Designing Education Across Borders and Barriers: Toward a Transnational, Inclusive, and Interoperable Future

By Richard Powers, University of Stuttgart

Introduction: Learning in an Age of Upheaval

If education in the 20th century was defined by nation-building, then education in the 21st century is being shaped by the need for planetary collaboration. We teach and learn in a world defined not only by borders but by shared crises: war, forced migration, accelerating climate breakdown, and digital transformation powered by artificial intelligence.

Yet much of our educational infrastructure—our systems, our platforms, and even our pedagogies—remains locked in outdated models that assume standardisation, homogeneity, and institutional control.

Today’s learners are not standard. And the world they’re preparing for is not predictable.

Therefore our design principles for both corporate and university courses must cross borders, respect diversity, and build resilient communities. This means opening up how we collaborate globally and how we design for learner variability locally. Organisations like CAST.org, ICDE, EDEN, the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung and OLC provide visions for how this will work.

From Mobility to Mutual Design: The Rise of Transnational Didactics

Traditionally, international, immersive education was centered around mobility—students and faculty moving across national borders through scholarships, exchanges, or partnerships like Erasmus+. But mobility, while valuable, is also limited by logistics, costs, privilege, and geopolitics.

In response, many educators have shifted from mobility to mutual design: cross-border projects where learners, teachers, and institutions co-create curricula, artefacts, and knowledge—predominantly virtually. This evolving approach is being described as transnational didactics, particularly when it brings people whose nations are in conflict or whose politics represent different sides.

Where traditional didactics focus on transmitting knowledge within a single system, transnational didactics is the art and science of designing learning experiences across cultural, institutional, and linguistic boundaries. It invites us to build educational encounters that are not merely exported from one context to another but constructed collaboratively, with space for negotiation, friction, human compassion and reciprocity.

Key features of transnational didactics include:

• Pedagogical interoperability: aligning values, not just platforms, across contexts
• Shared authorship: moving from teacher-led to learner-centered design across countries
• Resilience: designing for contexts affected by conflict, inequality, or infrastructure gaps
• Critical reflection: attending to power dynamics in partnerships between the Global North and South
  
  

Interoperability: More Than Plug-and-Play Platforms

In discussions of global education, interoperability is often treated as a technical issue—ensuring that tools and platforms work together across systems. But in transnational learning environments, the real challenge is pedagogical and institutional interoperability.

What does it mean for a project in Germany, Kenya, and Lebanon to be truly collaborative? It’s not enough that everyone can log into the same platform. We must also ask:

• Are the learning goals co-constructed and culturally inclusive?
• Is there shared access to decision-making, timelines, and outcomes?
• Do assessments value different forms of knowledge and expression?

Interoperability, in this sense, becomes a design ethic—a commitment to flexibility, openness, and mutual recognition of difference.

Learner Variability as Design Imperative

While transnational design addresses the global, we also face an urgent challenge within our own institutions: designing for the rich variability of learners.

The myth of the “average learner” has long been debunked by educational research. Students bring vastly different experiences, needs, motivations, and barriers to the table. Some are multilingual; others are neurodivergent. Many are caregivers, refugees, or working adults balancing study with survival.

To design effectively for this reality, we need more than empathy—we need frameworks.

One of the most widely adopted frameworks is Universal Design for Learning (UDL), developed by CAST and grounded in cognitive neuroscience. UDL shifts the focus from retrofitting accessibility accommodations to proactively designing flexible, inclusive learning environments.

UDL’s core principles advocate for:

• Multiple Means of Representation: offering content in different formats
• Multiple Means of Engagement: tapping into learners’ motivations and needs
• Multiple Means of Action & Expression: allowing varied ways to demonstrate learning

But like any framework, UDL risks becoming a checkbox exercise unless it’s critically applied. To be transformative, it must move beyond accessibility into engagement, learner agency, and equity.

From Parallel Tracks to Integrated Practice

Too often, global collaboration and inclusive design are treated as separate conversations in higher education. One lives in the international office; the other in the disability services or instructional design unit.

However they are, in fact, deeply interconnected.

• A global classroom that fails to consider learner diversity will replicate exclusion across borders.
• A UDL-infused course that is only accessible to students in one geographic region misses the opportunity to build global competence and solidarity.

As digital learning becomes increasingly hybrid, mobile, and asynchronous, we design for both global collaboration and learner inclusivity simultaneously.

This is the promise of transnational, inclusive pedagogy: a future where students learn with others across the world—and on their own terms.

Tools, Tensions, and Takeaways

Designing across borders and for diversity is not easy work. It requires:

• Reimagining learning materials for flexibility and cultural resonance
• Choosing technologies not just for scale, but for adaptability and accessibility
• Facilitating dialogue among learners with different assumptions, norms, and comfort zones

But the rewards are immense: empowered learners, deeper cross-cultural understanding, and educational systems that can adapt to global shocks with creativity rather than collapse.

Related Sessions at OEB 2025

Come explore these above ideas with me at two OEB 2025 sessions:

1. Boardroom Dialogue: “Global Classrooms, Global Citizens: Rethinking Higher Education & Interoperability through Transnational Didactics”
   A participatory session exploring the shift from mobility to mutual design, featuring case studies and open exchange on global education futures. Let’s connect for future collaborations.

2. Workshop: “From Access to Impact: Hands-On Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for Course Designers and Trainers” (Wed, 3 Dec, 9:30-13.00)
   A practical, working session where participants redesign real course materials using UDL principles to better support learner variability. Join the international UDL group!

Final Thoughts

Let’s not separate questions of equity, accessibility, and internationalisation. In a world shaped by disruption and displacement, how we design learning experiences—who they include, who they serve, and how they connect—is no longer a technical matter. It’s an ethical, human one.

At OEB 2025, and beyond, let’s build the future of education across borders and beyond barriers.

Written for OEB 2025 by Richard Powers.


Join Richard for his Pre-Conference Workshop or Boardroom Dialogue at OEB25.