The Expatriate and Transnational Distance Student Phenomenon: A Series of Investigations

............................................................................................................ 95 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 97 Background ............................................................................................ 98 Globally Distributed Distance Students................................................... 99 Key Research Objectives ...................................................................... 102 Methodology .................................................................................................... 103 Operational Definitions ........................................................................ 103 Visibility .............................................................................................. 103 Results ............................................................................................................. 107 Discussion........................................................................................................ 115 Contributions ........................................................................................ 123 Limitations ........................................................................................... 124 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 125 Future Research .................................................................................... 125 CHAPTER IV: Study Two: Expatriate and Transnational Distance Students: A Multicase Study in the Republic of Korea .................................................................................... 128 Abstract ........................................................................................................... 128.......................................................................................................... 128 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 129 The Problem .................................................................................................... 130 Background of the Study .................................................................................. 132


Introduction to the Studies
Distance education has become a relatively common experience today, and notably one that is increasingly global (Allen, Seaman, Poulin, & Straut, 2016;Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2018;Harasim, 2000;Lee, 2017;Means, Bakia, & Murphy, 2014;Ortagus, 2016;Watts, 2016). At present, millions of students take distance classes annually at open universities, in addition to students who take online courses offered from brick-andmortar institutions (Allen et al., 2016;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012). Distance education participation numbers are even more staggering when considering that average enrollment in a single MOOC (from wellknown North American providers such as Coursera, Udacity, edX, HarvardX) is around 45,000 students with the upper end of enrollment numbers sometimes reaching hundreds of thousands (Jordan, 2014(Jordan, , 2015Onah, Sinclair, & Boyatt, 2014) with students hailing from all over the world (Christensen et al., 2013;Glass, Shiokawa-Baklan, & Saltarelli, 2016;Nesterko et al., 2013;Shah, 2017). With so many new students gaining access to online courses and entering online classrooms, it is worth re-examining who distance students are in the 21st century (Jones, 2001;Latchem & Ryan, 2013), as well as the complex landscape of distance education itself.

Statement of the Problem
The currents of globalization, demographic changes, advancements in ICT, and the proliferation of the Internet have all affected the composition of the distance student body (Furham, 2012;Gunawardena, 2014;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Harasim, 2000). Earlier scholarship and models that assisted in categorizing and understanding distance students have limitations, particularly in terms of a wider view of global trends and circumstances. Although descriptions of expatriate, international, and transnational students have surfaced in the form of various terms and descriptions (e.g., Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016;Ziguras, 2008), their voices have otherwise been poorly recognized and represented (Rensimer, 2016), if heard at all (Andrews & Tynan, 2010). While some prior scholarship has recognized this student phenomenon in a limited capacity (e.g., Dobos, 2011, Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Hoare, 2012;Selwyn, 2011aSelwyn, , 2011bZiguras, 2008), only more recent literature displays a clearer and deliberate distinction among distance students (e.g., Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017).
In this dissertation I have posited that the Internet has had a transformative effect on distance education, and this transformation is evident when comparing the scope, scale, and complexity of early correspondence programs like the Society to Encourage Studies at Home in the United States with current programs. For example, over a 24-year period from 1873-1897, the program enrolled approximately 10,000 students from the Boston, Massachusetts area (Casey, 2008;Gibson, 2008). The scope, scale, distribution, and diversity of the student body today, however, is a remarkable contrast with students potentially hailing from all over the world. The impressiveness of the scale and potential global access notwithstanding, the increased connections between diverse groups of students, instructors, resources, and universities in a dynamic virtual space is at the heart of transnational distance education (Gunawardena, 2003(Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Harasim, 2000;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Sidhu & Christie, 2013).
Transnational education "refers to the crossing of various kinds of 'borders'geographical, sectoral and conceptual" (Garrett, 2003, p. 113), as well as identifying those settings in which "learners are located in a country different from the one where the awarding institution is based" (McBurnie & Ziguras, 2001, p. 86). Investigations of the characteristics and motivations of transnational and expatriate distance students as well as the makeup of online programs themselves in transnational contexts is currently lacking.
The differences between seemingly similar students of these kinds have not been disambiguated in both distance education and transnational education literature. There is no clear distinction or consensus on what an "international" student is in the distance education literature, or how this differs from a "transnational" distance student (Kosmützky & Putty, 2016). Moreover, the term "international" is used as a research analytic to describe so many different situations that it becomes unhelpful (Madge, Raghuram, & Noxolo, 2015;Rensimer, 2016;Stewart, 2017). Further, the lack of differentiation overlooks the potential for expatriate distance students in international, transnational, and distance education literature. Thus, the purpose of the three studies in this dissertation was to clearly investigate two distinct student scenarios (defined by three criteria) which are presented below in Table 1. These distinctions served as the analytical foundation for the three studies in this dissertation which were situated in the Republic of Korea as one microcosm of demographic, technological, and globalization-related changes.

Table 1 Stewart's Model of Distance Students
Term Description National

A-A-A
A student who is a citizen of country A, attending university at a distance in country A, while living in country A. They are most likely classified as a "regular" student by the university.

International B-A-B
A student who is a citizen of country B, attending university at a distance in country A, while living in country B. They are most likely classified as an "international" student by the university.

Expatriate A-B-A
A student who is a citizen of country A, attending university at a distance in country B, while living in country A via a non-tourist sojourn status. They are most likely classified as a "regular" student by the university.

Transnational A-B-C
A student who is a citizen of country A, attending university at a distance in country B, while living in country C via a non-tourist sojourn status. They are most likely classified as an "international" student by the university.

The Korean Context
The Korean peninsula is located in East Asia, situated south of China and to the north of Japan. Historically, however, the territory of the Korean kingdoms stretched into modern day northeast China in the Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces; this region is also commonly known as Manchuria (Kim, 2017). Historical activity on the peninsula dates back some 4500-5000 years with the founding of the first Korean kingdom ascribed to the god-king Dangun. Over the millennia, the peninsula has been home to numerous kingdoms (e.g., Silla, Balhae, Baekje, Koguryo, Kaya, Puyo), imperial dynasties, and internecine conflicts which eventually resulted in a unified governance at the end of the Josun Dynasty in the late 14 th century, which lasted for approximately 500 years until the formation of the unified Daehan (Great Korea) Empire in 1897 (Kim, 2017). In 1910, the independence of the state fell to Japanese colonial rule for 35 years until its liberation from Japan by the Allied forces at the end of World War II in 1945.
Shortly thereafter in 1950, a proxy war broke out between two governments established by the Allied powers north (Soviet) and south (American) of the 38th parallel respectively. In 1953, an armistice agreement was signed between the two governments and the peninsula has since been home to two nations: The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK).
The Republic of Korea, also referred to as South Korea and simply "Korea", covers a landmass of approximately 100,000 sq. km, making it comparable in size to the U.S. states of Indiana or Pennsylvania, or countries like Iceland or Hungary (CIA, 2019).
The terrain is mostly hilly and mountainous (about 70%), and relatively arid with heavier rainfall in the summer. The national population is estimated to be around 51 million as of 2019, though the distribution is highly disproportionate to lowland regions (CIA, 2019; Joo, 2019). The capital, Seoul, is home to roughly 10 million people and the surrounding metropolitan area adds an additional 15 million for a total of around 25 million people or roughly 50% of the population (CIA, 2019, Kim, 2017), and it takes up less than 12% of the nation's land area (Joo, 2019). Seven other large urban cities (i.e., Busan, Incheon, Daegu, Daejeon, Kwangju, Ulsan, Changwon) have populations ranging from 1.0-3.5 million for a collective total of approximately 14 million (CIA, 2019). Combined with the capital metropolitan area's population, some 39 million people or 75% of the population live in dense, urban areas, in cities with one million or more residents. Such heavy urbanization has not always been the case, however.
The modern developed nation and population distribution is the result of impressive periods of industrial and economic development, and internal migrations from the 1960s onward that transformed the non-industrialized agrarian nation into the global economic and technological force that it is today (CIA, 2019;Joo, 2019;Kim, 2017).
This period of growth and development is not without controversy, however, as it also coincides with nearly 40 years of military dictatorships, periods of intense civil unrest, and economic crises (Kim, 2017). Nevertheless, one element considered integral to the success of Korea's transformation is education (CIA, 2019; Kim, 2017;Mani & Trines, 2018). Distance education opportunities have served Korean citizens since the 1950s (Im, 1992), and more prominently since the 1970s (Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Park & Kim, 2004). Numerous distance programs, formal online courses, private and public distance classes, and even local MOOC platforms (e.g., KMOOC) have proliferated since then (Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Shah, 2017). Several explicit transnational programs have also formed over the last 20 years to meet different and growing educational demands (FAU, n.d.;FSU, n.d.;GNUCR, n.d.;IGC, n.d.;IFEZ, n.d.;Jon, Lee, & Byun, 2014;Mani & Trines, 2018;UCRX, n.d.). At the same time, notable changes in the national demographic makeup have also occurred.
Korea has experienced significant immigration since the mid 1980s. The foreign resident population has grown from approximately 30-40,000 to over 2.5 million in a period of only 35 years (Kim, 2014;MoJ, 2016;Shin & Moon, 2019;Socinet, n.d.).
Though the nation's demographic makeup has remained predominantly homogeneous compared to other relatively more diverse countries or regions (e.g., the United States, Europe), this fact understates rather rapid changes in the national makeup given the Korean peninsula's 5000 years of otherwise relative homogeneity (Kim, 2017). These demographic changes have given rise to a foreign-resident population that has moved beyond just unskilled migrant labor (Shin & Moon, 2019), and whose educational needs/goals are not necessarily being recognized or met in the same way as those of its native population. Even Korean returnees (i.e., Korean citizens who typically lived abroad as children or adolescents), or members of the Korean diaspora can experience a similar lack of appropriate or viable education opportunities upon ethnic return migrants (Kim, 2018;Shin & Moon, 2019). How members of the foreign resident community overcome challenges to education by means of distance education abroad is the focus of this dissertation.
The literature includes research in varying capacities on foreign residents (Shin & Moon, 2019) who are academics (Froese, 2012), corporate workers (Jun & Gentry, 2005), international students (Jon et al., 2014;Lee, 2011), and marriage migrants (Kim, 2014;Socinet. n.d.) in Korea, and further research that examines the "heterogeneity and multiplicity of migrants in Korea within the broader categories of migrant workers" is needed especially since there has been a steady increase in skilled labor migrants (Shin & Moon, 2019, p. 603). The reasons underlying why foreign-residents choose to study abroad at a distance are not clear. The experience of studying at a distance while situated in a culture different from one's own is under described in the literature (Harrison, Harrison, Robinson, & Rawlings, 2018). Nor is it clearly understood why some long-term foreign residents in Korea, with no plans to return to their home nations, do not take advantage of local education programs, especially when comparable programs exist. The decision to forgo both local national or transnational program opportunities is particularly intriguing since students are choosing methods (i.e., at a distance, asynchronous, digitally mediated) that generally require more technical knowledge, self-directedness, and independence, in addition to incurring avoidable tuition costs, as there are various scholarships (e.g., Global Korea Scholarship [GKS], Korean Government Scholarship Program [KGSP]) that cover tuition and living stipends for foreign students (Study in Korea, 2019). Moreover, there are various undergraduate and graduate programs taught in English as a common international language that should make such programs viable, if not compelling, options (Jon et al., 2014;Kim, 2018;Stewart, 2017). As such, these questions have been asked and investigated, the results of three-related studies are presented herein.
Study one is an exploratory and descriptive study that proposed a model of distance students that accounted for various difficulties and discrepancies described in the literature over the last 10 years (Stewart, 2017). Further, study one tested the constructions of two proposed categories of students (i.e., expatriate, transnational) and collected demographic data about students, as well as the characteristics of their distance programs. Study two built upon this relatively simple foundation in the form of a multicase study that explored and documented the experiences of expatriate and transnational distance students, in addition to looking for commonalities across all of the cases. Study three was a grounded theory that explored the motivations and thought process of these two categories of students and ultimately presents a theory grounded in their experiences that approximates and suggests why these particular individuals chose to study in distance programs "abroad" rather than at universities (both local and transnational) in Korea.

