TRANSNATIONAL HIGHER EDUCATION PARTNERSHIPS IN THE COVID-19 ERA; STUDENTS’ RATING OF AN ONLINE AND MODULAR LEARNING PROGRAMME

Abstract

Transnational educational partnerships among tertiary institutions have been around for a long time all over the world. There will always be cases where some institutions or countries have a better capacity and operational advantage over others. It is because of this rationale that educational institutions from two or more countries through collaborative partnerships and or relationships, rally or agree to counter contemporary challenges in their countries and they have been very successful in this for a long time. The COVID-19 pandemic created a disruption of education systems, affecting over 1.6 billion learners globally and hence the numerous surges of transnational educational partnerships. The study investigated the rating of a programme that is running under a transnational higher education partnership between two institutions in two different countries. An exploratory study of a qualitative design was adopted for this research and by use of a closed and open-ended questionnaire, data was collected. The questionnaire was designed to benchmark the three instructional strategies of the Community of Inquiry framework model, and these are cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. Results reveal positive students’ ratings of the programme on all instructional strategies social, teaching, and cognitive presence with a few outliers. The study portrays an effective switch from a face-to-face lecture learning session programme, to online-modular learning without so many obstacles to affect the teaching-learning process. Future research could pick interest in more detailed experiences of students on such programmes, and this is in addition to the detailed responses for other stakeholders like instructors, administrators, and possibly parents.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0404/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>