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The purpose of this paper is to share insights, research findings and discuss key issues relating to quality practices and quality assurance in cross-border nursing education program development and implementation.

The authors used a qualitative, multiple case-study approach, by sampling local, national and international nursing education institutions, academia and nurse graduates to identify challenges and best operating practices in implementing and facilitating cross-border education.

The authors reveal that quality assurance affects cross-border nursing education program design, delivery and implementation.

Quality assurance plays an important role in cross-border nursing education, by enhancing the reputation and recognizing the effectiveness and capacity of the educational institution. These findings of this study can offer valuable insight to forthcoming as well as existing nursing education curriculum developers who plan to engage in national or international educational partnerships.

Quality assurance plays an important role in cross-border nursing education, by enhancing the reputation and recognizing the educational institution’s effectiveness and capacity. The findings offer valuable insight into forthcoming and existing nursing education for curriculum developers who plan to engage in national or international educational partnerships.

This paper explores inherent challenges in cross-border nursing education and maximized data collection opportunities by sampling participants from both national and international settings.

The purpose of this paper is to set out the experience of the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications (HKCAAVQ) in carrying out cross-border quality assurance (QA) in Macao.

The paper draws on case studies of two very different QA exercises conducted by HKCAAVQ in Macao in 2015 and 2016. The first was a program accreditation conducted as part of a pilot of the external QA standards and process developed by the Macao Government’s Tertiary Education Services Office (GAES) for potential use by all higher education institutions (HEIs) in Macao. The second was a learning program review (LPR) conducted by HKCAAVQ following a request by a HEI in Macao using QA standards and processes developed by HKCAAVQ.

The key findings from the case studies are that an agency engaging in cross-border QA needs to have a clear rationale for their engagement, ensure that they are “fit-for-purpose” in terms of the context of the employing jurisdiction and the expectations of their HEIs and have a clear understanding of the relevant legal framework.

Cross-border QA is likely to grow in importance and activity in the coming years. The example of Macao provides a useful reference point for governments, HEIs and external quality assurance agency considering engaging in cross-border QA activities.

The purpose of this paper is to share insights, research findings and discuss key issues related to graduate experiences with transnational nursing education (TNE).

The authors used a qualitative approach and sampled national and international nurse graduates to identify challenges and best operating practices in cross-border nursing program facilitation.

This research paper has provided a platform for graduates to lend their voices to the promotion of effective cross-border nursing education delivery and suggests that although international collaborations endeavor to maintain high academic standards in TNE, there is still a need to re-engineer, revise and adapt curricular content, learning, teaching and assessment practices to aid the nursing student.

Identified challenges affecting the facilitation and delivery of cross-border nursing education programs can act as levers to improving service quality of present and future cross-border programs to the nursing student. This will assist future nursing students to recognize culture shock and embrace their decision to pursue nursing.

The experience of being involved in TNE for nursing students may not be that much different than students of other disciplines. While not able to be generalized to the entire population, the reports by the nursing students in this sample appear to be valuable and worthwhile to continue supporting and encouraging other TNE opportunities.

This paper explores cross-border nursing education experiences from national and international perspectives. The authors were able to explore inherent TNE challenges from diverse population and cultural backgrounds.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the importance of cross-border cooperation in the quality assurance of transnational education (TNE) by offering a comparative overview of how TNE is quality assured by both sending and receiving countries. Through this comparative analysis, it will be possible to appreciate the diversity of approaches to TNE. The paper also shows that for the foreseeable future, progress towards effective and effiicient quality assurance of TNE cannot rest on the hope of developing an internationally agreed framework, but it must rest on strengthening cooperation between quality assurance agencies operating within different national frameworks.

This paper looks at four key sending countries of TNE, the UK, Australia, the USA and Germany, considering the main drivers for out-going TNE, its main features and how it is quality assured. It then considers the same aspects from the perspective of receiving countries of TNE, looking at four key receiving locations, China, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong. It also offers an overview of some recent international initiatives aimed at fostering cross-border cooperation in the quality assurance of TNE.