Summary
This chapter has posited how modern ICT (and the Internet in particular) has enabled newer categories of distance students. This evolution can be seen by examining the a) nationality and sojourn status of a student, b) their geographic location as well as that of the university, and c) their administrative designation as either a regular or an international student. The three studies in this dissertation use this analytical lens to explore how this phenomenon is made manifest in the Republic of Korea where significant demographic changes have occurred over the last 35 years (Shin & Moon, 2019), and where a growing diversity among the migrant population requires greater attention.

Introduction
The world is increasingly dynamic and multifaceted in the 21st century. Digital information and communications technology (ICT) continue to increase the breadth and depth of connections between people, places, and resources. Small, dispersed and regionally confined populations have been transformed through ICT into an increasingly connected, global community (Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008). This phenomenon of global interconnectedness, or globalization, is multifaceted and socially, politically, economically, and culturally complex (Aman, 2013). In the context of education, the effects of globalization can also be seen in the increasing reach of education as it extends beyond national boundaries; namely through various modes and formats of transnational education, distance education, and ultimately transnational distance education. While distance education has traditionally served as a pathway to education for underserved or underrepresented populations (Casey, 2008;Harasim, 2000;Lee, 2017;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Saba, 2011;Simonson et al., 2012;Sun & Chen, 2016), the distance education space continues to be shaped by broad social forces through migration, demographic, and technological change (Aman, 2013;Haughey, Evans, & Murphy, 2008;Yelland, 2000). Moreover, the parallel developments of new technologies continue to complement and evolve the practice of teaching and learning at a distance (Casey, 2008;Tracey & Richey, 2005).
With each particular technology used, there have been paradigmatic shifts in methodologies, approaches, and pedagogies (Harasim, 2000(Harasim, , 2012Holmberg, 1986;Lane, 2009;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Simonson, 1999;Simonson et al., 2012;Tracey & Richey, 2005). Over time, distance education has evolved from servicing typically a local region/nation (see Allen et al., 2016) to offerings that are now potentially global in reach (Li, 2018;Means, Bakia, & Murphy, 2014;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Simonson et al., 2012). From the earliest days of distance education nearly 200 years ago until the present, this change in scope and access has enabled increasingly diverse and complex educational settings. This growing complexity and nuance are the research focus of this literature review.
In distance education, international education, and transnational education literature, there is no disambiguation between types of distance students (Kosmützky & Putty, 2016). Thus, when the term international is used (in distance education) to refer to students, it is not clear what is meant beyond the student simply not being a "national" student. Similarly, in a transnational context (where the home institution is located in a different country than the student), simply studying at a distance appears the same as an "international" student. Moreover, the term "transnational" is often readily used by scholars, though not necessarily with the same meaning (Pieterse, 2007). The terms international and transnational used throughout this dissertation have much narrower and more specific definitions than is conventionally used at present in either the distance or transnational education literature bases (see Table1). Thus, the specific objectives of this literature review are to: 1. trace the origin and development of distance education; 2. examine the impact that the Internet has had on distance education; 3. analyze the characteristics of distance learners; 4. synthesize the characteristics and additional complexities of transnational distance education and relevant considerations; 5. analyze the literature for recurring themes in the transnational distance education space.

Distance Education
Education, as traditionally experienced, takes place when students and teachers meet face-to-face for a set period of time typically at a fixed location. This experience is (and has been) a familiar one to nearly everyone in the world. Distance education, by contrast, is not necessarily so familiar or uniform (Allen et al., 2016;Harasim, 2000;Lee, 2017;Lowenthal, Wilson, & Parrish, 2009). While distance delivery of formal and informal learning experiences has continually been evolving and expanding and is no longer a fringe educational experience (Allen et al., 2016;Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2018;Harasim, 2000;Means et al., 2014;Ortagus, 2016;Watts, 2016), it is still a minority one to a certain degree (Allen et al., 2016).
Moreover, distance education has a complex history that lacks a standardized set of terms in both the past and present, not to mention a constantly shifting landscape of practices and models. The resulting lexical variety, at times, can make the goal of a clear and systematic discussion somewhat challenging (Larraeamendy-Joerns & Leinhardt, 2006;Lorenzo, 2015;Lowenthal et al., 2009). Furthermore, distance education can often be misperceived as a relatively new phenomenon enabled by the Internet (Lee, 2017;Lowenthal et al., 2009). Rather, distance education is a generic term that perhaps deceptively encompasses a diverse set of practices and technologies spanning over 240 years (Bower & Hardy, 2004;Casey, 2008, Lee, 2017Lowenthal et al., 2009;Saba, 2011;Sun & Chen, 2016). Characteristics of this diversity are subsequently discussed.

Definitions and Characteristics
In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Educational Research and Improvement described distance education as "the application of telecommunications and electronic devices which enable students and learners to receive instruction from some distant location" (Casey, 2008, p. 45). One notable limitation of this definition, however, is its era/technology specific frame of reference. This technological focus, however unintentional, excludes the much longer history of distance education facilitated by other means (Lee, 2017). More appropriately, Bower and Hardy (2004) discussed how the United States Distance Learning Association described distance education as "the acquisition of knowledge and skills through mediated information and instruction, encompassing all technologies and other forms of learning at a distance" (p. 5). They pointed out how this definition is technology-agnostic so as to include all forms of technology used historically (i.e., printed media and the post office), not solely the technology employed in the latter part of the 20th century or the beginning of the 21st.
Definitions of distance education have been described at length in the literature. Schlosser and Anderson (1994) provided an extensive overview in regard to what distance education is citing Perraton in 1988, Rumble in 1989, Keegan in 1988, Holmberg in 1986, and Garrison and Shale in 1987. All of the definitions from these scholars, despite their differences, described a geographical and temporal separation between learners and instructors, two-way communication between the groups, and ultimately a technology to mediate the process. These characteristics, of course, are all captured in the definition described by the United States Distance Learning Association (Bower & Hardy, 2004). Moreover, the merit of the definition can be seen when examining the development of and changes in distance education over time from a technological perspective.

