announced the addition of non-Latin based characters to the Internet’s domain system for the first time in the technology’s history (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers 2009). ICANN estimates that over half of the world’s Internet users speak a language with a non Latin script. Called “International domain names” (IDN’s), one example (using the Greek character set) would be the working link: http://παράδειγμα.δοκιμή. How such a massive change in Internet technology may affect internationalization levels in University education remains to be seen as the scheme is incrementally applied in the coming months and years.

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instruction creates a strong impact on the cultural context with which students interact in online education3. Ironically, this use of a single language of instruction is not unlike the medieval University’s case, where also a single language of instruction, Latin, was used. English, as was Latin in its day, is one of the world’s primary languages, now estimated to be spoken varying degrees by some 25 percent of the world’s population, and also accounting for some 80 percent of the world’s electronically stored information (Mydans 2007). English language learning, too, is available in most parts of the world, and there are an increasing number of university programs are offered in English at universities of another host language (Carvajal 2007), further mimicking the case of Latin’s use in the medieval University. The use of a single LMS site along with a common language of instruction powerfully affects the cultural context for a web based e-learning course. But the cultural context of the online “classroom” is not the only factor in this equation: students will be logging into this online culture context from their own cultural context, one that, for international students, may be markedly different than the LMS context. For example, a web based course in architectural history might be implemented in English through an LMS, but have students from Latin American, Asian, and Eastern European locations. The great disparity in local language, tradition, custom, and history from each of these areas might make it appear that such a class would be strong in internationalization effects, but in reality, the implementation of the course in English with a single LMS setting may tend to eliminate these intercultural effects as all students seek to find common ground using the language and culture of instruction. One way of envisioning this phenomenon would be to picture the effect of the same students operating in a traditional, physical classroom setting. In such a case, the potential for internationalization could arguably be much stronger than in the online setting, for although a common language of instruction would continue to prevail, the characteristics of culture – dress, mannerisms, communication styles, and more – would be in evidence to anyone participating in the course. The opportunity for first hand, unfiltered interaction between students from widely disparate locations and cultural backgrounds would be strongly present, and as students collaboratively worked on assignments, activities, and other social events, the ability for each 3

It can be easily envisioned that, if a student is not fluent in the language of instruction, that student may not be able to meaningfully contribute to either the class proceedings or to helping broaden the classes’ cultural context. In a related aspect of minority languages in the online setting, it has been documented that, in some cases of minority languages in online settings, there is a migration towards the dominant language, even when the less dominant language is known by users (Danet and Herring 2007).

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to experience and consider a wide range of cultural dynamics would likely create lasting impressions in each of them. Much of these opportunities for cultural interaction are lost in the online context, where the very same advanced computer based communication technology can actually filter out the very elements that are part of cultural context. In such an online setting, the majority of interaction will occur in electronic and written text of a single language via documents, e-mails, and discussion boards, and the elements of culture are largely filtered out through this basic medium of written electronic communication.

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AVAILABILITY OF KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION The availability of a large and growing online collection of information has significantly impacted the University, and is an important potential factor affecting University internationalization. To understand why this may be the case, one must remember that the historical approach within higher education has almost exclusively been that of the “warehousing” of information at the school, where faculty members served as the gatekeepers and dispensers of that content. In terms of the University’s history, this approach has always served as self-reinforcement to Institution’s viability, for access to amassed University knowledge was strictly controlled through student admittance, attendance, and graduation constructs (Verger 1992a). With faculty members serving as the dispensers of that content, the University has always remained the penultimate source of instructional and informational content, and continues to this day to be viewed as a premier source of knowledge. The emergence of the Internet, however, with its vast and growing source of indexed material4, has challenged this time honored paradigm of instructor as content dispenser. The immense amount of free and publicly available information on the Internet has made the technology a content source unparalleled in history. By 2009, it is almost impossible to think of a topic, regardless of the level of specificity, for which large amounts of information are not available online. The Internet has, in a sense, democratized information, making information of all types openly available to all people, at 4

In a recent IDC white paper sponsored by the corporation EMC, the amount of information that is either “created, captured, or replicated in digital form” was estimated in 2007 to be some 281 exabytes (1018 bytes or 1 billion gigabytes), with an estimated growth to 1,800 exabytes by 2011, ten times that in 2006 (Chute, Manfrediz et al. 2008). The compound annual grown of stored data is now estimated by EMC to be nearly 60%.

