Digital Technologies, Generative AI, and University Internationalization in the Non-Anglophone World

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Mobility, AI, and DSO Engagement

Proposal

As higher education internationalization continues to expand and evolve around the world, growing student mobility remains a key trend, with more students seeking education abroad for academic, cultural, and career benefits. However, another more recent trend is increased emphasis on critical approaches, attending to global power imbalances, focusing on equity, sustainability, global citizenship, and transformative education (de Wit & Altbach, 2021). Meanwhile, all of this coincides with a concomitant shift towards more diverse destinations beyond traditional hubs in the Anglophone world (e.g. USA, UK, Australia, etc.) to primarily non-Anglophone regions of the globe, such as Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia (Rumbley et al., 2022).

However, the global dominance of English poses a significant barrier to the efforts of universities in non-Anglophone countries to engage in internationalization processes (Ament, 2021). Consequently, university internationalization in the non-Anglophone world has seen a rapid rise in English-medium instruction (EMI) and English-taught programs (ETP), reshaping higher education landscapes globally. EMI and ETPs are increasingly offered in countries where English is not the primary language, as universities aim to attract more international students, enhance their global reputation, and prepare local students for a competitive global workforce. In Asia specifically, countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea have embraced EMI as part of their broader internationalization strategies (Macaro, 2020). These nations aim to boost their competitiveness by offering world-class education in English while maintaining national languages for local programs. Ultimately, EMI and ETPs provide non-Anglophone countries with a tool for global engagement and growth in higher education, but their implementation also presents problems.

One of the biggest problems in successfully delivering EMI/ETP in higher education stems from students’ English language proficiency levels. Due to the intense popularity and rapid expansion of EMI/ETPs in non-Anglophone countries, it is very common for universities to admit students with relatively lower levels of English proficiency and to have populations of students with wide disparities of English proficiency (e.g. from too limited to engage in learning processes to native or near-native speaker competency) (Aizawa & McKinley, 2020). This intersects with another common problem in EMI/ETP education, which is that teachers are often not sufficiently trained in pedagogical approaches or teaching methods to accommodate the learning needs of all students in their classrooms. In the final analysis, these problems pose an issue that interweaves both academic and ethical dimensions, with direct implications for broader scholarly discussions about the capacity of higher education institutions in non-Anglophone countries to embody critical internationalization that addresses global power imbalances while focusing on equity, sustainability, global citizenship, and transformative education.

One under-researched area in EMI/ETP education is the ways that digital technologies can be applied in teaching approaches and methods to help overcome the problems of students’ low and disparate English language proficiency. However, determining this has become even more complex at a time when both education and society are experiencing revolutionary changes due to the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) use. This circumstance presents a conundrum for EMI/ETP teachers who want and need to leverage digital technologies to meet the language proficiency challenges that commonly arise in their unique educational environment but do not know how to do so while at the same time preventing inappropriate AI use from undermining the learning process.

The paper I intend to present at the CIES 2025 conference provides insights gained through a case study of applied research using a qualitative approach to identify some solutions to this conundrum. The research site was an ETP at one medium-size private (not-for-profit) university in Japan. Data was drawn from discussions with both subject-based course teachers and language course teachers in this ETP, who were grappling with the problem of using digital technologies to promote individual and social learning in their courses while contending with the potential negative impacts of students’ inevitable generative AI use. The findings of this study present several crucial lessons that could be learned from an analysis of these teachers’ struggles, including:
1. The necessity of explicitly educating students about generative AI technology
2. The usefulness of generative AI to provide multi-level instruction
3. The indispensability of proactive incorporation of AI into the learning process
4. The importance of designing AI-resistant assignments

Eventually, in this particular ETP, the lessons learned from this study led to the development of guidelines for pedagogical approaches that could ensure improved student learning success in both subject-based and language-based courses respectively. The insights from this case study should also be useful for other EMI/ETP learning environments in higher education institutions elsewhere in Japan and the non-Anglophone sphere, thus supporting the ongoing evolution of higher education internationalization towards more critical forms that better address global power imbalances while focusing on equity, sustainability, global citizenship, and transformative education.

Given the particular educational matters described heretofore, this presentation is highly relevant to the CIES 2025 conference which is centered around the theme of “Envisioning Education in a Digital Society”. It has a strong focus on the transformative impact of digital technologies on education with an eye on the ethical, social, and practical challenges of digitalization while exploring the opportunities it presents for shaping the future of international higher education and global society.

Author

• Thatcher A. Spero, Musashino University