DEHub/Research Themes/Globalisation of education



= Globalisation of education and cross-cultural aspects =

Another high priority is investigation of aspects of the global external environment and the drivers for the development of a global education distance market. This will include the cultural considerations necessary for teaching and learning in mediated global environments and their implications for relevant professional development.

= Guiding question =

Research Questions

 * What social and global developments and ‘fiscal realities’ impact on current distance learning models?


 * What policies exist at institutional/national/international level to support effective integration of ICT’s?


 * What policies or frameworks are required to address institutional national/international issues in relation to the effective integration of ICT’s into teaching and learning activities?


 * What are the foundations, theoretical models and frameworks for distance education: The impact of social-cultural learning theories on distance education practice in the global context?


 * What are the implications for professional development with the expansion into the global environment, development of the global distance education market with technological mediated teaching and learning?


 * What are the theoretical and practical applications of communication technologies in distance learning? How does improved communication support/ promote/ advance rural economic sustainability?

 Highly Recommended Priority Links

The Observatory on borderless higher education
Reports on Internationalisation, Virtual Universities and Distance Education There 8 article from 2009, 7 from 2008 and 13 from 2007. reports cover individual countries, policies and practice, student mobility and joint/double degrees. It is also worth exploring the Articles section of the site where topics cover economics, business cultures, offshore recruitment agents and some 26 2009 related articles.

JISC
Understanding global activity in higher education and research The study provides a snapshot of e-learning and e-infrastructure activities that support the higher education and research communities in 10 countries including Australia; Canada; Denmark; Germany; Korea; Japan; the Netherlands; New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Open Educational Content for Informal Learners: Beyond the Horizon? (2009). This article is concerned with the availability and usage of open content in informal learning. It reviews the current usage, and outline the potential for future enhancement and expansion in this area.

Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
Global Connections -- Local Impacts: Best Practices, Models and Policies for Cross-Border Higher Education This presentation by Sir John Daniel and Ms Stamenka Uvalić-Trumbić at the Global Forum of the Observatory of Borderless Higher Education, Kuala Lumpur, 21-24 October, 2009 examine cross-border education as a vehicle for individual and institutional empowerment. Through their personal histories they present examples of international, local and personal impacts of Cross Border Higher Education. They flagged some good practices, models and policies. However, they also examin the expansion of degree mills and the danger they present to higher education. They conclude that Cross-border higher education, like most human endeavours, has both its positive and negative sides.

Higher Education Crossing Borders this consultant's report is a Guide to the Implications of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) for Cross-border Education by Dr jane Knite prepared by COl for UNESCO in 2006. The purpose of this Guide is to make higher education policy-makers and leaders more aware of the realities of cross-border education in an increasingly trade-oriented environment. In turn, this greater awareness will likely prompt closer examination of the role that cross-border education plays in relation to a country's priorities, resources and goals for higher education.

EDEN
Future Directions for Distance Education (2008), by P. Kawachi. Paper presented at the Researching and Promoting Access to Education and Training: The Role of Distance Education and e-Learning in Technology-Enhanced Environments, EDEN / UNESCO 5th Research Workshop, 21 October 2008, Paris.

First Monday Journal
Toward global measurement of the information society: a U.S.-China comparison of national government surveys The abstract states: To be global, digital and inclusive, we need comparable measures of ICT use around the world. To contribute to this, this research note analyzes what questions the Chinese and the U.S. governments ask in their large, long-running surveys on the topic of computer and internet use. The process and content of these surveys point up agreements, differences, and silences. Based on this, we propose nine basic questions that can be standardized and used in all country surveys of ICT use to create a coherent global dataset.

Global Media Journal
Impact and Implications of New Information Technology on Middle Eastern Youth by Mahboub E. Hashem, Volume 8, Issue 4, Spring 2009. Quoting from the Abstract:"This paper presents and reflects upon Middle Eastern youth’s use of new information technology (IT) and the implications of that use. Several key problems and great prospects related to that use will be identified. Middle Eastern youth were found to be fond of their IT use mostly because of their ability to access all sorts of information and communicate with the outside world, including friends and family members abroad. To those youth, while IT is building bridges between them and distant others, it is also building ever stronger walls between them and close individuals, including family members, relatives, and neighbors at the same time."

Globalisation and Communication (Lord Anthony Giddens)
Globalization and Communication is a major address by Anthony Giddens, Director of the London School of Economics, among the world's leading sociologists. This YouTube video presentation is poor quality, however the analysis by Giddens of globalisation and what it is and is not is insightful and how it reaches deep in to the individuals personal life while at the same time causing the restructuring of societies institutions is a challenge and so multi faceted that you cannot be for or against globalisation because of that very multi faceted nature. The length of the video is one hour and ten minutes.

 Other sites to explore

Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology
Monkeys on the Screen?: Multicultural Issues in Instructional Message Design, V35(1) Winter, 2009, by Debbie McAnany. To celebrate cultural diversity and meet the challenges associated with designing for diverse learning styles and educational experiences, this paper offers a review of the literature and proposes a systematic three-fold approach to the creation and evaluation of multicultural instructional messages and materials: first, “Do no harm”; second, “Know your learner”; and third, “Incorporate global concepts and images into instructional messages.” -

JISC
Edgeless University: why higher education must embrace technology This book is from the London based [www.demos.co.uk Demons] think tank. Authored by peter Bradwell in 2009 it is published under Creative Commons copyright.

Mapping security to the e-Framework The objectives of this project were to contribute UK security functionality documentation to the e-Framework and to compare and contrast the security mechanisms in place across the partner countries in the e-Framework to support increased interoperability.

User needs study: How JISC could support Business and Community Engagement If the Business and Community agenda is about extending the boundaries of HEIs’ activities, where are the pain points, and how could JISC Services help to ease the pain? This question formed the basis to the research. While focused on UK higher education it is relevant to the expansion of both Higher education and business activities in a global context.

Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
Globalization, Competitiveness and Open and Distance Education: Reflections on Quality Assurance. This is a presentation delivered in 1997 by Professor Gajaraj Dhanarajan, the then President of The Commonwealth of Learning for the to the Asian Association of Open Universities Eleventh Annual Conference "Quality Assurance in Distance and Open Learning" conference. In this presentation professor Dhanarajan reflects on the state of Golbalisation and how it has been with us a long time and that the outcomes of globalisation means many things to many people as he suggests: Depending on your politics, globalization is either the best thing that has happened to human kind or it is the most selfish and self-serving manifestation of our greed. This short presentation provides some points for reflection 10 years on from its delivery in 1997. The issues raised still play large today despite the developments an downturns of the past 10 years.

International Journal for Academic Development
Academic development in a global context, Volume 14, Issue 2 June 2009, is an issue devoted to academic development in a global context. While focused in academic development two articles are equally relevant to the issue of globalisation, these are:
 * The status of faculty development programmes in Iran after the medical education reform: a systematic and comprehensive approach
 * Engaging the disciplines in internationalising the curriculum.

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)
Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning a 2009 video on TED. Richard Baraniuk is founder of Connexions, a free, open-source, global clearinghouse of course materials. People in some 200 countries tap into its vast store of texts on everything from engineering to ornithology to music, adapting the content as they see fit.

= Delicious = More related sites can be found at the DE Hub Delicious Globalisation site.

Alan Wylie 06:09, 9 November 2009 (UTC)