Early Distance Education
Correspondence Courses The genesis of early distance courses begins with print media and the postal service. As early as 1728 in the United States, the Boston Gazette printed advertisements for distance shorthand lessons (Bower & Hardy, 2004). Formal distance education (i.e., from a university), however, is considered to have originated in Europe in Sweden in the 1830s with a university offering composition courses (Bower & Hardy, 2004). Around the same time in Germany in 1840, Charles Toussaint and Gustav Langenscheidt established distance courses in Berlin, while the Phonographic Correspondence Society in England began offering its own correspondence courses (Bower & Hardy, 2004;Lee, 2017;Schlosser & Anderson, 1994;Simonson et al., 2012). Meanwhile in the United States, the first vocational course conducted at a distance was the Pitman Shorthand training program where "self-taught secretaries would mail their exercises to the Phonographic Institute in Cincinnati, OH, and, after completing the required coursework, receive a certificate of expertise in stenographic shorthand skills" (Casey, 2008, p. 46). Distance education programs from Boston to New York ultimately came into existence providing alternative access to education, and eventually well-known American institutions of higher learning such as Illinois Wesleyan began offering bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in 1877, as did the University of Chicago shortly thereafter in 1892 (Bower & Hardy, 2004;Casey, 2008;Schlosser & Anderson, 1994). While not all of these correspondence programs lasted (for various reasons e.g., waning interest, concerns regarding quality), the utility of correspondence courses for reaching underserved or remote populations was a lasting change.
As noted earlier by Haughey et al. (2008), in addition to the challenge of providing education to remote and distributed populations in the United States, other social forces such as the Lyceum movement in 1826, the Chautauqua movement in 1873, and the Society to Encourage Studies at Home created an increasing public interest in education (Casey, 2008;Gibson, 2008;Lee, 2017;Saba, 2011). As Holmberg (1986) noted, there were numerous reasons for the proliferation of early distance courses, including the need to generally increase access to education for the betterment of society, the recognition of working adults as potential students, the need for ongoing vocational training for workers, and the desire to provide a social service to the underprivileged. Elsewhere around the world, distance education programs were implemented for similar reasons.
In Australia, for example, correspondence courses began in the "state of Victoria at [the] secondary level in 1909 and at [the] primary level in 1914 and [were] soon followed by the other states" (Stacey, 2005, p. 253). While correspondence courses were available for teachers to complete their academic credentials in 1910, Australia developed and deployed a large-scale distance education program for young learners, whereas most programs described in the literature in the late 1800s and early 1900s primarily served adult students (Stacey, 2005). In Mexico, Castañeda (2005) described the "the distribution of educational materials designed for independent study and subsequent visits by educators to students' places of residence, as in the cultural missions created in 1923 to provide service to rural professors in their own community" (p. 229). In Russia, vocational/training courses began in 1870 for workers in Moscow and St. Petersburg (Moiseeva, 2005). Even in more recent history, in nations where modern telecommunications technology or ICT infrastructure is inadequate, correspondence courses (typically in conjunction radio and/or TV broadcasting) with print materials, cassette tapes, etc., are still a viable and effective method of delivery (Simonson et al., 2012).
The literature provides ample evidence of early technological forms (i.e., asynchronous correspondence) of distance education and non-traditional student populations (e.g., women, farmers, workers, rural inhabitants) (Lee, 2017). The purposes of these early programs ran the spectrum of informal learning situations (e.g., the Lyceum and Chautauqua movements), formal yet non-academic learning (e.g., vocational training), primary and secondary school levels (e.g., Australia), to undergraduate and graduate study (e.g., Illinois Wesleyan and the University of Chicago). Correspondence courses would evolve, however, with further technological development and the subsequent advent of broadcast communications: namely the radio and soon thereafter the television.

Broadcast Courses
In the 1920s, the use of radio broadcasting marked a shift in the scope and possibilities of distance education (Casey, 2008). Live educational broadcasts could diminish the asynchronicity inherent to correspondence courses and the speed limitations of the postal service; the radio also "allowed students to hear their instructor" (Casey, 2008, p. 46). By 1921 in the United States, "educational radio licenses were granted to the University of Salt Lake City, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Minnesota" (Casey, 2008, p. 46;Saba, 2011). Elsewhere during the 1920s in the United States, "at least 176 radio stations were constructed at educational institutions" (Schlosser & Anderson, 1994, p. 4). Later by extension, television broadcasting was experimented with in the 1930s at the University of Iowa, Purdue University, and Kansas State College (Schlosser & Anderson, 1994). In 1945, Iowa State University applied "to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for an education television (ETV) license" and became "the first ETV broadcaster in the world" (Saba, 2011, p. 12).
In 1963, the FCC gave further support for broadcast education through the creation of the Instructional Television Fixed Service (ITFS) (Casey, 2008). The ITFS was a band of 20 channels made available exclusively to educational institutions to "provide a low-cost, fixed-range, subscriber-based system capable of being utilized for the distribution of broadcast courses" (Casey, 2008, p. 46). These courses became more accessible through the later development of satellite technology throughout the 1960s that ultimately became financially viable in the 1980s (Schlosser & Anderson, 1994).
México's Telesecundaria, launched in 1968, is a good example of the reach broadcast courses enabled to rural communities (Gulati, 2008). Though 50 years has passed since its founding, the Telesecundaria program still exists to this day serving students in rural communities (Mantilla Gálvez, 2018;Telesecundaria, n.d.). The widespread adoption of broadcasting technology would ultimately lay the foundation for the modern era of distance education (Bower & Hardy, 2004;Harasim, 2000;Holmberg, 1986;Lee, 2017;Moore & Kearsley, 2012).

Modern Distance Education
From the 1960s onward, open or exclusively distance universities were created.
Where correspondence courses were relatively limited in reach by the postal service and complicated by time delays, the cost of delivery, and even lost mail, the technological evolution of radio and television broadcasting marked significant changes and improvements in efficiency, presence (the degree to which students can construct meaning [cognitive] and project their identities [social]), and allowed for the combined use of print and audiovisual media (Bower & Hardy, 2004). The development of computers and networking technology in the 1980s and 1990s changed the distance education landscape with the invention and widespread adoption of the Internet (Harasim, 2000). Broadcast methods and analogue multimedia formats have not disappeared, however. Rather, they have been reinvented in the form of streaming audio-video services such as YouTube or podcasting platforms like Apple Podcasts; these "traditional" delivery methods have simply merged with (and been augmented by) modern digital systems (Moore & Kearsley, 2012). Nevertheless, computers and the Internet have changed the practice significantly (Harasim, 2000).

Computer Networked Distance Education
Harasim (2000) documented the evolution and development of communications technology from the invention of the telegraph in 1861, the telephone in 1876, the ARPANET in 1969ARPANET in , email in 1971ARPANET in , and computer conferencing technology in 1972 Universities began to augment/supplement their courses with these newer technologies.
According to Harasim (2000), the first completely online course (for adult education) was conducted in 1981, making the 1980s a practical starting point to examine the beginnings of online classes as they are known today. As Harasim (2000)  Since computer networking enabled the creation and delivery of the first fully online course, various online programs followed with networked classroom models in the K-12 sector, non-degree granting mini courses and executive education programs, online undergraduate/graduate courses, and ultimately fully accredited online degree programs by the mid 1980s (Harasim, 2000;Simonson et al., 2012). Newer asynchronous, semi synchronous, and synchronous methods of interaction, teaching, and learning became more practical (Bower & Hardy, 2004;Harasim, 2000;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Sun & Chen, 2016). The growth and development of distance programs in the 1980s was impressive since it occurred prior to the widespread use of the Internet. The subsequent global interconnection of all computer networks, which characterizes the Internet today, was profound (Harasim, 2000).
This global network has ultimately enabled not just the possibility of greater local and/or regional access to education, but potentially global educational access and opportunities for anyone, anywhere in the world. The increasingly diverse student demographics later seen in the 21st century would not be possible without the ability to transcend local boundaries (e.g., a city or state), and ultimately national borders which has been afforded by the Internet (see Dobos, 2011;Gemmell, Harrison, Clegg, & Reed, 2013;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Gunawardena, 2003;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Heffernan, Morrison, Basu, & Sweeney, 2010;Hughes, 2013;Selinger, 2004;Selwyn, 2011a, Selwyn, 2011bWilkins, 2016;Ziguras, 2008). The central meeting place for students and instructors in this interconnected digital space is the online course, though defining the online course is not a simple task (Lowenthal et al., 2009).

