On 26 November 2020, Vice President of Mae Fah Luang University, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nantana Gajaseni and Administrative Officer of the Global Relations Division, Ms. Warunee Kaewbunruang shared MFU’s best practices and discuss possible virtual collaboration activities in the international forum “COVID-19: Current & Future Trends Of International Collaboration” hosted by the Division of Community and International Networking (DCInterNet), Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), Malaysia via Zoom Meeting.
This international forum brought together 80 participants including guest speakers from 29 partner universities in South East Asia, India, Pakistan and Africa.
The forum consisted of two sharing sessions. In the first session entitled “Current Situation of International Collaboration during the COVID-19 Pandemic”, there were four guest speakers, namely Vice President of Mae Fah Luang University, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nantana Gajaseni from Thailand; BINUS Global Program and Collaboration Coordinator, BINUS University, Rokoyah Andariani Amin from Indonesia, Director of Directorate of Quality Assurance and Career Services, Meru University of Science and Technology (MUST), Dr. Eunice Nkatha Marete from Kenya; and Head of Faculty of Engineering Department of Software Engineering, Iqra University, Dr. Mansoor Ebrahim from Pakistan.
MFU Vice President, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nantana Gajaseni presented a video of short speech on MFU’s international collaboration during COVID-19 pandemic. MFU applies multimedia technologies to improve the quality of learning, facilitate access to resources and services as well as remote exchanges and collaboration. According to the Blended Learning and Internationalisation at Home policies, MFU adopts and promotes the concept of virtual mobility to develop students’ intercultural understanding and the exchange of knowledge by providing online courses with invited foreign lecturers and virtual classrooms or forums held by its partner universities. Moreover, MFU has actively maintained and promoted international collaboration via virtual collaboration.
The second sharing session was a round table discussion under the theme ‘Post Covid-19 new international collaboration model and possible collaboration’. During this session, the representatives from Yiwu Industrial and Commercial College (China), Xianyang Normal University (China, SRM Group of Institutions (India), Davao Del Norte State College (Philippines), Mae Fah Luang University (Thailand), Universitas Surabaya (Indonesia), Iqra University (Pakistan), Institute of Technology Sepuluh Nopember (Indonesia), BINUS University (Indonesia) and London School of Public Relations (Indonesia) actively proposed various interesting collaboration programmes. The Administrative Officer of the Global Relations Division, Ms. Warunee Kaewbunruang shared that the university is promoting online academic mobility through “MFU Visiting Scholars Programme” and “MFU Students Mobility Programme”.
Altogether, the participation in the international forum shows MFU’s efforts to constructively engage in taking global collaboration between universities to the next level.