In the backdrop of this overview of different approaches to TNE, this paper will conclude that for the foreseeable future it is not possible to develop an internationally agreed view and approach to TNE and its quality assurance. This conclusion allows the author to focus on the importance of cross-border cooperation amongst quality assurance agencies in sending and receiving countries for the effective and efficient quality assurance of TNE.

This is the first comparative study of different countries’ approaches to TNE and its quality assurance, taking into account both sending and receiving countries. It allows pointing to the key different features in different countries’ approaches and illustrates how these often relate to the underlining national strategic priorities and drivers for TNE (either in-bound or out-bound). It also allows the international community to realise that in the absence of a viable shared and agreed international framework for the regulation and quality assurance of TNE, it is of paramount importance to focus efforts on inter-agency cross-border cooperation in order to ensure that TNE continues to be of good quality and relevant to the respective communities.

During the past two decades, China has been rapidly rising in nearly every aspect. With the growing prominence of economic prosperity in China, numerous multinational corporations and companies across the globe have entered this vast market in order to benefit from this enlarging economy. This development also creates an emerging market in China to educate senior managers of these transnational firms in the form of cross‐border partnerships among regional universities. The EMBA programme, a more internationally oriented educational product, is thriving in the Greater China Area. This study aims to examine how universities in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are partnering with other institutions in order to deliver collaborative EMBA programmes for this educational market.

The article uses case study as research approach by selecting ten famous cross‐border EMBA programs from elite universities in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan for analysis.

The result shows that distinctive patterns of organisational behaviour are present in terms of how selective universities in Greater China organise their cross‐border EMBA programmes. By combining abundant academic resources with their partners, Chinese institutions aim to enhance their programme reputation and mainly serve the territorial needs of executive managers within China. Hong Kong, serving a bridging role, is inclined to cooperate with leading universities in Western countries and attract all kinds of students across the globe, including Chinese ones. Alternatively, Taiwanese universities cooperate with major universities or institutions in China in order to serve the needs of Taiwanese businessmen in China instead of Chinese nationals or foreign students. These different approaches indicate a labour division among universities in these three societies, with China targeting primarily the domestic market, Hong Kong aiming at the global market, and Taiwan seeking to serve its country's population.

The different approaches employed by universities reveal how neighbouring societies react to the rise of China respectively. The uneven division of universities among these three societies might to some extent reflect the concepts of “centre” and “periphery” developed by Philip G. Altbach.

In response to the emergence of a strong cross-border student flow of postgraduate students from mainland China to the Macau Special Administrative Region (Macau), this study examines the motivations and experience of a special group of doctoral students: college teachers working in Guangdong Province and simultaneously pursuing PhD degrees at private universities in Macau.

Using a qualitative research method, thirteen college teachers were interviewed.

The research findings reveal their motivations for pursuing doctoral studies in Macau, and the difficulties they faced and gains they obtained from this experience.

All the findings indicate a potential expansion of the role of Macau’s higher education system. Once merely a stepping-stone, it is now an acceleration site for brain circulation between Macau and Guangdong as part of a regionalization strategy for China’s Greater Bay Area.

The 2020 pandemic disrupted traditional student mobility and forced a larger majority of transnational programmes to switch to a virtual or hybrid mode, including joint and double degree programmes. Therefore, this study aims to perceive the linkage between quality assurance (QA) and delivery modes of cross-border higher education (CBHE) in Asia before and during the pandemic.

Through an online survey and semi-structured interviews, the process by which top 200 ranked universities in the 2022 QS global ranking responded to QA and qualification issues of joint/dual degree programs in conjunction with delivery modes was explored.

The study has discovered that most respondents from universities, to some extent, tended to be positive about the effectiveness of hybrid delivery of the joint/dual degree programs, even if they still preferred the physical mode to alternatives. Either “divergence” or “responsiveness” QA modes were not applied appropriately in most joint/dual degree programs of the selected universities during the pandemic. Moreover, a fair, transparent and convergent quality and qualification system should be established to facilitate agility and responsiveness of CBHE.

The findings are of value for policymakers, QA agencies and universities to advocate the new QA model for CBHE as a systematic approach in response to changing higher education landscape in the post-pandemic era.

