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Bridging the World through Internationalization in a Covid era:
The UKM Global Webinar Experience
*1Nur Haiqal Rawlins Una Abdullah, 2Abdul Latiff Ahmad
UKM International Relations Centre, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bandar Baru Bangi, 43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
*E-mail: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
When the pandemic hit and the physical movement restriction was enforced worldwide, all sectors especially international higher education reacted reactively towards the new and unprecedented challenges. The partnerships among universities and countries halted for a while before finding out that the virtual realm allows the relationship to carry on, and even foster old ones and create new partnerships via online means. UKM shares the challenges, the success stories and the best practices hosting webinars during the pandemic and how it helps to lessen the bridging gaps among partners, old and new. Not only webinars manage to gather enthusiast from all corners of the world, but it also connects parties with similar intention to start a new partnership and creates more opportunities for the masses to connect and engage.
Keywords: Webinar; partnerships; collaborations; virtual
1. INTRODUCTION
When the world is hit by the global pandemic COVID-19, most teaching and learning (T&L) at the higher learning institutions are moved online, regardless of the readiness of all the institutions. This abrupt transition caused higher education institutions to undergo drastic revamp of its T&L towards online platforms in a matter of weeks, instead of years in normal situation. In a blink of an eye, all institutions are entering a new realm of higher education, whether they are ready or not.
2. THE IMPETUS: COVID-19 PANDEMIC
The World Health Organisation (WHO) stated in its timeline of WHO’s response to COVID-19 (WHO, 2020) that Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released a statement of cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, People Republic of China on 31 December 2019. More similar cases
446 were reported and recorded.
On January 9, 2020, the Chinese authorities have determined that the outbreak is caused by a novel coronavirus. As more cases were detected in and outside of China, WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) on January 30, 2020 and a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The situation led to many countries and regions imposed global restrictions that apply to all foreign countries and territories or prevent their citizens from travelling overseas.
The global pandemic created a lot of new and unprecedented challenges that force the whole world to be reactive to the current situation. There were travel bans, social distancing, new health issues and the countermeasures (a lot of vaccines) and many more.
One of the most impacted sectors is international higher education. Higher education was disrupted like never before (Rashid & Yadav, 2020). The immediate reaction of all institutions of learning, higher learning included, was to suspend all physical face-to-face teaching and meetings, closing all buildings to physical access and keeping everyone at their own homes. International students were forced to remain in their host countries, or were repatriated by their respective governments, as borders were closed for international travel.
The most evident and pivotal change that the whole world agrees on is to bring everything online, regardless of one’s readiness towards it (Rajan, 2020). The sudden push towards virtuality raises concerns – are we ready – human resource wise, infrastructure wise, policy wise and most importantly, physical and mental wise as higher education is one of the least digitized and most people-intensive economic sectors (Sean & Jason, 2020). This point supports the IAU’s conclusion that despite the difficulties in the adaptation to a completely different methodology for teaching, the Higher Education sector demonstrated reactivity in order to find solutions to the challenge raised by the pandemic, and of continuing teaching and learning (IAU, 2020).
Prior to the global pandemic, researchers, education practitioners and enthusiast alike would throng together and attend conferences, seminars and workshops all over the world.
But all that were put to a halted stop when the pandemic hits and it affected the whole face-to- face meeting and networking sessions that have been going well.
The most evident and pivotal change that the whole world agrees on is to bring everything online, regardless of one’s readiness towards it. The sudden push towards virtuality raises concerns – are we ready – human resource wise, infrastructure wise, policy wise and most importantly, physical and mental wise as higher education is one of the least digitized and most people-intensive economic sectors (Sean & Jason, 2020).
447 Interestingly, Malaysia was among the countries that are not well-prepared for such unprecedented phenomenon. Some countries instructed that all T&L are to be carried out online, but Malaysia went the other way. The MoHE took the unusual step to prohibit all digital learning activities on March 17, 2020 (Ministry of Higher Education 2020a; Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, 2020). Both public universities and private HEIs were forbidden to conduct any T & L activities, including those online, as well as examinations, viva voce, student development and research activities during the restricted movement period (Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation, 2020). This unpopular directive was later retracted, allowing HEIs to offer courses fully online to implement e-learning, provided that the institution could guarantee that every student had access to the Internet and that the lecturers were ready and fully equipped, with adequate infrastructure (Asia Pacific University of Technology & Innovation, 2020, Ministry of Higher Education, 2020b). This decision was taken to ensure that the right to sustain educational activities for all registered, full fee-paying students in HEIs was protected within the framework of equal opportunity and non- discrimination.