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little or no cost. The advent of web based e-learning has played an important role in ushering in the Internet as a venue for University learning and a source for intellectual subject matter to integrate into the instructional process. Prior to the maturation of web based e-learning, the University continued to rely on printed texts as primary sources for intellectual content in the vast majority of courses. However, as web based e-learning has become an increasingly prominent modality in the University, it has brought with it new instructional strategies (see discussion below), many of which capitalize on opportunities for sustained exploration, analysis, and discussion of high-quality web-based sources. Textbooks, long the staple of the academic classroom, are now challenged by an immeasurable amount of online content from a wide variety of sources, and these sources all bear the marks of the cultural, historic and academic backgrounds from which the content originated. For example, an American “Psychology 101” textbook may accurately convey the basic facts surrounding Russian learning researchers such as Vygotsky (1896-1934) and Pavlov (18491936), but may lack the culturally-relevant contextual factors and societal impacts relevant to the study of Vygotsky and Pavlov’s contributions to psychology. Russian sources (many of which, including full-text, electronic versions of books, are accessible online) may provide valuable information to fill in these “gaps”, thereby potentially enriching the curriculum while internationalizing it, too. As content sources become more diversified for the University environment, the levels of internationalization in the curriculum can therefore be seen to potentially increase. There will likely be an increasing move towards leveraging online content for both secondary, and in some cases, primary instructional source material. As this content continues to be developed from a wide range of cultural, geographic, and political backgrounds, this contents’ impact on University internationalization will likely be strong.

EDUCATIONAL ACCESS There is little doubt that today’s availability of web based e-learning has greatly expanded educational access for millions of people around the world. The lifting of student relocation requirements that is a part of online learning means that, in most cases, whole new vistas of educational opportunities have been made available to anyone, anywhere, given the caveat of a technological

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infrastructure and political freedoms to access such opportunities. Online learning has opened educational opportunities to entire communities of people who were previously restricted from higher educational systems, and there is reason to believe that such access will continue to grow as the technological infrastructure continues to expand around the world. The “digital divide” still exists: there are still billions of people around the world without Internet access. However, with Nielsen projecting that the global Internet population has grown 16% between 2008 and 2009, the divide is shrinking (news.com.au 2009). This opening of educational access to disparate groups of peoples around the world means by definition that the global higher educational systems is internationalizing, at least in terms of the location of origin of the world’s learners. As this trend continues, increasing numbers of web based e-learning programs are seeking to reach specific target audiences scattered around the globe. From a strictly technological standpoint, one might intuitively argue that the conditions have been set up for universities to reach ever more diverse audiences, and the opportunity for greater University internationalization has therefore been created. In reality, however, there are several factors that should be carefully considered as part of the “bigger picture” when exploring educational access, internationalization, and web based e-learning. While access to the Internet, an essential prerequisite for e-learning, has been increasing globally, Internet penetration varies greatly from one regional area to the next. Internet penetration rates in North America are estimated at over 70 percent, and at about 52 percent in Europe (Miniwatts Marketing Group 2009). By comparison, Internet penetration rates are estimated to be at less than seven percent in Africa (Miniwatts Marketing Group 2009). Thus, while web based e-learning courses are potentially accessible to all locations with Internet access, true internationalization is limited by the extent of Internet penetration within each geographic region. Coupled with the fact that some of the most culturally heterogeneous regions of the world are the same with the lowest Internet penetration rates, this is a particularly sobering thought. It is unlikely that universities will be able to affect Internet penetration rates: however, they can strive to reduce the bandwidth requirements for participating in their e-learning courses in order to maximize educational access among those with limited Internet connectivity. The extent to which the educational access made possible by web based elearning fosters greater internationalization is also affected by the continued challenges of the cost of higher education. This issue has particularly affected universities in the United States and Europe. In the United States, college

