Separate but not equal

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I mentioned this study briefly in a recent Interesting Reads This Week post at On EdTech, but I wanted to dig deeper from a student-success angle. Jisc has published the second of two research reports on the digital experiences of transnational students and staff. The first report focused on the challenges faced by TNE providers; this second one offers rich insight into how students and staff actually experience TNE.

The UK uses an unusually expansive definition of transnational education (TNE): higher education delivered by an institution based in one country to students located in another. This can include fully online courses delivered at a distance, joint or dual degrees, franchised programs, and overseas branch campuses. While that breadth can be frustrating when I’m trying to focus on online learning, in this case it’s a useful lens that highlights issues often overlooked in the US.

Most students in this study are enrolled on campuses in their home countries, either at branch campuses or at institutions affiliated with UK universities through partnership agreements.

Their experiences highlight a core issue for remote learners: access to digital and physical resources. Access isn’t the whole story of student success; students’ backgrounds, motivations, and the quality of pedagogy matter, too, but it is a critical precondition. The access problems documented here are both concerning and instructive, and they should serve as a call to action for institutions educating students in other countries to address and resolve these barriers.

What is TNE and why is this important?

For the purposes of this study, the authors identify three principal modes of participation.

To explore students’ digital experiences, Jisc partnered with 19 UK institutions delivering TNE via online learning, collaborative partnerships, or overseas campuses. The 4,802 TNE students in the study came from a wide range of locations, with a slight majority from China. Data were gathered through focus groups and surveys; most survey respondents (77%) were studying in person on campus.

This matters because we rarely see detailed evidence on the success and challenges of students studying internationally,especially those on branch campuses of institutions from the US, UK, and Australia. The study offers valuable insight into the barriers these students face and the issues host institutions should address.

Its relevance is growing as regulations and practices constrain international student enrollment in countries like the UK, US, Australia, and Canada, even as franchise arrangements (e.g., via Emeritus and Beacon) expand and more institutions open branch campuses, including recent moves into India.

Student access to resources

Some of the challenges students described are unsurprising, limited access to free Wi-Fi and to devices, for example. Others are more striking, such as difficulties securing reliable electricity.

What stood out to me, though, was how many students reported inconsistent access to the very resources they need daily to do their coursework: the LMS, online books and journals, and course-related video.

Problems with access varied quite a bit by geography but are especially severe in the Middle East and Asia.

These data point to a serious problem. If only 82% of students can always access the LMS, 60% recorded lectures, and 70% e-books/journals, you don’t have the conditions for TNE students to thrive

Even the physical side surprised me. For students studying on campus, just 67% report reliable access to a computer lab and 79% to a physical library. This is hardly ideal in largely urban settings where many learners commute and depend on campus spaces to reach digital materials (LMS, e-texts, videos, software). But even on home campuses campus IT has a history of under-investing in these spaces based on the (incorrect) assumption that every student has a capable device and prefers to work alone. At least we’re no longer hearing the 2011–2014 chorus of prominent CIOs declaring computer labs obsolete. But today’s quieter under-investment may be even more damaging, and libraries and academic departments are often left to pick up the slack. The problems for TNE students evident in this data are concerning.

Two additional patterns in the report reinforce the concern:

• Mode matters. Asynchronous learners face the steepest barriers with higher “no access” rates to recorded lectures (16%), required software (9%), and even the LMS/e-texts (6%), and far lower access to computer rooms (only 42% “always”; 43% “no”) and libraries (38% “no”). But even on campus students face significant challenges.

• Cost and design matter. Students cite data costs, time-limited e-text licenses, and unoptimized, heavy video files that are expensive or impossible to stream on slow/mobile connections, undercutting daily study routines

Access isn’t the whole story of student success, but it’s a non-negotiable precondition. The figures above, combined with mode-based inequities and avoidable design and licensing frictions, should be a call to action for institutions delivering education across borders to fix both the licensing and digital delivery issues and the on-the-ground study infrastructure that enable students to actually use those resources.

Why do these access problems exist?

Given the wide range of contexts, there’s no single cause behind students’ difficulties accessing digital and physical resources. The report points to several contributing factors, including:

• Licensing restrictions, particularly around access to digital books and journals, which often limit use by students located outside the institution’s home country.

• Firewall and platform and website restrictions

• Internet and connectivity limitations.
  

• Digital literacy limitations and inconsistency of support including time delays.
  

• To this I’d add communication gaps between home-campus staff and those at remote sites. For example, I’ve seen cases where staff at a partner or branch campus licensed resources already covered by the home campus, simply because no one had communicated the existing access. More commonly, the home campus hasn’t fully considered, or isn’t even aware of, the constraints transnational students and campuses face.

How should campuses solve these problems of access?

The Jisc report offers a detailed set of recommendations urging greater attention to these issues, stronger collaboration to address challenges, and collective pressure on external providers. For example.

Jiscs first report on the challenges of TNE focused more on some of the ways institutions can address the challenges of transnational licensing and is worth a read. It also sounds like British institutions are doing a far better job in collaborating to address these issues than are those in the US.

They also recommend ensuring that all key stakeholders, including IT and library staff, are involved in planning any new TNE locations or programs. In addition, institutions should calculate the full costs of providing access to digital resources to confirm that proposed initiatives are economically viable.

Parting thought

This is sensible advice, especially the emphasis on including all stakeholders. But collaboration and pressure on license holders can feel like a band-aid: ad hoc workarounds rather than structural fixes. We may have limited leverage over geopolitical realities (e.g., firewalls), but licensing is different. Transnational and international education is here to stay, and digital resource licensing must reflect that. The era of strictly place-based licenses is over; institutions, and especially vendors, need to update their assumptions accordingly

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