SRHE: Internationalisation in and of Higher Education: Contexts, Concepts and Contentious

SRHE: Internationalisation in and of higher education: contexts, concepts and contentious issues

Wednesday 29 April 2015

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Internationalisation and the digital

This paper considers theoretical approaches to revisiting the idea of the international student in relation to online ‘distance’ education and the digital university. Troubling the notions of ‘home’ and ‘host’, it draws upon Dall’Alba and Barnacle’s (2005) work on ‘embodied knowing’ in an online context, and Sidhu and Dall’Alba’s (2012) analyses of ‘(dis)embodied cosmopolitans’ in international education, in order to consider what it is to be an international student in the digital university. An analysis of the 2014 controversy around country sanctions and export restrictions imposed by the US export authority on Coursera, the MOOC (massive open online course) platform provider, is presented to support the argument that we need to address the discourse of ‘smoothness’ in the marketing of online education. The intention of this paper is to move towards opening up new ways of thinking about internationalisation and the digital, by first recognising the complex and effortful practices ofmakingeducation international (after Lin and Law 2013).

References and further reading

Barnett, R. (2013) Imagining the university. London: Routledge.

Braidotti R., Hanafin, P., Blaagaard, B. (eds.) (2013) After cosmopolitanism. Abingdon: Routledge.

Coursera blog (2015) (Accessed 27 April 2015)

Dall'Alba, G. and Barnacle, R. (2005) ‘Embodied knowing in online environments’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37(5) pp719-744

FutureLearn (2015) (Accessed 27 April 2015)

Hawawini, G. (2011) The internationalization of higher education institutions: a critical review and a radical proposal, INSEAD Working Paper 112/FIN. Available at: (Accessed 20 April 2015)

Sidhu, R. and Dall'Alba, G. (2012) ‘International education and (dis)embodied cosmopolitanisms’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(4) pp413-431

Lin, W. and Law, J. (2013) ‘Making things differently: on ‘modes of international’’, CRESC Working Paper No. 129. Available at: 20 April 2015)

Zalcman, D. (2015) (Accessed 26 April 2015)

Philippa Sheail, Research Associate

DiCE: digital cultures and education research group

Moray House School of Education

University of Edinburgh