Online Courses
Since the networking technology and the first digital spaces of the 1980s and 1990s were not deliberately built for educational purposes, the development of virtual learning environments (VLEs) and subject-specific tools/software began in order to overcome these limitations (Harasim, 2000). VLEs evolved into complex, web-based software applications like Blackboard or Moodle which provided structured access to educational resources in digital form (e.g., pdf documents, images), audiovisual multimedia (e.g., recordings, videos), communication methods (e.g., discussion forums, messengers), and provided education-specific tools (e.g., gradebooks, rosters, etc.) (Lane, 2009). VLEs and other ancillary tools have not remained static, however.
Just as the technology used in earlier distance education practices changed over time, so too have the tools in the digital space. Earlier forms of educational technology such as audio cassettes, CDs, DVDs, and print media which facilitated aspects of early distance courses were either replaced by newer forms of educational technology, or merged with more specific computer-enabled means (Anderson, 2007;Hanna, 2003;Harasim, 2000;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Simonson et al., 2012).
The convergence of these technologies with the Internet also coincided with the evolution of web-based technologies. These tools have evolved from static content delivery to dynamic user content creation, in addition to newer ways of interaction and participation in online communities (Anderson, 2007;Harasim, 2000;Lafuente, 2017;Moore & Kearsley, 2012). This paradigmatic shift is referred to as the second generation of the Web or Web 2.0 (Anderson, 2007), and these tools are commonly used today (Lafuente, 2017). The Internet and tools within a broader ICT ecosystem have continued to change in markedly different ways from the days of Web 2.0. An emerging paradigm is present and characterized by technology that is "continually assessing and capturing the user's profile, and the information produced and shared on the web" that is adaptive, personalized, and semantic (Lafuente, 2017, p. 73). Lafuente (2017) described the semantic aspect of the third generation of the Web, or Web 3.0, by being "smart" or intelligent. It is important to note, however, that the delivery technology is but one aspect of distance education that has changed during this time period. Harasim (2000) described the emergence of two types of online classrooms (i.e., collaborative/interactive and the traditional didactic lecture style), and these have also continued to evolve and change in response to technological affordances and related pedagogical changes (Harasim, 2000). While we may use the generic term "online class" for the sake of simplicity or efficiency, it overlooks a significant amount of variety and nuance (Lowenthal et al., 2009). Moreover, transnational education delivery modes can add more complexity to the discussion on what an online class is or is not (see Francois, 2016). Prior to adding an additional layer of complexity from the transnational education space, a discussion of the potential richness of online class formats follows.
Online Format Variety Harasim (2000) distinguished online education in three distinct modes: adjunct, mixed, and totally online. Similarly, over the last 13 years, Allen et al. (2016) and the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) have categorized online courses in three distinct types (plus the default face-to-face class). The OLC's categories are based on an arguably arbitrary percentage of content/activity that occurs online. They are labeled: web-enhanced, blended, and fully online courses (Allen et al., 2016). Blended learning (BL), however, further complicates the discussion on online class formats since BL also encompasses a wide range of modes or models which can facilitate various aspects of class (Horn & Staker, 2014;Sethy, 2008). Sethy (2008) described how "virtual classroom education which is considered as residential education is based on synchronic and verbal interaction, while distance education is mainly realized in asynchronic [modes]", but carefully noted how "BL [blended learning] blurs these sorts of education" (p. 34). While online learning may often be perceived as a homogenous concept, we would be wise to avoid such oversimplification (Lee, 2017;Lowenthal et al., 2009).
There are multiple attempts in the literature at conceptualizing and characterizing forms of online classes and blended learning, three of which are outlined in Table 2 and 3. The landscape is so large that no one model can completely encompass the diversity of online learning scenarios, as well as fairly account for differences in corporate, vocational, K-12, and higher education sectors (Hanna, 2003;Horn & Staker, 2014;Lowenthal et al., 2009;Waha & Davis, 2014). Therefore, the models presented here are to serve as examples of the complexity and variability inherent in online learning and the online course, rather than as a comprehensive overview. The complexity of online classes and blended learning approaches will be added to by an additional layer of transnational delivery modes (see Table 2). Course that blends online and face-toface delivery. Substantial proportion of the content is delivered online, typically uses online discussions, and typically has a reduced number of face-to-face meetings.

Totally Online
Networking as the primary teaching medium for an entire course or program.
Online 80+% online A course where most or all of the content is delivered online. Typically has no face-to-face meetings.

Rotation Model
Students rotate on a fixed schedule between learning modalities, one of which is online. 1. Station Rotation -classroom-based stations in which whole-class, groups or individual students rotate. All students rotate through all stations.
2. Lab Rotation -campus-based stations in which whole-class, groups or individual students rotate. At least one lab is predominately online.
3. Flipped Classroom -students rotate between face-to-face guided practice in the classroom and online delivery of content from a remote location.
4. Individual Rotation -classroom-based stations in which students rotate based on individual need. Not all students will rotate through all stations.
Flex Model Most content is delivered through the Internet or online, and students move between online and face-to-face based on individual need. For example, the face-to-face interactions may include targeted interventions for tutoring or some kind of small group instruction or project.

Self-Blend Model
Students self-blend their curriculum by taking one or more courses completely online, through a supplemental program for example. The online courses may be supported by an on-site school lab.

Enriched Virtual Model
Students meet a face-to-face instructor for a course or a subject a few times weekly or monthly, but otherwise complete course work remotely (i.e., online).

Online Interaction Modes
While the experience of face-to-face classes tends to be a relatively uniform experience from person to person, the literature shows that a far greater range of circumstances can potentially be met with various online course formats, transnational delivery modes (generally where learners are located in a country that is different from where the degree is awarded from, see Table 5), and blended learning concepts. One omission in the modes and/or class models from Harasim (2000), Allen et al. (2016), and Horn and Staker (2014), however, is the type of interaction/communication (i.e., synchronous, semi synchronous, and asynchronous) utilized to facilitate the class. It is important to note that "although asynchronous [interaction] has been the primary method for interacting in the online setting, technological advancements have made it possible for students and instructors to interact in a more face-to-face like setting" (Watts, 2016, p. 30).
Broadcast and online courses have been viewed the same way despite the availability of technology that can enable more synchronous or semi-synchronous methods of interaction (Anderson, 2007;Casey, 2008;Watts, 2016). This distinction between interaction modes is not to imply that one method is superior or inferior, but rather that each interaction mode can be effective when appropriately applied (Watts, 2016). Furthermore, other contextual dimensions (e.g., formality, setting, synchronicity, pacing) and course characteristics (e.g., teacher and learner roles, class size, learner demographics) can help frame our understanding of the complexity of online education (Lowenthal et al., 2009 would satisfactorily address the "perfect" enrollment number in an online class, the ranges presented by Tomei (2004), Orellana (2006), and Taft et al. (2011) are not notably different from traditional face-to-face course sizes. By contrast, various forms of telecourses (e.g., live broadcast, taped broadcast, videotape) saw enrollment numbers range from "typical" class sizes from 20-40 students, to more than 700 per class in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s in the United States (Allen, Bourhis, Burrell, & Mabry, 2002). While the utilization of telecourses has been supplanted largely by online courses, there are cases today such as the Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU) in India where telecourses still serve millions of students (Panda, 2005;Panda & Mishra, 2007;Subba Rao, 2006). Nevertheless, Taft et al., (2011) noted that there is theoretically no upper limit in online classes which take an objectivist approach (i.e., one-way interaction). The relatively new phenomenon of Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs is demonstrative of this theoretically limitless state, although MOOCS are not necessarily limited to being objectivist.

MOOCS
MOOCs are relatively new in the domain of distance and higher education and are among more recent creative ways to reduce common access barriers to higher education through tuition-free (not necessarily administrative cost free) class models (see Stoessel, Ihme, Barbarino, Fisseler & Stürmer, 2015;UoP, n.d.). Sharrock (2015) noted how the New York Times described 2012 as the year of the MOOC where it was predicted that MOOCs would disrupt the traditional higher education paradigm and be an end to university campuses as we know them. The open, global access to high quality, university education from renowned institutions would democratize education and act as a catalyst for change (de Freitas, Morgan, & Gibson, 2015;Christensen et al, 2013;Glass et al., 2016;Major & Blackmon, 2016). However, this major paradigmatic shift has not, at least as of late 2018, changed the landscape of higher education significantly or disrupted higher education as originally touted (Christensen et al., 2013;Schmid, Manturuk, Simpkins, Goldwasser, & Whitfield, 2015). The theoretical application of MOOCs and their actual uses have been going through a period of trial and error (Sharrock, 2015). MOOCs are continuing to be developed and their precise place in the world of higher education is still being articulated. Furthermore, like online courses, MOOCs can take a number of formats. Some formats described in the literature include xMOOCs, cMOOCs, and pMOOCS, in addition to various hybrid formats (Fidalgo-Blanco, Sein-Echaluce, & García-Peñalvo, 2016;Lowenthal, Snelson, & Perkins, 2018).
The difference between xMOOCs and cMOOCs is similar to the original two different philosophical underpinnings of online courses that Harasim (2000) described in the 1980s (i.e., collaborative/interactive and the traditional didactic lecture style). Lowenthal et al. (2018) noted that at least one way scholars have differentiated MOOCs is by examining the role of instructor in them. For example, in xMOOCS, instructors serve a traditional didactic role and such courses are "instructivist and individualist, use classic e-learning platforms and are based on resources" while cMOOCs position the instructor as a guide and the courses are "connectivist and are based on social learning, cooperation and use of web 2.0" (Fidalgo-Blanco et al., 2016, p. 14). pMOOCs are "problem" oriented where instructors guide students in addressing or solving a particular issue . While three common MOOC formats have been presented here, there are other possible categorizations described in the literature (see Lowenthal et al., 2018). In addition to the numerous potential formats of MOOCs, there are also many potential uses. These cases range from the specific usage of a MOOC for the replacement of large introductory college lecture courses (Blackmon, 2016) to subsequent credit validation for use in degree-granting programs (Sharrock, 2015).
Other issues related to legal, ethical, and privacy concerns still need to be fully addressed given the massive scale and status of participants, and whether or not they have the same rights/protections/expectations that "official" university students do (Hutchens & Hulbert, 2016). Many MOOC instructors also have little online teaching experience prior to facilitating MOOCs . Moreover, proverbial best practices still need to be developed and refined in so far as course designs, development, and implementation methods are concerned (Manallack & Yuriev, 2016;Ossiannilsson, Altinay, & Altinay, 2016;Park, Jung, & Reeves, 2015). Some instructors have also expressed various concerns such as the quality of MOOCs given the massive scale and difficulty in providing feedback to individual participants . Growing pains and trial and error aside, there are trends in MOOCs that are noteworthy.