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tuition fees increased some 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, according to a recent article in the New York Times (Lewin 2008). These events have marred efforts of institutions to draw in a more diverse student body in either face-toface or web-based programs. Regardless of whether e-learning is more costeffective or not for educational institutions, there is little question that tuition rates for e-learning courses – a determining factor for those attempting to enter an academic program – are generally not cost-competitive relative to face-toface courses at institutions that offer both modalities. A final issue potentially affecting University internationalization in regards to access is localization. Localization involves the adaptation of academic curricula for consumption by a specific, remote target audiences through the translation of instructional materials and the adaptation of instructional strategies, examples, and assignments to suit the needs and context in which the target audience operates (Edmundson 2007). Take, for example, the case of a university promoting an online degree program developed specifically for Spanish speakers in the Caribbean. Enrolling students in “cohorts,” such a program customizes its academic offering to this group by hiring Spanish speaking instructors, converting instructional content into Spanish, and by selecting Spanish language textbooks. This approach allows for an “international” reach that the university would not normally have, because these students would not likely to be able to complete the program’s coursework in the traditional face-to-face manner in a different language. Yet, in another sense, a program like this does little to increase internationalization within the university in terms of cultural exchange and interpersonal relationships between students and faculty from different geographic locations. While a worthy and commendable goal, such programs may simply reinforce a cultural isolationism by reason of the demographic makeup of its specific student population, which can often be a homogenous group in terms of location, language, and culture. In terms of internationalization, if this cohort remains isolated from the rest of the university’s community throughout their course of study, students within the cohort may contribute little to the university’s international culture, and may themselves remain unaffected by the rest of the university community of which they are a member. Indeed, localization is often a construct associated more with attempts at globalizing e-learning (McBrien 2005), rather than at internationalizing it. There is little question that web based e-learning creates opportunities for increased access, which in turn may support increased internationalization of the University. As discussed above, however, translating this potential for

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increased access into increased internationalization requires targeted strategic planning that makes internationalization a priority. For example, while universities alone cannot address the issue of variability in Internet penetration rates in different regions of the world, they can improve opportunities of access for those with low Internet connectivity by making careful decisions about the extent to which high bandwidth requirements are built into elearning. Universities can also seek to make strategic partnerships with universities in other nations, so that goals of expanding target audience reach are achieved while minimizing the need for localization strategies that might effectively work against internationalization. If a university should embark on localization efforts via e-learning programs, it can strive to integrate instructional strategies, such as those discussed in the next section, to promote an internationalized curriculum and classroom culture within an otherwise localized e-learning program.

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INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES As mentioned previously, some aspects of internationalization can be promoted through the targeted strategies by faculty (and programs) seeking to improve this aspect of their educational systems. At the course level, the use of specific instructional strategies conducive to internationalization can play a key role in helping move the institution as a whole more towards a more international character, for it is students moving through individual course requirements that will set the overall tone of the institution as it relates to a truly international character. There are many instructional strategies that can be used to promote an international character to a course. First and foremost is likely to be the targeted and carefully planned use of group work for academic assignments. Group based work, particularly if there is careful oversight to help keep groups from forming that are largely culturally uniform, is a powerful instructional strategy for promoting internationalization, for it is at the basic academic assignment level where students can be exposed to cultural, political, and linguistic differences, and where a motive exists for overcoming any obstacles perceived to be created by such differences. It is in the group based approach where students who have never before had such opportunities to discover that they may have greater interests in discovering people from differing contexts and to open up new ways of viewing and solving problems.

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Another instructional strategy potentially promoting internationalization within the online classroom is the selection and use of instructional and source materials from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. Instead of using a single textbook from a major textbook producer, background readings can be selected from authors representing a wider set of viewpoints from very different geographic and cultural backgrounds, allowing students to begin the process of developing an understanding of the many views evidenced by writers of greatly diverse backgrounds. In some cases, assignments can be given which require the use of online language translators to translate online source material written in different languages to emphasize the difficulties – and opportunities – represented by the use of such sources. Similarly, students can be assigned readings where authors of very different backgrounds all write on the very same subject to highlight and differentiate the differences and similarities such writings provide. Another useful instructional strategy for helping promote internationalization that might especially be effective for the online environment is the use of interviewing. The effectiveness of this approach is especially powerful in the online setting, where students are able to contact individuals from a wide range of geographic areas using computer based communication technology. To use such a strategy, each student in an online class might be required to interview, say, some three people of differing cultural backgrounds for purposes of determining where similarities and differences between the interviewees exist on a certain topic or question. Students would be asked to develop a written summary of the findings, and then share those findings with other students in the class, with specific emphasis placed on achieving an understanding of a problem or question from a wide variety of viewpoints. These strategies, and many more like them, can be applied in virtually any type of online university course. It may be true that some academic subjects are less likely than others to yield a rich outcome with such strategies, but there is likely no topic or subject that could not reap some benefits as pertaining to internationalization through such. No academic field is the purveyance of only one country or one country’s set of scientists: therefore, there is something that can be learned regarding internationalization in virtually any university subject, even in courses within the physical sciences or mathematics curriculum. In considering instructional strategies for the web based e-learning environment that may support internationalization, it is important to remember that there are specific technologies that may further support such efforts for

