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This study examines collaborative online international learning (COIL) programs implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, and discusses the potential and significance of COIL during a global crisis. In the COIL-conductive environment induced by the pandemic, the author implemented four COIL programs with partner institutions located in different countries as part of his seminar courses at a Japanese university. COIL is an equitable and partnership-based learning format that effectively uses technological tools. The professors collaboratively designed joint sessions that attended to different learning styles, which led to an equitable intercultural experience. Technology provided students with the ability to control their learning environment, which helped them to actively participate in intercultural communication and collaboration. Through joint lectures, interactive sessions, and collaborative research projects, students developed global competency and a sense of bonding unabated by the global crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation at universities and forced a rapid transition to online education. Tecnológico de Monterrey leveraged its experience in online education to develop and scale a program of collaborative courses with international partners on the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The pilot program, based on Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), and focused on the UN SDGs, aimed to provide international experiences to students who were not able to study abroad due to economic reasons (SUNY Collaborative Online International Learning). The formula involves two professors who co-design and co-teach an online subject or part of the syllabus to their joint cohort of students, highlighting the relevant elements associated with those subjects’ contents included in the UN SDGs. However, generating enough courses that reached a considerable number of students and involved an international diversity of partners and topics, added layers of difficulty. For instance, not all academics were prepared to manage an online joint group of students or to introduce concepts of the UN SDGs in their courses. To solve these problems and scale up these courses, we created ‘Global Shared Learning – Classroom’ a program that addresses the necessary elements of faculty matching, joint planning of subjects, online co-teaching, use of technological tools, and the active participation of students. Today we have involved more than 18,000 students and 500 professors from 150 universities. This chapter shows how capacity building and complementary partnerships were built. It includes the elements to design, replicate the model, and overcome technology issues for other universities asking to be part of this program.

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has profoundly altered the zeitgeist of American higher education. Currently, these institutions struggle to find safe and creative ways to reopen in the fall. While the debate is mainly focused on the reopening possibilities, one area of the university experience is profoundly impacted and overlooked: the study abroad programs. The chapter overviews the role and importance of international education for American higher education institutions (HEI) and explains the pandemic’s profound disruption. The chapter will review how institutions reacted, first reactively and then proactively. This chapter will argue for adopting technology not just as a tool to save the immediate study abroad offerings but as a catalyst for change. In the post-pandemic world, universities need to create more robust and agile international experiences for students using alternative formats, facilitating shorter travel experiences, more cultural exposure through technology, and allowing more options for international faculty and students to participate in the life of the college. Universities have an invaluable opportunity to rethink their international offers and approaches, working with the assumption that students will still want to travel (even more than before) and that international travel will eventually resume operations.

This chapter documents a study based on an international partnership between faculty members at SUNY Empire State College and Tecnológico de Monterrey-Chihuahua. The collaboration presented an excellent opportunity to integrate cultural issues into the geology course as well as interdisciplinary collaboration in the programming course. The objectives were to: (1) create and implement learning activities to help students understand that scientific and technological advances do not occur in isolation, and (2) to evaluate their effectiveness developing a multicultural perspective. We adapted and generalized the virtual team model of Hertel et al. (2005) to the design of group activities in an academic setting. A series of learning activities were developed, including an experiential learning group project aimed at helping with the first objective if the study. Overall, the collaboration was a success. We also discuss the challenges both we and the students faced.

In Japan, virtual exchange and mobility are regarded as an emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic and as alternatives to international learning through physical mobility. International educators express concerns that online international learning methods may fade away after physical student mobility resumes on a larger scale. However, it is crucial for universities to leverage newly developed online learning tools after the pandemic in order to offer inclusive international education which reaches the larger student pool who are unable to study abroad. Now is the time to reflect on how international education policy and practice have relied excessively on cross-border student mobility. In turn, it will be important to position ICT-based educational practices as an opportunity to create new value and meaning for international education in an environmentally friendly and low-cost manner in the new normal world. Also, in Japan, internationalization at home was not addressed to any great extent before the pandemic. However, there is an increasing awareness that ICT-based international education can effectively contribute to the expansion of internationalization at home. Adapting to the new normal situation requires a new modality of internationalization, and it will have a significant impact on the attractiveness of higher education in the country.

Using a case study approach, this chapter examines two primary changes to global health education prompted and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. First, is the acceleration of digital education into the typical global health classroom. Second, is the integration of transnational networks and partnerships between intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and higher education institutions (HEIs) to create, adapt, and disseminate digital materials in fast-changing information environments. The chapter examines the potential positive and negative impacts of the proliferation of digital content created by IGOs and international NGOs that is being rapidly integrated into use in HEIs for Global Health. The growth of tools and access through these new partnerships may lead to increased access to global health information for professionals. However, these changes may have long-term implications for global health regarding equitable access to culturally appropriate and accurate information. Furthermore, there may be additional implications for equity, as the proliferation of tools may still leave out the most vulnerable that do not have access to digital platforms.

This paper attempts to recast the entrepreneur by synthesizing ideas from personal construct psychology and systems-based evolutionary economics. It retains an Austrian subjectivist emphasis but focuses on rapid product innovation rather than arbitrage. Profit opportunities are mental constructs that link products and revenue streams. Entrepreneurs develop new products by forming novel connections between existing product elements and diverse technologies, mindful of the connections between these products and the complex structures of consumer lifestyles. These linkages are often formed in the context of large multi-product firms, as well as being the basis of new enterprises, so entrepreneurship overlaps with strategic management.

A mathematical model for sustainable optimization is presented. The sustainability parameters are linked to end-of-life considerations in product design and development. The sustainability considerations such as total embodied energy, eco-materials selection, CO₂ emission, cost savings due to recycling and reuse including the water savings are presented for helical compression springs used in mattresses.