Since everything is pivoting to the online mode, why not bringing collaborations and partnerships online too? That exactly what UKM did in the early months after the WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic.
Abd. El-Aziz (2020) mentioned that even though the global pandemic happened, there were efforts to treat, cure, or provide a vaccine for COVID-19 proceeded both in isolation (i.e., within a single nation), and cooperatively, across national borders, even though there were fears that these efforts were carried out not in the name of the global interest. These collaborative efforts were done via changes of emails, sharing of findings and online meetings on various platforms throughout the world.
ICC (2020) applauds that the rapid sharing of scientific findings and updates of the new COVID-19 disease has enabled scientists and relevant authorities and bodies around the world to mobilise health, skill and knowledge assistant to the world, despite the international travel- ban enforcement. The sharing of these valuable information was done virtually and in real time, thus enable the whole world to work together and in tandem in accessing and coming up with possible and potential solutions to the world pandemic that is COVID-19.
After experiencing a few infectious disease incidents, the world realised that international collaboration is crucial in overcoming the diseases. Thus, global research collaboration has becoming increasingly important throughout the years. Kim (2020) shared that all studies have concluded that global research collaboration is increasing, when in 1996,
448 Royal Society recorded that the share of papers with more than one international author was only 25%.
It Started with A Webinar
Originally, UKM’s collaboration with Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT) was to hold a one-day seminar in September 2020. A few meetings took place in the end of 2019 and early months of 2020. When the pandemic hits, UKM was challenged by AKEPT to hold a webinar, specifically to address the university’s management take on the new issues brought forward by the pandemic.
In the bid of understanding the new challenges in the latest international educational norms, on May 14, 2020, UKM brought together a list of education practitioners from the four corners of the world to discuss on an interesting matter, “Entering the New Realm of International Higher Education”. The online panel discussed their strategy in embracing this new normal of education and the preparations involved in realizing the strategy.
The panellist includes the following, with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Abdul Latiff Ahmad (Director, UKM Global) moderated the session:
1. Prof. Shingo Ashizawa, Deputy Sec- Gen UMAP, Toyo University, Japan 2. Dr. Lily Freida Milla, Director III, Commission on Higher Education, Philippines
3. Prof Adriana Rojas Martinez, Director, Asia-Pacific Region, Vice-Rectory for International Affairs, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico
4. Prof. Dato’ Dr. Norazah Mohd Nordin, Dean, Faculty of Education, UKM, Malaysia
Figure 1: Entering the New Realm of International Higher Education Poster, May 14, 2020
449 After a very successful first session with the panelist, UKM realized that having online discussions to facilitate the webinar’s preparation is considerably easy and do-able, regardless of where the panelist is.
As the saying goes, the rest is history after the first webinar. UKM Global has hosted a total of 13 webinars since the pandemic started (4 of AKEPT, 7 with Toshiba International Foundation and 2 with National Cheng Kung University) with various international partners, new and old ones.
Table 1 below is the list of webinars that UKM Global has hosted and all these recordings are available on UKM Global’s website.
Table 1: List of webinars that UKM Global has hosted
No Webinar Title Date & Time
1
AKEPT
Entering the New Realm of International Higher Education on
14 May 2020 (Thursday) | 9.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
2 Values-Based Leadership in ASEAN
Higher Education on
14 September 2020 (Monday) | 10.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
3 Women Leadership in International
Higher Education
17 November 2020 (Tuesday) | 10.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur) 4 Universities Leadership in Challenging
Times … And the Way Forward
10 February 2021 (Wednesday) | 10.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur) 5
Toshiba International Foundation
The Internationalization Experience of Higher Education Institutions in Japan and Malaysia
30 August 2021 (Monday) | 10.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
6 Transdisciplinary Education and the Growth of Global Citizens
28 September 2021 (Tuesday) | 10.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
7 International Virtual Learning
Engagements: Understanding Concepts, Strategies and Executions
29 October 2021 (Friday) | 10.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
8 The Importance of Associations in the Internationalization Strategies of Universities
22 November 2021 (Monday) | 10.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
9 Embracing Language and Culture
Through Internationalization
8 December 2021 (Wednesday) | 2.30 pm (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur) 10 The International Mobility Experience of
Students from Malaysian and Japanese Universities
25 January 2022 (Tuesday) | 8.30 pm (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
11 Virtual Seminar and Workshop:
Internationalization of the Future
24 May 2022 (Tuesday) | 8.45 am - 12.00 pm (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur) 12
National Cheng Kung University
International Strategies on Student Mobility in the Era of a Global Pandemic
25 May 2021 (Tuesday) | 10.00 am (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
13 Virtual Student Mobility during COVID-19 from Student’s Perspective
22 October 2021 (Friday) | 8.30 pm (GMT+8 Kuala Lumpur)
Along with the webinars, UKM finds that virtually meeting partners, old and new, is much easier and cost-effective as compared to pre-COVID era.