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this setting. As mentioned above, the use of online translation tools, now becoming increasingly powerful and accurate, are potentially very compelling tools as regards internationalization. The growing presence of high bandwidth Internet connections capable of supporting real time audio/video linkages are technologies also capable of supporting internationalization efforts, as these types of communication transmit far more cultural nuance than simple text messaging. The possible emergence of “cloud computing,” where most data and software resides on servers and where individuals connect to the “cloud” using very basic, inexpensive computers, may also serve to increase internationalization, as such technology may level the playing field between more and less affluent geographic areas. Social networking, now seen in increasing amounts to be entering even the news and business worlds, may also play a role in internationalization efforts as people from all parts of the world interact with pictures, video, audio, and near real time text messaging. These technologies can all be considered as playing a role in the selective use of instructional strategies that can support university internationalization.

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Chapter 7

DISCUSSION

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Having now reviewed the background of University internationalization, the emergence of web based e-learning, and the characteristics of e-learning that might potentially impact internationalization within the University context, it remains to present some summary comments and conclusions regarding the central theme of this chapter. It is helpful, also, to codify a series of outstanding questions which are still open to debate and discussion in terms of the 21st century University’s relationship to the issue of internationalization.

CHARACTERISTICS OF WEB BASED E-LEARNING IN TERMS OF KNIGHT’S FOUR APPROACHES TO INTERNATIONALIZATION This chapter has argued that a particular subset of the characteristics of web based e-learning might most likely impact internationalization within the University, i.e., faculty and student migration, faculty role, student role, community and cultural context, availability of knowledge and information, educational access, and instructional strategies. The potential impact on University internationalization by these characteristics could be positive or negative, but each characteristic could theoretically play some role in how the Institution attains (or perhaps, fails to attain) internationalization goals within the Institution. By taking the further step of categorizing these characteristics into Knight’s (1999) classification scheme, we can more fully understand the cause and effect sequences each of these characteristics can generate in University internationalization processes. When universities make the deliberate decision

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to strive for greater internationalization of their institutions, understanding how each of these characteristics falls within Knight’s scheme can provide powerful information to further strategic planning for internationalization goals. The impact of e-learning on student and faculty migration (either in the traditional migration patterns or in the “non” migration patterns of the web based e-learning paradigm), as well as on educational access, would seem to align most closely with the Activity approach of Knight’s (1999) internationalization scheme (curriculum, academic exchange, and international students), for these interactions deal with the potential increase of international students and with the exchange of faculty members across universities. As discussed earlier, web based e-learning opens the door for significantly more fluid “movement” of students and faculty between institutions, no longer constrained by the requirement for physical relocation. The online interaction of students and faculty from all parts of the world to universities of choice potentially influences the Activity aspect of internationalization in a direct manner: these individuals will tend to transmit the culture, linguistics, and other background characteristics of their place of origin to others, and these factors can directly impact the internationalization efforts at any university. E-learning’s impact on the role of faculty and students in the University might arguably be seen to fall within the Competency approach of Knight’s (1999) internationalization scheme (focused on knowledge, skills, and attitudes development), because understanding the new roles each plays in this online, “internationalized” environment can positively impact these “KSA’s” for the international environment of the 21st century. E-learning can potentially play a powerful role in helping widely different groups achieve skills needed in the local environment of each, outcomes more difficult to achieve in the traditional setting. Likewise, integration of digitally archived intellectual content originating from diverse geographic regions into web based e-learning links to Knight’s (1999) Ethos approach to internationalization (culture or climate development that supports internationalization). The breadth of knowledge and information available online from a wide variety of disparate sources and the improvements to reach that information via increased access through online technology can significantly impact the culture or climate present in University courses and programs, and this can significantly impact a university’s ethos character and personality.

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Discussion

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Finally, the use of instructional strategies supporting internationalization can be viewed as most directly aligned with Knight’s (1999) Process approach (integration of international elements into teaching, research, and service). It is the purposeful element of design on the part of instructors that can most fully integrate internationalization processes within University classes and programs, and these functions fall within the Process category described by Knight.

