Abstract
The joint development and delivery of co-branded programmes across universities and countries promises enhanced visibility for partnering institutions, stimulating synergistic collegial relationships for teachers, and expanded opportunities for students to access a wider range of courses enhanced by a broader range of international expertise. At the same time, the development of such programmes is potentially fraught with difficult logistical, interpersonal, organisational and managerial challenges. A growing literature from fields of inquiry outside higher education has begun to address these challenges. This literature offers useful guidance to higher education practitioners and researchers in appreciating the range of factors involved in significant collaborations across institutional and national boundaries, identifying issues that commonly arise in such work and considering ways of accommodating these factors and issues in order to navigate the complexities of international collaboration in programme development. Data from a case study of such programme development across two universities on different continents, one in the UK and one in Australia, are used to identify critical factors to be taken into account. These factors, considered in the context of inter-institutional collaboration literature, provide the basis of a framework for joint international programme development which explicates each factor and the relationships between them in order to guide future collaborations. A common collaborative space that enables such joint work to occur despite inevitable differences between the parties is a central part of this framework.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Al-Youbi, A., & Zahed, A. H. M. (2020). King Abdulaziz University’s approach to international collaboration. In A. AI-Youbi, A. Zahed, and W. G. Tierney (Eds.), Successful global collaborations in higher education institutions (pp. 3-11). Springer.
Ankrah, S., & Al-Tabbaa, O. (2015). Universities-industry collaboration: A systematic review. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 31(3), 387–408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scaman.2015.02.003
Antony, J. S., & Nicola, T. (2020). The tricky terrain of global university partnerships. In A. AI-Youbi, A. Zahed, and W. G. Tierney (Eds.), Successful global collaborations in higher education institutions (pp. 75-86). Springer.
Ashkenas, R. (2015). There’s a difference between cooperation and collaboration. Harvard Business Review April 20.
Bagshaw, D., Lepp, M., & Zorn, C. C. R. (2007). International research collaboration: Building teams and managing conflicts. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 24(4), 433–446. https://doi.org/10.1002/crq.183
Boud, D., Dahlgren, L. O., Dahlgren, M. A., Larsson, S., Sork, T. J., & Walters, S. (2006). Creating a ‘world class’ programme: Reciprocity and constraint in networked global collaboration. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 25(6), 609–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370600989327
Bryson, J. M., Crosby, B. C., & Stone, M. M. (2015). Designing and implementing cross-sector collaborations: Needed and challenging. Public Administration Review, 75(5), 647–663. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12432
Chen, K., Zhang, Y., & Fu, X. (2019). International research collaboration: An emerging domain of innovation studies? Research Policy, 48, 149–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2018.08.005
Ferrazzi, K. (2015). How to run a great virtual meeting. Harvard Business Review. March 27, 2015
Gazley, B. (2017). The current state of interorganizational collaboration: Lessons for human service research and management. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership and Governance, 41(1), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1080/23303131.2015.1095582
Gieser, J. D. (2016). An international academic partnership through a policy implementation lens: Top-down, bottom-up or somewhere in between? FIRE: Forum for International Research in Education, 2(3), 62–78. https://doi.org/10.18275/fire201602031094
Godin, B. (2015). Models of innovation: Why models of innovation are models, or what work is being done in calling them models? Social Studies of Science, 54(4), 570–596. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312715596852
Good, R. (2021). Online collaboration tools. ZEEF. Retrieved from: https://online-collaboration-tools.zeef.com/robin.good
Grossman, R., Lobnig, H., & Scala, K. (2012). Facilitating collaboration in public management. Information Age Publishing.
Gulati, R., Wohlgezogen, F., & Zhelyazkof, P. (2012). Two facets of collaboration: Cooperation and coordination in strategic alliances. The Academy of Management Annals, 2012, 1–53. https://doi.org/10.5465/19416520.2012.691646
Kushnarenko, V. (2010). International collaboration in higher Education: The Canadian-Ukrainian Curriculum Development Partnership. PhD Thesis. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Retrieved from: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/26420/1/Kushnarenko_Valentyna_201011_PhD_thesis.pdf
Larsson, S., Boud, D., Dahlgren, M. A., Walters, S., & Sork, T. (2005). Confronting globalisation: Learning from intercontinental collaboration. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 42(1), 61–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290500048960
Macdonald, R., & Joughin, G. (2009). Changing assessment in higher education: A model in support of institutipon-wide improvement. In G. Joughin (Ed.), Assessment, learning and judgement in higher education (pp. 193–213). Springer.
Majchrzak, A., Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Bagherzade, M. (2014). A review of interorganizational collaboration dynamics. Journal of Management, 41(5), 1338–1360. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206314563399
Majchrzak, A., Sirkka, L. J., & Bagherzadeh, M. (2015). Review of interorganizational collaboration dynamics. Journal of Management, 41(5), 1338–1360. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206314563399
Patel, H., Pettitt, M., Hansen, S., & Wilson, J. (2010). A descriptive model of collaboration to underpin a collaboration profiling methodology. In G. Stevens (Ed.), International reports on socio-informatics (IRSI), Workshop proceedings of 9th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems - COOP 2010, Aix-en-Provence, France, May 2010 7(1), 15-23. Retrieved from: https://www.iisi.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/irsi_vol7_iss1_patel_pettitt_hansen_wilson_a_descriptive_model_of_collaboration_to_underpin_a_collaboration.pdf
Patel, H., Pettitt, M., & Wilson, J. R. (2012). Factors of collaborative working: A framework for a collaboration model. Applied Ergonomics, 43(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2011.04.009
Raisene, S. G., & Baranauskaite, L. (2018). Investigating complexity of intersectorial collaboration: Contextual framework for research. Contemporary Research on Organization Management and Administration, 6(1), 79–89.
Settle, N. M. (2012). Leading virtual teams. Auerbach.
Stake, R. E. (1977). The countenance of educational evaluation. In A. A. Bellack & H. M. Kliebard (Eds.), Curriculum and evaluation (pp. 372–390). McCutchan.
Stufflebeam, D. L. (2003). The CIPP model for evaluation. In T. Kellaghan & D. L. Stufflebeam (Eds.), International handbook of educational evaluation. Kluwer International Handbooks of Education, 9. Springer.
Stufflebeam, D. L., & Coryn, C. L. S. (2014). Evaluation theory, models and applications (2nd edn). Jossey-Bass.
Stufflebeam, D. L., & Zhang, G. (2017). The CIPP evaluation model. The Guildford Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Joughin, G., Bearman, M., Boud, D. et al. Creating and sustaining collaborative connections: tensions and enabling factors in joint international programme development. High Educ 84, 827–844 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00802-8
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00802-8