450 From Participants to Partners
Based on the feedback from the participants, the webinars organized by UKM Global are always awaited because of the topics that are relevant to current issues and the critical selection of panelists. The thought-provoking subjects and the critical and analytical sharing by the panelists managed to draw a large number of practitioners and enthusiasts from around the world, as far as the US and the UK. The webinars managed to successfully gather 300 - 500 participants from 10 - 12 countries for each webinar.
As UKM Global invited experts from all over the world as panelists, the webinar managed to showcase the expert’s credibility and knowledge to the masses. UKM have received emails from former panelists that they have been contacted by the participants of the seminar to start collaborating – may it be for classes, research or projects.
UKM has also been approached by participants from the webinar – either to be introduced to the experts or to start discussing potential collaborations. There have been a few documents of collaborations been signed since then – all done virtually – starting from discussion up to signing the documents.
Apart from the participants, UKM has also signed documents of collaboration with some of the panelists too. The series of discussions that led to the webinar has sparked interests to further collaborate between UKM and the panelist that both sides feel the need to formalise the partnerships.
Not only UKM introduced the UKM’s experts to the world, but the webinar has also enabled the participants to connect and interact with each other based on the same topic of interest during the webinar. These virtual meetings led to discussions and further in-depth exploration of the common interest from all parties involved.
Enrichment for All
Adam (2020) wrote that somehow, the global pandemic Covid-19 has ‘forced’ the world to start collaborating in ways that they have never dreamt before. Partnerships between academic institutions and humanitarian organizations are a unique and pragmatic approach to harness intersectoral collaboration and strengthen knowledge dissemination during pandemics.
Babcock (2010) highlighted that such innovative partnerships have the potential to produce more sustainable and comprehensive public health responses.
451 With reference to above, UKM found out that international collaboration forged during the pandemic outlined different key performance indicators – ones that are more relevant to the current global situation.
Despite that there was physical traveling restriction all over the world, via the webinars, UKM managed to fulfill the activities listed in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)/
Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) signed. It is via the webinars too that UKM has managed to gather experts from all over the world within a virtual conference room, sharing their issues and best practices for the masses to learn from – all being done from the comfort of one’s home – no matter what time zone they are from.
In retrospect to pre-pandemic period, for a conference to be held, all participants will travel to the conference venue and pay a handsome amount of fee to be a part of the conference. On top of that the traveling cost, one also must secure accommodation and transportation to fully attend the conference. During the pandemic, all is done with just a steady signal of internet line, very minimal fee and within the comfort of one’s house (without even dressing up for the sessions). This is one of the sustainable points of hosting webinars and conferences online.
As such, in the context of UKM’s webinar to strengthen the international collaborations, apart from meeting fellow partners and friends from all over the world, it also serves as a contact point for every attendee. Participants with similar interest met and connected during webinar before exploring their mutual interests post the webinar. The webinars are also a part of activities in fulfilling the collaboration agreement between UKM and the governing body of the grant (in this case, AKEPT, Toshiba and NCKU).
With the assistance of international associations that UKM is a part of, the invitations to attend the webinars were shared world-wide. The associations such as University Mobility in Asia and the Pacific (UMAP), The Association of Universities of Asia and the Pacific (AUAP), SATU Presidents’ Forum and ASEAN University Network (AUN) assisted with sharing the invitations of the webinars to its members.
The Global Pandemic: A Blessing in Disguise for International Collaborations
In a joint statement by IAU and Erasmus Student Network (ESN) in 2020, they noted that moving forward, the international higher education community will find the ‘right balance between face-to-face and online learning, between physical mobility and virtual exchange’.
This further supports the notion that the world will continue to interact virtually, albeit that the world is opening again and slowly, yet surely easing into normalcy, pre-pandemic.
452 In spite all that, Littleton (2022) wrote that in 2021, the international student enrolments were down 17 per cent compared with 2019, and although overseas students can now return (and many have continued to study through remote learning systems), rebuilding international enrolment will be slow. Universities may never regain pre-COVID international enrolment levels.
As in the case of Malaysia, had it not been for the pandemic, the pivotal change to digital learning would take a while. The pandemic pushed the relevant authorities to enhance the facilities and infrastructures to ensure that Malaysians will have access to education despite the remote learning situation. The initiatives were done via extensive collaborations between the government and the relevant authorities, may it be government or private entities.