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HOW THE TECHNOLOGY OF WEB BASED E-LEARNING MAY AFFECT INTERNATIONALIZATION In this chapter, it has been argued that some aspects of communication technology used in the online environment (e.g., text based e-mail, discussion boards, etc.) tend to filter out certain aspects of internationalization processes, because individuals using such technology are working within a single language and because the transmission of textual communication does not transmit many of the features inherent in cross cultural intercourse (e.g., accents, mannerisms, styles of verbal communication, study and learning patterns, etc.). With many students in an online course struggling to manage communication in a non-native language, the result is often a non nuanced and imprecise interaction: few people communicating in a secondary language have achieved mastery of the language to achieve the levels of precise, inflected communication that a homogenous group of native speakers would share. This means that, for the online environment that spans multiple cultural backgrounds and linguistic groups, the weakest link in the chain is often the textual communication of students, and internationalization impact on the group as a whole are reduced. This situation may be changing, however. As computer and communication technology steadily improve in sophistication, and as the “backbone” linkages of the Internet continue to increase in bandwidth (i.e., the amount of data that can be simultaneously transmitted), text based communication will not remain the sole method for online communication. Audio and video “streaming” are increasingly becoming utilized in the online learning environment, and as this technology becomes more universal, aspects of international intercourse between students and faculty will become improved. The ability to watch and listen to an instructor creates a much more potent link with that instructor’s cultural background and setting, and as

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students themselves are given course assignments that include the development of audio and video artifacts, even more elements of international communication characteristics will become apparent within online courses. Moving even beyond the streaming of audio and video files is the real time audio and video connection between individuals that is now starting to become more commonplace. These technologies, which make use of a microphone and/or videophone at each person’s location and some type of communication platform to make a live connection between these devices (e.g., Google Talk, Microsoft Windows Live Messenger, etc.), make possible an entirely new level of interpersonal communication between widely separated individuals, and also have the added benefit of not filtering out as much cultural data as simple text communication typically does. Using such technologies, students and faculty not only can see and hear aspects of communication such as verbal style, accents, mannerisms, and gestures, but also are able to communicate in real time, bringing the communication near to what is experienced in face-to-face settings. This technology is increasingly being implemented within online learning courses, with online collaboration products being developed by a wide range of companies and organizations to support such communication. This technology, then, shows a much improved potential for increasing the levels of University internationalization.

THE POTENTIAL AND THE REALITY OF INTERNATIONALIZATION AS IT RELATES TO WEB BASED E-LEARNING As this chapter has described, web based e-learning may indeed have the potential to increase University internationalization, but the approaches and instructional strategies surrounding the use of this technology in the online setting are not always implemented in a manner that achieves internationalization outcomes. Without a careful and systematic approach towards internationalization, it is unlikely that the University will be successful in increasing internationalization through e-learning, and, in some cases, may actually experience decreases in internationalization. As many institutions enlarge their online programmatic offerings, internationalization strategies should be carefully considered and factored into long term strategies for those institutions seeking to broaden educational outreach and reframe their institutional mission to achieve greater internationalization.

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Discussion

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A report on a global survey on the internationalization of higher education done for the International Association of Universities (IAU) provides important data regarding the use of online programs to support internationalization goals in the tertiary education context. The report states that 73 percent of the 526 higher education institutions responding to the survey cited internationalization as being a high priority, but among a list of17 internationalization policies and strategies, distance education was ranked at nearly the end of the list, in 15th place1 (Knight 2006). In other words, distance education was cited as among the least commonly used policy or strategy for achieving internationalization. This data reflects some of the issues surrounding web based e-learning in achieving internationalization within universities that are germane to this present discussion. First, the perception of most institutions of higher education is that web based e-learning and other forms of distance learning are not among the most significant of elements when it comes to achieving internationalization. This view is not hard to understand: Allen and Seaman (2007) report that 85 percent of students taking online courses at U.S. institutions in 2007 were classified as either local (living within 50 miles of campus) or regional (living within the state or surrounding states). The perception can arise from any number of sources: lack of understanding of the affordances of distance learning technology, difficulties in implementing meaningful distance learning programs, or even lack of applied experience with institutional issues surrounding distance learning. But the 2005 IAU report clearly indicates the lack of relative weight placed on distance learning as critical to internationalization within higher education. Next, this ranking of distance learning stands somewhat in contrast to an earlier, 2003 IAU Global Report where distance learning was reported as a key area for new development within internalization (Knight 2003). The lack of uniformity within such a short period of time speaks to the uncertainty regarding how distance learning approaches such as web based e-learning can 1 The elements, in ranked order, were (Knight 2006): (1) international institutional agreements/networks; (2) outgoing mobility opportunities for students; (3) international research collaboration; (4) outgoing mobility opportunities for faculty/staff; (5) visiting international scholars; (6) international/intercultural dimension of curriculum; (7) area studies, foreign language, internationally focused courses; (8) international development projects; (9) recruitment of fee-paying foreign students; (10) joint/double/dual degrees; (11) recruitment of foreign faculty/researchers; (12) international/inter-cultural extra-curricular activities; (13) recruitment of non-fee paying foreign students; (14) liaison with community based cultural and international groups; (15) distance education; (16) delivery of education programs abroad; and (17) establishment of branch campuses abroad.