Notable MOOC Trends
Jordan (2014) analyzed a variety of publicly available MOOC data which suggested that the average MOOC enrollment is around 43,000 students, while the higher end of enrollment can be in the hundreds of thousands (Jordan, 2014;Jordan, 2015;Onah et al., 2014). While course attrition/retention is a complex topic, MOOCs tend to have comparatively low completion rates around 10% or less (Jordan, 2014).
Nonetheless, it should be emphasized that the complex interplay of student motivations for taking MOOCs (e.g., casual interest, novelty, lifelong learning, skill improvement), the intentional absence of gatekeeping or prerequisites, and the massive scale of delivery (i.e., tens of thousands of students per course) requires a highly nuanced analysis. The large attrition rates alone are not necessarily an indicator of the relative quality, success, or failure of MOOCs (Glass et al., 2016;Jordan, 2014Jordan, , 2015Means et al., 2014;Semenova & Rudakova, 2016).
For example, if a typical MOOC services roughly 50,000 students and only 10% successfully complete it, 5,000 students have still benefited from having taken the course (Glass et al., 2016;Jordan, 2014Jordan, , 2015. The course completion number for a single MOOC is still far greater than any typical face-to-face or online class can achieve (cf. Taft et al., 2011;Tomei, 2004;Orellana, 2006). Furthermore, the motives of major universities in offering MOOCs may be more for marketing purposes in order to attract students to university programs after the fact by virtue of brand name recognition, rather than just an altruistic desire to provide open learning opportunities (Glass et al., 2016;Howarth, D'Alessandro, Johnson, & White, 2016).
From a demographic perspective, Glass et al. (2016) referred to MOOCs as "masculine" open online courses in light of the overwhelming gender disparity among participants. Some surveys indicated that not only are the instructors disproportionately male, but so too are students (Glass et al., 2016). This gender imbalance contrasts with enrollment trends in distance education that indicate a slightly higher percentage of female students over all (Christensen et al., 2013;Glass et al., 2016), as well as with face-to-face education (Hoyt & Simon, 2016). Other demographic trends tend to portray the typical MOOC participant as relatively young, western, English-speaking, and male, as evidenced in data from courses from high profile providers such as HarvardX, MITx, edX, and Coursera (Christensen et al., 2013;Glass et al., 2016;Nesterko et al., 2013;Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016).
While this student profile can be correlated with the geographic location (i.e., North America) and linguistic profile (i.e., English-speaking) of these providers (Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016), the geographic data from these studies (i.e., Christensen et al., 2013;Glass et al., 2016;Nesterko et al., 2013;Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016) suggests that this relationship is not necessarily the case. In the data from edX, Coursera, and HarvardX, roughly two-thirds of total participants were located outside of the United States, with one-third clustering in the European region, and the remaining third distributed throughout other countries/regions (Christensen et al., 2013;Glass et al., 2016 Despite being available freely or at relatively low cost, MOOCs largely reach the "most motivated and affluent learners" in their respective countries (Glass et al., 2016, p. 44). As noted by Pearce and Rice (2013), "demographic differences, access, skills, interests, and infrastructure all represent kinds of costs and barriers" (p. 722).
The massive scale and increased access to MOOCs may unintentionally exacerbate a socioeconomic and related digital divide around the world (Glass et al., 2016;Pearce & Rice, 2013). The history and development of distance education shows a field that has evolved from encompassing relatively simple methods and technology (i.e., correspondence courses, print media, transmission models of information) into an umbrella term that is deceptively simple despite increasing methodological and pedagogical complexity tied to parallel advancements in technology (Lee, 2017;Lorenzo, 2015;Lowenthal et al., 2009;Tracey & Ritchey, 2005;Watts, 2016).
With so many new students gaining access to online courses, it is worth examining and reexamining who distance students are in the 21st century (Jones, 2001).

Distance Students: A Complex Portrait
The academic literature is plentiful and varied when it comes to the study of distance students, their salient characteristics, and the relationship of those characteristics to online courses success in particular. Current research spans virtually all fields and levels of study from secondary schools through graduate studies (Means et al., 2014). Dabbagh (2007) suggested that a definitive archetype of distance students only exist in simple terms. Misperceptions of distance students can also be compounded to some degree by national or homogenous frames of reference (Gunawardena, 2003(Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Jayatilleke & Gunawardena, 2016). While distance students do share a broad range of demographic and situational characteristics on the whole, they are still heterogenous (Dabbagh, 2007;Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016).
Distance students also increasingly present the researcher with diverse educational, cultural, and situational backgrounds (Aman, 2013;Dabbagh, 2007;Dobos, 2011;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Lorenzo, 2015;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016). However, prior to exploring the limitations and/or gaps in the literature regarding distance students in a transnational context, a more generic view of distance students is presented.

Ideal versus Actual Online Students
An analysis of the academic literature yields a profile of the successful online student as one with strong emotional intelligence, self-awareness, self-regulation abilities, self-discipline, time management knowledge, organizational skills, interpersonal communication adeptness, technology fluency, and an internal locus of control (Colorado & Eberle, 2010;Dabbagh, 2007;Glass et al., 2016;Kauffman, 2015;Means et al., 2014).
While such ideal online students do in fact exist (Colorado & Eberle;Dobos, 2011), many real-world factors and conditions limit the applicability of this profile (Means et al., 2014). Means et al. (2014) noted that distance education is often paradoxical in this regard; the students who need distance courses (or might benefit the most from them) can often be the most ill-suited for the conditions, demands, rigors, and requirements of learning at a distance. Moreover, distance courses can often be a second or last chance for some students (Means et al., 2014). In other cases, distance courses may be the only realistic option available given local course availability, geographic location, or other cultural, political, or socioeconomic factors (Dobos, 2011;Gunawardena, 2003;Hewling, 2005;Means et al., 2014;Selwyn, 2011aSelwyn, , 2011b. Aragon and Johnson (2008) conducted a study in the American Midwest examining the "difference in demographic characteristics, enrollment (hours enrolled), academic readiness, and self-directed learning readiness between students who complete and do not complete online courses" (p. 147). They noted that students had a greater chance of completing online courses if they were enrolled in more hours. Moreover, they found that the higher a student's prior GPA, the greater chance of completing the course.
For working adults and students with limited or no higher education backgrounds, however, the effects of these conditions were more prominent. Similarly, Hachey, Wladis, and Conway (2013) investigated whether or not it was worth restricting access to online courses based on prior GPAs given high online course attrition rates as a preventative measure. They concluded, however, that the cut off GPA (3.0) would exclude the majority of eligible community college students in their study and run contrary to the goal of education access, though such a measure would reduce the attrition rate. Hachey et al. (2013) clearly noted that any policy deliberately limiting educational access, particularly for public universities and community colleges, would be paradoxical if not impractical. Roblyer and Davis (2008) built a predictive model of success based on data from a virtual K-12 school and argued for increased and more targeted support systems rather than restriction, while Liu, Gomez, and Yen (2009) suggested the need for early identification of at-risk students coupled with effective intervention programs. Prior familial educational attainment often showed a strong a relationship to subsequent education success (Davis-Keane, 2005), and similarly prior online course experience displays a similar correlation (Hachey, Wladis, & Conway, 2012). This paradoxical situation is yet another example of the challenges that many distance students face (Means et al., 2014).

Prior Experience, Expectations, and Motivation
Dumais, Rizzuto, Cleary, and Dowden (2013) examined the educational generation status (i.e., first time college students in a family versus students with parents who attended university to any degree of completion) to better understand "information about the individual's educational history, online learning experiences, access to educational support services, work-family demands, and employment attitudes and perceptions" for students in Louisiana (p. 103). They found that first generation adult online students were likely to cite their workplaces as obstacles to balancing school and life commitments, in addition to interactional difficulties with online course instructors.
From a different perspective, Kelly and Schorger (2003) conducted a study on rural students in Cyprus and southern Colorado/New Mexico in an international/transnational program for special education teachers that exposed a varied set of computer literacy skills among participants. That is, students came to class with different levels of technology skills, but there were notable differences between students from families with prior academic experience and consequent online performance and successful course completion. Kelly and Schorger (2003) reported that links between prior experience and subsequent success are logical, however, Hachey et al.'s (2012) investigation highlighted more nuance with the link between prior online course experience and online course success. They found that attrition rates in online courses were markedly higher in the first semester of the academic year versus the second, suggesting that the first semester served as a period of acclimatization. This particular nuance furthered the discussion by recognizing that a lack of familiarity with distance courses and/or online learning was an additional factor that could be addressed proactively. Such difficulties or obstacles are not necessarily limited to the inexperienced learner, however.
Tyler- Smith (2006) argued that even for mature, adult learners, their first experience in distance education can result in cognitive overload, serving as a possible cause for attrition. And even if one has prior online course experience, it may not be experience with the same type of online course, since they vary dramatically in type, size, purpose, formality, synchronicity, etc. (Lowenthal et al., 2009). Nevertheless, the resulting implication was that online courses should be designed in a way that initially reduces or limits cognitive load, and then scales up the load as the course progresses. He suggested numerous load-scaling interventions (e.g., face-to-face orientations, technology workshops, early course or module access, short entry courses in a program, minimal tasks early on), as well as ongoing student support and intervention strategies. While helping students gain experience in online courses may minimize course difficulties and improve attrition/retention rates, students may not have realistic expectations of the intrinsic workload or degree of difficulty.
In rural Wales, Packham, Jones, Miller, and Thomas (2004) provided questionnaires to students who withdrew from their distance program in order to develop a better sense of the reasons underlying the withdrawals. They ultimately suggested that some students did not have realistic expectations of the time needed to do the course while balancing demands from employers and/or families. Their analysis resulted in eight reasons for withdrawal, which fall either into an extrinsic or intrinsic category.
Ultimately, both extrinsic and intrinsic factors could be addressed with increased and/or better student support. Similar to the recommendations of Tyler- Smith (2006), Packham et al. (2004 suggested interventions such as orientation, training, and trial/sample courses before students actually enroll in courses. Realistic expectations notwithstanding, student motivation also plays a key role in course success. Yoo and Huang (2013) conducted a qualitative study investigating the motivational factors and engagement levels of adult graduate students and their online courses. The findings from their study showed that women had higher degrees of intrinsic motivation, and that "[p]articipants in their twenties, thirties, and forties reported a higher level of relevance in their short-term and long-term extrinsic motivation than the rest of the age groups" (p. 160). They ultimately suggested that "[o]nline degree programs targeting adult learners must incorporate workplace related considerations and career development opportunities in order to fully engage online adult learners before, during, and after the participation in the degree programs" (p. 160). Broadly speaking, prior experience, accurate expectations, and intrinsic motivation contribute to the complex profile of online students. Socioeconomic status, as I now show, complicates this picture even further (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Dabbagh, 2007;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Hewling, 2005, Jones, 2001, Lorenzo, 2015Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Wilkins, 2016).