Whereas in UKM, the industry players, the alumnus and the society came together to assist the students in need, especially those with minimum access to online facilities and instruments and those that were most affected by the pandemic.
The pivotal change to online communication and collaboration during the pandemic has alerted the world that virtual collaboration is possible and at the current era, plausible, economical and sustainable.
UKM’s webinars has opened more than one door for national and international collaborations when the participants attended the webinars, as are other webinars in the whole wide world. Even now when the physical traveling is picking up, webinars are still relevant and will continue to stay relevant in the years to come.
Not Without Its Challenges
Not all is without its challenges. As mentioned earlier, UKM was challenged by AKEPT to host an international webinar, just months in after Movement Control Order (MCO) was announced on 18 March 2020 in Malaysia and all non-essential business were ordered closed, universities included. With very minimal experience handling (even attending) webinars, UKM took on the challenge and sent staff to attend courses on webinar handling.
Then the next challenge was the infrastructure and digital gap. During the first few months of MCO, UKM were subscribed to Webex and believed that the whole world was also on the same page. After the first webinar, UKM shifted to Zoom for video conferencing purposes as the platform is more user friendly, considering virtual conferencing was not a popular choice pre-COVID era.
453 Coming up with an interesting and attention-grabbing title and subject is not an easy task. After which, UKM has also to identify and invite the relevant expert of the subject-matter to become a panelist in the upcoming webinar. During the few early months of the global pandemic, it was quite easy to invite panelist as there were only a few webinars. But as the pandemic crept into 6 months and more, it was becoming quite a hard task to invite a panelist as there were other webinars from all over the world and the panelist have a choice list to choose from. Here is where having a list of partners from all over the world helps in finding a panelist for the upcoming webinar.
And this situation applies to the audience as well. An attention-grabbing title with an interesting list of panelists are crucial to having a good crowd during the webinar.
Even when you have a great number of participants signed up for the webinar, the actual final number of attendees were always the deciding factor whether the webinar was a success or a flop. The declining number of attendees online during a webinar are an indicator that the subject discussed has lost its attraction.
UKM regards each webinar as a production, thus the ‘crew’ were trained extensively to host ‘a successful production’. Thus, each webinar will have its flow manager, a montage, a colour scheme, a running order, an emcee, a timekeeper, social media hosts and many more crews that will be ‘running’ the show from behind the scenes.
As per a physical production, UKM will always have a rehearsal or two with the panelists prior to the day of the event, to ensure that they are using the right session link to the webinar, their audio and visual are clear and playable during the session and to ensure that they will be presented well on-screen too during the session (lightings etc).
The biggest hurdle that UKM has experienced was a digital divide among the participants where their internet connection was not strong enough to enable them to flawlessly listen and view the session. There were participants that were kicked out for more than a dozen times throughout the session and reached out to UKM to view the recording after the session ended. UKM has recorded and uploaded all the sessions on UKM Global’s website so that the participants and everyone else may view them anytime.
3. CONCLUSIONS
The global pandemic COVID-19 introduced unprecedented challenges to the world, and thus requires new and unexplored solutions. COVID-19 has meant that social distancing has become a part of everyday life, a new norm of sort, it also meant that international traveling was prohibited to restrict the transmission of the virus. When physical traveling was banned,
454 most higher learning institutions reacted, some were forced, to pivot all T&L to online mode, regardless of their readiness from all aspects. UKM took a challenge by AKEPT to host a webinar on COVID-19 and its impact of the higher learning and found that virtual realm is an alternative to a greater collaboration with partners, old and new, locally and internationally. It started with a simple online meeting session with old partners that led to lengthy and in-depth discussions on potential subjects to be discussed online with fellow partners and then UKM hosted the first webinar. Realising that everyone is eager to get connected and virtual means were the only viable option available for everyone around the world, UKM collaborated with a few other grant governing bodies and international associations to host more relevant and thought-provoking webinars. UKM realized that webinars are the bridge that connects the minds of experts and audience in the virtual realm when physical distancing was in place, maintains/ elevates the visibility of UKM among friends and partners and encourages greater collaborations with international associations and bodies during the whole process. Ensuring the webinars hosted by UKM maintaining a steady stream of participants was no easy task as there were a lot of external factors to be given due consideration – the subject of the discussion, the credible and experienced panelists, the technology know-how, the production of the webinar, the different time zones of participant, the digital divide and the most crucial factor of all – maintaining the interest and focus of the participants. In a nutshell, when COVID- 19 closed the chance for UKM to physically collaborate with partners, UKM explored the less- traveled route that was via virtual means and hosted webinars to strengthen the partnerships, to which partners from all over the world were also eager to be a part of.
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