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be leveraged to achieve higher education’s strategic goals in relation to internationalization. Changing perceptions about the role of distance learning can be the result of uncertainty arising at both the institutional and the course levels regarding just what role web based e-learning can play within internationalization. It is also possible, however, that the changing perception of the role of distance learning in internationalization is the result of lack of success in previous efforts to use distance learning as a strategic tool for increasing internationalization. Given the relatively short timeframe within which web based e-learning has been gaining momentum, it is likely that institutions are still very much in the process of determining whether elearning is an effective vehicle for internationalization and, if so, whether the resources and tools are in place to bring this about. Finally, it is worth considering that a skeptical view of the role of distance learning in supporting internationalization may in fact be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If distance education is not viewed as a key component to helping secure internationalization, institutions of higher education will not likely strategize as to how distance learning programs can indeed help achieve internationalization. This means that a potentially important aspect of internationalization processes, the web based e-learning environment, is likely not being utilized to effect when it comes to internationalization within these institutions. Institutions will not necessarily focus on the “ingredients” required to strategically use e-learning for internationalization purposes: developing full programs (rather than single courses) that can be completed online; recruiting students and faculty from diverse regions of the world; designing curricula to capitalize on the diverse nationalities and backgrounds represented in a given course; and integrating reading materials from diverse intellectual traditions. When we reconsider the characteristics of web based e-learning that are most likely to affect internationalization, the question remains: does web based e-learning result in a net increase of university internationalization, or a net decrease? The question is difficult to answer. In part, the question is answered in terms of how one perceives internationalization. If internationalization is viewed strictly as a mechanism by which students and faculty from a variety of geographic areas can participate in courses of study, then the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” But if one understands internationalization in a deeper, more nuanced manner, web based e-learning has only the potential to increase internationalization: the realization of internationalization can only truly be achieved through the deliberate and purposeful implementation of strategic

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policies which count internationalization among the larger, ongoing institutional goals of the University.

OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS REGARDING UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONALIZATION AND WEB BASED E-LEARNING Altbach and Knight (2007) listed a number of “uncertainties” which may affect the pace of internationalization within tertiary institutions. Among others, these include national security issues, government policies, the cost of study, English, the internationalization of the curriculum, and e-learning. Of the uncertainty surrounding e-learning, the authors state:

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International acceptance of degrees will lead to an expanded role for distance education, though it is unclear whether international e-learning degrees will become more widespread or domestic e-learning programs often located in developing or middle-income countries - will continue to dominate. (Altbach and Knight 2007)

This statement reflects two realities covered in this chapter: first, that the full impact of e-learning as it regards University internationalization is not known; and second, that much of the potential of e-learning in terms of affecting University internationalization will not be realized without a deliberate and systematic approach to achieve internationalization goals. It can also be seen that e-learning will not be the sole determinant of University internationalization at the start of the 21st century: political, economic, and societal issues will all play a role in how universities internationalize in this technologically enabled era. A number of additional questions regarding web based e-learning’s impact on internationalization also remain open to debate. From the vantage point of the educational mission of the University, these questions include: What factors are the most basic indicators of internationalization within the University context? How can the level of internationalization within a university best be objectively measured using such indicators? Should internationalization be considered a requisite characteristic of receiving “a University education?” Does the term “University” carry with it this implied characteristic?