Socioeconomic Factors
Kaupp (2012) explored the implications of ethnic/racial minority status with Latino online students in the United States. He found that "[i]n most cases, students pay a penalty for enrolling in online classes, and this penalty is [relatively] larger for Latino students than for White students" (p. 15). This penalty (as described by Kaupp) is indicative of not only socioeconomic differences between students, instructors, and the academy, but the intersection of these factors. By extension, this disparity may exist for other minority groups due to similar social forces being in effect, and heterogeneous worldviews (Aman, 2013;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Kaupp, 2012;Salvo, Welch, & Shelton, 2019;Smith & Ayers, 2006). Xu and Jaggars (2013) investigated how well students adapted to online learning with a dataset containing information on student performance from over 500,000 courses taken by over 40,000 community college and vocational students in Washington state.
They suggested that, while overall for many students there is a decrease in online student performance when compared to face-to-face courses, certain groups were more at risk for lower performance. This included racial minorities (African Americans in this particular study), younger students, male students, and students with a relatively low prior GPA.
These results echo the findings and suspicions of Kaupp and are still found at present (see Salvo et al., 2019).
In Germany, Stoessel et al. (2015) conducted a quantitative study with data from the FernUniversität that similarly identified high and low categories for risk based on demographic characteristics. The high-risk group included those who were "full-time employed students, migrant students, and female students" (p. 242) whereas the low risk group contained students who were older (i.e., 50 years and above) and parents. The main finding was that "some sociodemographic student groups face, in fact, a higher risk for attrition from distance education programs than others" (p. 244).

Summary
Although distance education has been labeled and viewed as a democratizing force in education (Bower & Hardy, 2004;Casey, 2008;Glass et al., 2016), the online learning landscape is not a neutral space or level playing field for all participants (Aman, 2013;Glass et al., 2016;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Means et al., 2014;Pearce & Rice, 2013;Stoessel et al., 2015). While achievement gaps were explored here with research largely from the United States, the greater attrition rates and disadvantages for minority students may also be amplified in multicultural, polycultural, and transnational educational settings (Aman, 2013;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Hoare, 2013;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009;Stoessel et al., 2015). On one hand, the literature contributing to the profile of online learners is helpful in outlining broad strokes of student features and characteristics, but on the other, it also shows the limitations of single/national frames of reference, especially when importing and applying the paradigms of western educational values and traditions into non-western contexts (Gunawardena, 2014;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008). Thus, any discussion on distance education and online students should involve a transnational education perspective.

Transnational Education
While the definition of distance education was discussed and defined earlier in this review by the United States Distance Learning Association as "the acquisition of knowledge and skills through mediated information and instruction, encompassing all technologies and other forms of learning at a distance" (Bower & Hardy, 2004, p. 5), this definition does not explicitly address the conditions of distance education in a transnational context. There are numerous reasons, both historically and currently, that are responsible for migration, emigration, and immigration in the forms of military postings, missionary work, overseas corporate assignments, international education, selfinitiated expatriation, or marriage, to list but a few (Froese, 2012;Jon et al., 2014;Jun & Gentry, 2005;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). Moreover, there are less benign reasons that also cause the movement of people such as military conflicts, invasions, civil wars, natural disasters, or socio economic and political crises (Dobos, 2011;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009;Selwyn, 2011a). However, the Internet has unbound the individual from any particular geographic location. Students, instructors, and even the academy are not necessarily confined to a single geographic location (Garret, 2003;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016). Students now have the option to avoid the costs and difficulties of relocation and can still attend an educational program as a matter of choice (Hewling, 2005;Gunawardena, 2003).
The intersection of these circumstances is evidenced by the formation of transnational cultures that are not organic to any one place (Dobos, 2011;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008 (Seol & Skrentny, 2009), or the Zainichi Koreans in Japan (Lee & Tanaka, 2018). Transnational cultures are characterized by an interconnected, close, and constant contact with their "home" cultures by means of modern ICT and transportation technology (Guo, 2015;Pieterse, 2007), as well as fluid identity between host and heritage cultures (Lee & Tanaka, 2018). Earlier immigrant communities, by contrast, had one-way, fixed journeys marked by a "sharp and definitive break from their ancestral homelands" (Guo, 2015, p. 7). Such complex liminal spaces also create new challenges when conceptualizing the situations that students can exist in (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Harrison et al., 2018;Dobos, 2011;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016). Academic institutions have long made distinctions between national and international students in the student body for various practical, logistical, and legal purposes, but this traditional dichotomy is inadequate in modern face-to-face and distance educational settings (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Harrison et al., 2018;Dobos, 2011;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016). Rensimer (2016) critiqued, he overlapping language of all things international-international students and international institutions in (inter)national spaces-appears to have made the term all but redundant as a useful research analytic in a globalizing era" (p. 79). Moreover, the distinction between being an international distance student versus a transnational one is unclear in the literature (Kosmützky & Putty, 2016). While a uniform consensus does not exist in regard to transnational and adult education policy (Knight, 2016;Milana, 2012), there is a general consensus on transnational education delivery modes and sub formats.
These delivery modes and sub formats, like well-established blended learning models or common online class formats (Table 2; Table 3), provide some insight into the complexity in the transnational education space. This insight is especially useful when these modes and sub formats overlap/merge with the diverse practices of distance education. However, just as it was necessary to follow the lineage of distance education in order to better understand how computers and the Internet have enabled a variety of online courses formats, it is equally necessary to understand what transnational education is, and how it is uniquely manifested in various delivery modes (Francois, 2016).
Definitions and Characteristics Garrett (2003) wrote that borderless higher education "refers to the crossing various kinds of 'borders' -geographical, sectoral and conceptual" (p. 113). McBurnie and Ziguras (2001) noted that a hallmark of transnational education is when "learners are located in a country different from the one where the awarding institution is based" (p. 86). The Global Alliance for Transnational Education also echoed this geographic requirement (GATE, 1997). Nevertheless, all of these definitions are vague since the crossing-of-borders can happen in numerous ways. Adding to the difficulty of discussing transnational education is the lack of consistency between terms, definitions, and usage which vary based on the educational service provider or the students attending it (Caruana & Montgomery, 2015;Knight, 2016;Wilkins, 2016). Francois (2016), however, outlined a fairly comprehensive overview which is provided in Table 5.
Francois (2016) also provided additional (and more specific) definitions from the Asia-Pacific European Cooperation (APEC) describing a situation "in which the learners are located in a country different from the one where the awarding institution is based" (p. 3). UNESCO and the OECD defined transnational education as when "the teachers, student, programme, institution/provider or course materials cross the national jurisdictional border" (Francois, 2016, p. 4). The British Council defined it as when "students study towards a foreign qualification without leaving their home country" (Francois, 2016, p. 4). Dobos (2011) cited the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) when "programs/courses that are delivered/assessed by an accredited/approved/recognized provider in a country other than Australia, where delivery includes a face to face component" (p. 19). By extension, it is easy to see how distance education can also fall into the realm of transnational education as any given education program, its resources, students, and faculty can all cross borders electronically (Singh et al., 2012). Physical or digital cross-border movement is not necessarily all that characterizes transnational education, however.
Mason (as cited in Selinger, 2004), in a 1999 keynote address at the National University Telecommunication Network Conference by contrast, viewed transnational education more stringently with five distinct components: • students distributed over more than two continents; • a deliberate focus on marketing to and enrolling students abroad; • a truly transnational curriculum unique to a given program; • robust institutional and technological support structures designed around a global student body; • operations at a scale with the number of transnational programs greater than one, with more than one curriculum area (i.e., not just education or science), with more than 100 students.
For Mason, transnational education requires more than just the mechanics of physical or digital cross-border movement to be fully realized, and his criteria are both a valid and valuable critique on what it may mean for a program to truly be transnational. Knight (2016) argued that an overlooked nuance in transnational education is "whether the TNE [transnational education] program involves collaboration between a foreign and local provider" versus "situations where only facilities are provided by a host country HEI [higher education institute] or organization" (p. 38). The same advice that Lowenthal et al. (2009) offered about not allowing a simplified discourse to affect (i.e., oversimplify) our perceptions of online courses is equally valuable and warranted in the transnational context as well. Not all transnational programs and course modes are the same despite the common thread of physical or digital cross-border movement. Knight's (2016) collaborative factor is but one example that illustrates the push-pull between generalizations, particular situations, and nuance. One area of transnational education that is robust, however, are the modes and sub formats that enable transnational programs.