The purpose of this study was to examine the digital competence displayed by a primary school teacher who implemented an interdisciplinary cross-border lesson that was designed with the lesson study methodology and involved two countries: Brazil and Chile.

A qualitative methodology was adopted via the case study method through which the case of a sixth-grade Chilean teacher participating in the study was documented. The data were collected through a lesson plan, a videotape of the implemented lesson and a questionnaire. A professional digital competence framework for teachers provided an analytical perspective via data analysis.

The results show that the teacher displayed digital competence in a synchronous collaborative learning environment in which she had time to reflect on the educational value of technology and appropriate teaching methods involving information and communication technologies. Certain elements of the studied case contributed to this performance, namely the cross-border context, the classroom setting and the collaborative Lesson Study methodology.

The lesson study methodology facilitated the teacher's performance in the “Pedagogy and didactics” digital competence by enabling her to participate in planning and implementing a lesson that allowed all those who collaborated, including teachers and researchers, to reflect on teaching in a digital learning environment.

The cross-border context, which involved co-designing and implementing a lesson in two countries, allowed the teacher to display her “School in society” and “Ethics” competencies. This was achieved through connecting two classrooms with different languages and cultures digitally and synchronously, thereby providing students the opportunity to debate and participate in a global and local problem such as a country's responsibility for energy consumption.

Modern society requires the transformation of school practices, and new teaching approaches should include the provision of collaborative spaces that incorporate digital technologies. In this sense, this paper shows that cross-border lessons involving a synchronous learning environment offer a potential alternative, as digital teaching competence enables teachers to bring together different social and cultural groups virtually, thereby contributing to the reduction of social gaps and to the promotion of positive identity among less advantaged students.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have transformed the global outlook for international higher education. Given the rapid shift to online learning, the Tokyo Convention in the Asia-Pacific entrusted to UNESCO has become an important policy framework to facilitate regional collaboration, authoritative information sharing and recognition of qualifications across diverse modes of learning. This paper examines the role of the Tokyo Convention to establish an inclusive platform for monitoring and collaborative governance of mobility and internationalization based on fair and transparent recognition policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific.

In August 2019, a standardized survey instrument was sent by the Secretariat of the Tokyo Convention Committee at UNESCO Bangkok to competent recognition authorities in 46 countries in the Asia-Pacific, including the eight State Parties to the Tokyo Convention that ratified the Convention as of the reporting period. In total, qualitative data from n = 27 countries/states was received and analyzed to assess implementation of the Tokyo Convention throughout the region. The research design illustrates how normative instruments such as the Tokyo Convention are monitored and assessed over time.

A multi-stakeholder approach based on collaborative governance is needed to effectively monitor implementation and implications of the Tokyo Convention for diverse higher education stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region.

Implications include establishing baseline data and methods for monitoring implementation of the Tokyo Convention. Based on collaborative governance theory, the paper explores potential for a multi-stakeholder approach to promote mutual accountability in the Asia-Pacific and to develop mechanisms for inclusive participation in the governance of the forthcoming Global Convention on recognition.

As the first systematic review of its kind, this paper includes a unique dataset and insights into UNESCO's methodology to monitor implementation of standard-setting instruments for qualifications recognition in the Asia-Pacific.

The research aims to assess the achievements and challenges of international branch campuses (IBCs) to date and to consider how IBC development may progress in the future.

The article presents a review of the scholarly and grey literatures on IBCs. The commentary and discussion is structured around the objectives, perspectives and experiences of three key stakeholder groups, namely the institutions that own IBCs, students and host countries.

Some IBCs have failed to achieve their student recruitment and financial targets, while others have been successful, often expanding and moving into new, larger, purpose-built campuses. In the last few years, several countries have announced their intention to become a transnational education hub, or at least to allow the establishment of IBCs. It may be reasonable to assume that when there is demand for a product, supply will eventually follow. IBCs will survive and prosper as long as they provide benefits to each of their main stakeholder groups (i.e. students, institutions and governments), and as long as the local demand for higher education places exceeds the total supply.

The article provides a comprehensive and up-to-date review of IBC developments and research during the period 2000–2020. The findings and conclusions will be of interest to both researchers and practitioners.