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Ray J. Amirault and Yusra L. Visser Will the economic success of individual universities in the 21st century be tied to the extent to which they incorporate internationalization within their programs? Will the 21st century witness a growing division between University institutions, with one group maintaining a local, parochial educational outreach, and the other moving more toward the medieval view of the University as a truly international, “cosmopolitan” Institution? Should it? How real and sustained are the international aspects of university elearning courses? Do these aspects of web based e-learning actually establish and sustain a university’s reputation in this regard? What will be the impact to internationalization of “universities as businesses?” Will business issues relative to a University now operating in an increasingly global marketplace be a driving force towards increased internationalization within the Institution?

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A careful analysis of these questions should provide a useful starting point for the further investigation of internationalization within the University.

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CONCLUSION The University, a medieval educational system now some eight centuries old, has been a quintessentially “international” institution since its earliest years. In spite of this integral characteristic, the Institution has seen the actual level of internationalization within its institutions wax and wane over time, with each historical period seeing either greater or lesser emphasis on the construct depending on political, societal, or technological factors. The emergence of the computer and technological revolution in the late twentieth century provided the University with some of its greatest educational challenges, and the rise of web based e-learning, an educational approach built on the technological revolution, has presented the University with a newfound potential to move the Institution back in the direction of its medieval international character. The ability to attract students and faculty from virtually every part of the world to study at a university is unparalleled in the University’s history, and implies that internationalization could reach ever greater heights under this affordance. The assumption, however, that this technology enabled “assembly” of students and faculty will automatically increase the University’s internationalization is not justified. Rather, the University as an educational structure will have to reassess the value it places on internationalization, and take deliberate, systematic, and proactive steps if it is to leverage online teaching and learning to help secure internationalization outcomes. These steps will include a clear statement of internationalization goals, an understanding of the technology affordances of the 21st century, and the implementation of targeted instructional strategies to support internationalization. Only then can the University, a medieval creature in the 21st century, experience a full return to true internationalization within its newly constructed virtual “walls.”

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INDEX

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A accounting, 15, 36 achievement, 1 adaptation, 41 adjustment, 6 annual rate, 25 assessment, 25, 27, 30, 32, 35 assessment procedures, 27 assignment, 31, 43 assumptions, 31 asynchronous communication, 23 attitudes, 7, 8, 29, 48 authors, 5, 43, 54 availability, 29, 38, 39, 47

B background, 2, 23, 43, 47, 48, 50 bandwidth, 40, 42, 44, 50 barriers, 15, 32 behavior, 10 birth, 9, 10, 11

C case study, 63 category d, 49 certification, 16 classes, 15, 36, 49 classification, 48

classroom, 10, 15, 30, 32, 37, 39, 42, 43 classroom culture, 42 classrooms, x, 10, 12, 15 cohort, 42 collaboration, 6, 32, 51, 52 collateral, 61 communication, 13, 15, 22, 31, 32, 35, 37, 44, 49, 50, 59, 60 community, 1, 5, 29, 35, 42, 47, 52 components, 6, 7, 9, 21 computer systems, 21 computing, 21, 44 connectivity, 41, 42 consumption, 41 control, 8, 30, 33 correlation, 5 coupling, 22 covering, 25 crime, 13 criticism, 12 cultural differences, 32 cultural heritage, 36, 64 culture, 7, 8, 29, 34, 36, 37, 42, 48, 49, 60 curricula, 41, 53 curriculum, xi, 7, 10, 12, 27, 29, 39, 42, 44, 48, 52, 54

D database, 35 decisions, 16, 23, 42

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Index

decolonization, 2 definition, 6, 7, 29, 40, 63 delivery, 6, 23, 25, 29, 30, 35, 52 digital divide, 40 discipline, 12 distance education, 23, 36, 51, 52, 53, 54, 63, 64 distance learning, 25, 27, 52, 53 divergence, 5 diversity, 28 division, 14, 55 dominance, 12, 36 drawing, ix, 12, 28

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E educational experience, 28, 30, 32, 35 educational process, 7, 27 educational research, 5 educational system, xi, 43, 57 employment, 27, 33 engagement, 32 enrollment, 25, 26 enrollment rates, 26 environment, 10, 13, 25, 30, 31, 32, 39, 44, 48, 49, 50, 53 evolution, 64 exercise, 34 expertise, 12, 59

F family, 27 first generation, ix flavor, 10 fluid, 48 focusing, 7 food, 13 foreign language, 52

G generation, 11 gestures, 31, 50 global education, 60 globalization, 6, 7

goals, 8, 18, 42, 47, 48, 51, 53, 54, 57 government, 13, 18, 22, 54 group work, 43 grouping, 14 groups, 13, 14, 40, 43, 48, 50, 52 growth, 16, 17, 18, 38, 61 guidance, 12