Modes of Delivery
Since distance education requires some form of technology to mediate the process, it comes as no surprise that Francois (2016) classified all methods of distance education, from correspondence, broadcast (radio, television, satellite), and online courses as potential enablers of transnational education. However, the Internet has acted as a catalyst and enabler of transnational education in ways and scales that are fundamentally different prior to the Internet's existence (Andrews & Tynan, 2010). The emergence of international distance student enrollment, the phenomenon of transnational and expatriate students (Stewart, 2017), "home" students abroad (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017), and the staggering number of globally distributed students that enrolled in MOOCs is arguably indicative of this change. For example, there can be more students enrolled in a single MOOC (see Jordan, 2014, Onah et al., 2014, from all over the world (see Christensen, 2013;Glass et al., 2016;Nesterko et al., 2013), than an entire brick-and-mortar university will enroll on a yearly basis.
Ultimately, the key take-away from Francois (2016) is that from the perspective of transnational education, distance education is simply a part of the family. Francois (2016) outlined various ways that an institution of higher learning can establish a physical presence in a country abroad which characterizes in-country delivery modes, whereas the various blended transnational modes combine aspects of both in-country delivery and a mediating technology, as well as in-country delivery and the subsequent physical movement of students or faculty across borders. An overview of the variety of potential transnational delivery modes is presented in Table 5.  Table 5 Overview

Mode Format Characteristics Source
Consecutive Degrees students earn an initial degree in one country (e.g., an Associate's degree) and earn an additional, consecutive degree in the other country (e.g., a Bachelor's degree), or a graduate certificate in the home country fulfills portions of a Master's degree abroad Singapore (see Dobos, 2011) to list but a few. While the variety of delivery methods presented above in Table 6 may seem overwhelming with seemingly trivial differences, the outline is meant to bring the complexity of partnership agreements, local/foreign accreditation standards, and government regulatory compliance to the foreground. The delivery modes simply represent a number of creative responses to meet these diverse educational scenarios.

Diverse Global Circumstances
Distance education has often been advertised as a practical solution for providing students with flexible education options by enabling the ability to learn anytime, anywhere, at one's own pace (Bower & Hardy, 2004;Casey, 2008;Dobos, 2011;Lee, 2017;Saba, 2011;Simonson et al., 2012;Sun & Chen, 2016). Hewling (2005) noted this prevailing idea, but also suggested that at the very least on "a broader level, diversely located students spread nationally, or internationally, may be able to attend programs previously only accessible to students willing and able to accept the disruption of physical relocation" (p. 337). For example, even K-12 international schools can be characterized by student mobility or institutional/instructor mobility (Bunnell, Fertig, & James, 2016). Nevertheless, such geographic mobility is not always so straightforward.
While large segments of the population may live on continental landmasses both geographically near and far from the university, Singh et al. (2012) highlighted students from the South Pacific region who live across small island chains that can be "separated by vast expanses of ocean" and where "enormous distances between islands [sic] nations have made higher education less accessible" (p. 71), and may necessitate island hopping as a method of commuting.
The notion of convenience and flexibility is not necessarily the only appeal of distance education (Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Pyvis, 2011;Selwyn, 2011a), or transnational education (Selwyn, 2011a). There are other more contextually pertinent reasons that draw students to distance education beyond the benign idea of anywhere, anytime learning. Moreover, Selwyn (2011a) cautioned that there is a "need for educators, educationalists and policymakers alike to remain mindful of the limitations of globalised distance education in the twenty-first century" (p. 381). Rather than enabling flexible learning, participants in this study highlighted a "discrete, private and often socially empty enterprise" that necessitated rigid structures and routines (p. 381), and ultimately was more challenging than anticipated. Nevertheless, there are multiple reasons that make distance learning an appealing prospect beyond the notions of flexibility or convenience (Pyvis, 2011).

Socio Political Circumstances
Selwyn (2011a) noted that there can be comparatively simple reasons that influence the decision to enroll in distance programs such as the lack of local educational opportunities. For example, students in the Caribbean wishing to enroll in a law program often could not take classes because they would often be cancelled due to low enrollment.
He also highlighted more complex cases of ethnic discrimination for Serbians living in Bosnia, or the preference/privilege granted to ethnic Malay students applying to university over non-Malay minority groups in Malaysia. Even in the United States, certain religious/theological students sought courses related to theological matters that were not viewed as having "undesirable religious agendas in their curricula" (Selwyn, 2011a, p. 374). Selwyn also brought attention to the circumstances of the nomadic professional by highlighting an interview with a student who stated: I actually live all throughout the year in three different places between Gabon, Liberia and Greece….At one point I had planned on going back to the States and pursuing a master's or even a PhD but then I met my husband [in Liberia] and life continued here and realised I was not going to obtain that goal. (Selwyn, 2011a, p. 373) A core characteristic of this nomadic, transnational life compared to working professionals with fixed residency is its "irregular circumstances" (p. 373). Since geographic mobility has been increasing around the world due to technological change and development (Furham, 2012;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008), these circumstances may not be so "irregular" anymore.
As pointed out earlier by Gunawardena and LaPointe (2008), we are moving toward being a global or planetary community that is "evidenced by transnational cultures that are not wholly based in any single place" (p. 52). This trend can also be referred to as glocalization which is characterized by the "blending and connecting local and global contexts while maintaining the significant contributions of the different cultural communities and contexts" (Patel & Lynch, 2013, p. 223). Nevertheless, even without such benign or negative circumstances affecting student motivation to pursue distance education opportunities, differences in geographic origin may indicate other challenges like the lack of relevant ICT skills and knowledge (Aman, 2013;Gunawardena, 2014;Pearce & Rice, 2013;Pyvis, 2011). The umbrella term used to denote such potential difficulties is the digital divide (Aman, 2013;Habib et al., 2014;Pearce & Rice, 2013).

The Digital Divide
When using a VLE in an onsite program, Habib et al. (2014) noted and described different usage patterns among international students. They labeled two distinct behavioral trends as the Global South and Global North. In their definition "students from the Global South have probably experienced the so-called digital divide, a divide in terms of economy, access, knowledge and power" and "are lagging far behind the North when it comes to technological infrastructure and penetration of personal technology" (Habib et al., 2014, p. 197). Some students, by virtue of their geographic origin and socioeconomic status, may lack the necessary skills to effectively use modern educational tools required in distance education, and they may struggle to successfully navigate the cultural paradigms underpinning these delivery tools (Aman, 2013;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Pearce & Rice, 2013). Similarly in Korea, Lee (2011) conducted a quantitative study where international students described different role expectations of the online teacher compared to their Korean peers. He noted that Korean universities (among others) had not paid much attention to the socioeconomic and/or cultural factors of "international" students until relatively recently. Given the greater breadth of student circumstances and educational scenarios in transnational educational settings, university administration and faculty should take these considerations into account, and even take on new roles and responsibilities.

Mindfulness
While it may be appealing for faculty to want to teach online or in transnational environments (or both), the transition from a familiar frame-of-reference to a transnational one can be difficult (Leung & Waters, 2017 students' written or oral proficiency in a second (L2) or third language (L3), impeding communication (Dobos, 2011). More problematic, however, are difficulties encountered as the result of heterogeneous worldviews and cultures coming into contact (Dobos, 2011;Gunawardena, 2014;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2009;Patel & Lynch, 2013). Dobos (2011) reported that faculty felt it was difficult to adapt their teaching methods to meet the expectations of students. And such difficulty may be perpetuated by the assumption that faculty and students will automatically adapt successfully to a multicultural environment in a national setting (Hall, 1959;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009;Smith & Ayers, 2006), let alone a transnational context (Hoare, 2013;Leung & Waters, 2017). While there are indeed students and faculty who have little to no trouble with successful acculturation to different teaching/learning methods and environments, tools, and role expectations by making various accommodations (Sadykova & Meskill, 2019), it is difficult to predict (Gunawardena, 2014), and is often a highly individualized response (Furham, 2012;Gunawardena, 2014;Jun & Gentry, 2005). One consequence of cultural insensitivity (or the lack of awareness thereof) can be student harm.
Hoare (2013) noted that "reference points were at best negatively skewed and at worst ethnocentric and ill-informed" for some of the instructors in her study (p. 564).
Some intercultural faux pas (e.g., different role expectations, differing perceptions of time) were expected as par for the course, but other more serious intercultural transgressions (e.g., discussion prompts about topical but controversial topics, ethnocentrically informed practices, intercultural power imbalances) simply went unnoticed (Gunawardena, 2003(Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Harrison et al., 2018;Hoare, 2013;Lee, 2011;Patel & Lynch, 2013). These types of situational challenges may be exacerbated when instructors and administrators also experience adverse professional treatment by the home institution, a burdensome load of administrative responsibilities, the need to create new teaching materials for local effectiveness, as well as determining how strictly to adhere to a standardized curriculum that may not be effective in a different setting (Dobos, 2011).