H higher education, 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 23, 25, 26, 38, 40, 41, 51, 52, 53, 59, 60, 62 hiring, 41 host, 18, 37 hub, 22 humanism, 60 hypertext, 22, 23

I ideal, 63 idiosyncratic, 33 implementation, ix, 27, 37, 54, 58 income, 54 increased access, 42, 49 indicators, 32, 55 information technology, 64 infrastructure, 28, 39 innovation, xi, 15 institutions, xi, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 17, 23, 25, 26, 28, 35, 41, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57 instruction, v, 9, 14, 15, 25, 28, 32, 36, 37, 64 instructional materials, 35, 41 instructors, 10, 11, 30, 35, 41, 49 integrated circuits, 22 integration, 8, 29, 49 interaction, x, 9, 13, 32, 33, 37, 48, 50 interactions, 9, 34, 48 internalization, 52 international communication, 50 interpersonal communication, 50 interpersonal contact, 35 interpersonal relationships, 41 interview, 44 investment, 21

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Index isolation, 2 isolationism, 42

N K

knowledge economy, 61

nation, 8, 14, 18, 59 national interests, 18 national security, 54 nodes, 22, 23

L labor, 10 language, 10, 14, 15, 16, 28, 32, 34, 36, 37, 41, 43, 49, 60 learners, 16, 27, 40 learning environment, 33 legend, 10 linguistics, 48 linkage, 22 links, 49 literacy, 28 localization, 41, 42, 63 logging, 37 long distance, ix longevity, xi

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57

major cities, 10 management, 35, 36, 60 marketplace, 1, 55 mastery, 50 mathematics, 44 maturation, 38 membership, ix, 17, 30 memory, 13 metacognitive skills, 30, 32 migration, 12, 13, 16, 29, 33, 34, 36, 47, 48 military, 21 minority, 36 misunderstanding, 31 mobility, 6, 52, 61 model, x, xi, 8, 14 models, 59 momentum, 53 movement, 9, 11, 12, 13, 33, 48

O observations, 6 OECD, 62 online learning, 26, 28, 36, 39, 50, 51, 59 order, 2, 5, 10, 12, 15, 25, 31, 34, 35, 36, 41, 52 oversight, 43

P password, 35 peers, 32 perceptions, 53 permit, 31 personality, 49 physical sciences, 44 population, 13, 26, 28, 36, 40, 42 power, 21, 23 pressure, 34 profit, 36 program, 28, 29, 34, 41, 42, 63 proposition, 34 protocol, 22, 23 psychology, 39

Q questioning, 12

R range, 6, 10, 11, 37, 39, 44, 51 reading, 53 real time, 44, 50 reality, v, 22, 28, 37, 40 reason, 40, 42 recruiting, 10, 53 reflection, 15

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Index

region, 11, 40 reinforcement, 38 relationship, 7, 33, 47 relevance, 5 reputation, 11, 33, 55 resources, 53, 61 rhetoric, 12

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S scheduling, 32 schema, 14 scholarship, 16, 33 school, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 25, 28, 33, 38, 60, 61 secondary education, 6, 23, 29 seeding, ix, 16 selecting, 41 semiconductor, 22 shape, 34, 36 skills, 7, 8, 12, 29, 48 social activities, 34 social events, 37 social sciences, 5 software, 35, 44 sovereignty, 9 speech, 31 strategic planning, 42, 48 strategies, 29, 30, 33, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 49, 51, 58 strength, 17 supply, 10 survival, 18

technological advancement, 28 technological change, 59 technological revolution, 57 telecommunications, 22 tertiary education, 26, 32, 51 text messaging, 44 textbooks, 41 thoughts, 34 time frame, 5 trade, 61 tradition, 15, 37 traditions, 53 training, xi, 16 transformation, 22 transistor, 21, 22, 23 transition, 11, 61 translation, 41, 44, 59 transmission, 49, 63 transportation, 13 tuition, 41

U uncertainty, 52, 54 UNESCO, 36, 64 uniform, 6, 43 universe, 61

V variability, 30, 42 vehicles, 36 venue, 38

W

T teachers, ix, 1, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 33 teaching, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 18, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 49, 57, 60, 61 teaching experience, 30

weapons, 21 wholesale, 25, 26 World War I, 21

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