Summary
To summarize, the motivations and circumstances that lead to transnational distance education are varied and complex. For some students, the allure of flexible and convenient learning opportunities may be fulfilled, but this cliché in distance learning is not globally applicable, nor necessarily the most salient reason that draws students to choose distance education. The addition of more diverse sociopolitical, economic, linguistic, and cultural conditions requires that institutions, instructors, and students be mindful of how these complex circumstances and relationships differ from their own worldviews, and that students varying from those default perspectives does not equate to being wrong or less in any way (Aman, 2013;Dervin & Hahl, 2013;Germain-Rutherford & Kerr, 2008;Furham, 2012;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Hall, 1959;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009;Pyvis, 2011;Sadykova & Meskill, 2019;Shi-Xu, 2001). And while this mindfulness is equally true for students, the power imbalance between the instructor and student can make the interaction challenging since "[i]ntercultural communication is situated in the context of imbalance in power and inequality" such as between the East and the West, the North and the South, men and women, etc. (Shi-Xu, 2001, p. 287), and imposing labels on others could be considered an abuse of cultural power (Dervin & Hahl, 2013). Therefore, more than being just mindful, these conditions need thoughtful consideration so that transnational distance students are afforded equitable educational opportunities and experiences.

Transnational Distance Student Considerations
The academic literature thus far has shown that distance education can transcend national borders, and that this seems to be happening with increasing frequency . Evidence for this expansion includes traditional face-to-face and hybrid transnational programs (e.g., Arunasalam, 2016;Dobos, 2011;Francois, 2016 Yung-Chi Hou et al., 2015;Ziguras & Pham, 2014), the emerging recognition of transnational distance students and possible ways of categorizing them (e.g., Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016;Ziguras, 2008). While ICT (and the Internet in particular) has enabled potentially global access to distance education opportunities, the difference that institutions, instructors, and students have in values, expectations, and social and cultural norms are arguably greater than any technological challenge facing those wanting to take advantage of these opportunities (Gunawardena, 2014). The task of understanding the needs of prospective and current students will continue to challenge instructors and universities unless appropriate considerations are made (Aman, 2013;Dervin & Hahl, 2013;Furham, 2012;Gunawardena, 2003;Gunawardena, 2014;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Jun & Gentry, 2005). This point is particularly important for education that is increasingly offered globally (Wilkins, 2016;. These factors affect not only classroom dynamics but the designs of virtual learning environments, curriculum architecture, and pedagogical approaches (Germain-Rutherford & Kerr, 2008;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Hewling, 2005;Morrison et al., 2011;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009;Pyvis, 2011). On one hand, subtle external circumstances (e.g., no local access, discrimination) may influence students' decisions to take online courses but these cues may not be apparent to others in the digital space. On the other, students' unique, and complex cultural identities can be more obvious to their peers through classroom interaction (Germain-Rutherford & Kerr, 2008;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Hewling, 2005;Smith & Ayers, 2006;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009).
One of the most written about considerations is culture. I also state here for the reader that when culture is discussed throughout this review, any particular culture referenced is but one of many, and equal to all others.
Moreover, people in general tend to have multiple cultural identities (Gunawardena, 2014;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009), in addition to the fact that cultural identities are fluid and can change in relation to the surrounding environment (Hewling, 2005;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). Even when students share the same national background, this does not necessarily mean they share the same cultural understandings as their peers (Aman, 2013;Furham, 2012;Gunawardena, 2014;Hewling, 2005;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009).

Consider how any
individual may choose to identify in general with the cultural norms of a nation, but this is by no means the only way in which individuals may locate an idea of culture for themselves. Furthermore, an increase in crossborder movement of people around the world means that many individuals are operating within at least two nation-based frames of cultural reference. (Hewling, 2005, p. 339) Many of the studies on culture in the distance education literature exhibit limitations by presenting generalized views, or by not recognizing their Western-centric constructs (Fougère & Moulettes, 2007;Gunawardena, 2014;Hewling, 2005;Miike, 2004;Sadykova & Dautermann, 2009). Further, culture is often equated with "membership in a particular nation state" (Hewling, 2005, p. 338), though when cross-border movement is taken into account, the accuracy or utility is arguably lessened.
Culture-related studies are often broad in scope, taking a national level view of behavior, oversimplifying culturally diverse nations/regions, and glossing over subcultures and polycultural identities (Furham, 2012;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Hewling, 2005;Jayatilleke & Gunawardena, 2016). Moreover, cultural dimensions and their expected behaviors such as power-distance (i.e., the degree to which lower ranking people in a society accept or expect unequally distributed power) may prove to be the opposite of expectations online since the Internet can appear as a socially neutral or liberating space due to the absence of physical attributes, visible cues, and social markers (Gunawardena, 2003;. For example, one study with Mexican and U.S. participants found the online medium to enable more equitable power-distance behavior for Mexican students despite Mexican culture typically being rated as a high powerdistance culture, as did another study with Sri Lankan and Moroccan Internet cafe users . Even more pressing, however, is that prevalent culture and communication research (e.g., Hall, 1959Hall, , 1976Hofstede, 1983), with its western origins, is built on non-western cultures as the basis for analysis, and does not so reciprocally with other cultures for theory building (Miike, 2004;. As I stated earlier in this review, any culture is but one of many constructs, and all cultures are equal to one another which makes the unilateral research and analysis approach limiting. Gunawardena and Jung (2014) summarized several critiques of Hofstede's cultural dimensions in seven points:

Models of Culture
According to Hall (1959), "for anthropologists culture has long stood for the way of life of a people, for the sum of their learned behavior patterns, attitudes, and material things" (p. 42). Hall (1976) later elaborated by stating that "culture is man's medium; there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by culture" (p. 16).
Culture, as a term, is ultimately nebulous and deceptively simple as it is a construct encompassing numerous complex dimensions. These dimensions can include personality, emotion/expression, thought processes, time orientation, space/proximity orientation, and so on. The models or frameworks for culture that have been developed over the last 60 years in western research provide a useful set of markers that we can use to a) analyse and organize behavior, b) approximate why actions may occur, and c) generate guidelines to avoid causing problems or offense (Lewis, 2010). However, it must be remembered that speaking broadly of cultural norms is not tantamount to speaking about individual behavior (Gunawardena, 2003(Gunawardena, , 2014Hall, 1959Hall, , 1976Parrish & Linder-VanBerschot, 2010;Sadykova & Dautermann, 2009). Moreover, individuals can identify with multiple cultural identities, and constantly switch between them given the local environment or situational circumstance (Gunawardena, 2014;Hewling, 2005;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009;Smith & Ayers, 2006). And as discussed above, the rather well-known models are not without western-centric and developmental shortcomings . The models presented here are meant to illustrate various attempts at, and guides for, interacting in multi-and cross-cultural classrooms. Considerations made in light of such cultural models are integral to creating equitable transnational and transnational distance education environments (Pyvis, 2011;Welikala, 2019). Hall (1976) provided a framework to better approximate and guide the comprehension of culturally-based behavior through his High and Low Context framework. The key distinction between these two ends of the spectrum is that in High Context cultures, people generally share a high degree of common knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, etc., whereas in Low Context Cultures, the degree of mutual commonality is significantly reduced, elevating the value of content versus the context surrounding it. A brief overview of behaviors across various dimensions is presented in Table 6. In educational settings, the role of the teacher as an authority is often ideal in High Context Cultures, whereas the facilitator is often described as ideal in modern pedagogical approaches in Low context cultures (Hall, 1976;Hofstede, 1983). The misapplication of teaching practices in different cultural contexts risks creating problems despite good intentions (Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Harrison et al., 2018). For example, consider Grow's (1996) model of student self-directed learning (SSDL) which is indicative of a distinctly western worldview that prioritizes and values self-directed learning. He provided a generic set of guidelines that teachers could use to help students reach this ultimate goal. Yet, outside of the originating cultural context, its appropriateness is debatable since the model's value orientation is not culturally neutral (Gunawardena, 2003(Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Miike, 2004). The nuance of implicit bias should be kept in mind when examining any approximation of cultural values, and that the models used to approximate cultures are likely useful only up to a certain point.

Similar to Hall, Geert
Hofstede developed a cultural model to analyze and categorize cultural behavior (Hofstede, 1983). The dimensions are currently described as: individualistic/collectivistic, masculine/feminine, high/low uncertainty avoidance, large/small power distance, long/short term time perspective, and indulgence/restraint.
Northouse (2016)  Despite differences in each of the approaches mentioned here, there are notable similarities and overlap among the various dimensions. One notable (and understandable) absence in these models given their age, however, is a discussion of the role that the Internet, digital spaces, and virtual learning environments play in the formation of culture, cultural identities, and behaviors (Gunawardena, 2014). Since distance programs are overwhelmingly delivered online today (Moore, 2013;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Simonson et al., 2012), this omission is noteworthy.
Dynamic Polycultural Identities Gunawardena (2014) specifically argued that transnational education in particular needs a better model of culture that includes the Internet in its definition since the negotiation of culture also takes place online. This critique is highly relevant to the digital space, as well as to the implementation of more deliberately cross-cultural instructional designs that are mediated online (Germain-Rutherford & Kerr, 2008). To capture the kinds of cultural configurations arising from the situation, she adopted the term "idioculture" which encompasses the blurred lines between physical and virtual reality.
An idioculture was described as a locally forming system (i.e., highly situated), and a system that "includes multiple cultural selves and hybrid identities on the Internet that interact with each other cross-culturally to form unique cultures of their own" (Gunawardena, 2014, p. 84).
The recognition and inclusion of the unique affordances of the Internet, at the very least, contributes to the literature in the context of culture, transnational education, and the online classroom. It should also be equally relevant in the discussion of MOOCs.
Returning to the concept of multiple selves, hybrid, and fluid identities, another model that sought to capture this relational complexity is the PolVan Model of Cultural Identity (Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). This model was developed in the context of K-12 international education by examining the Third-Culture Kid (TCK) phenomenon. The relational nuance highlighted in the model is relevant in distance and transnational education because it recognizes and illustrates the logical (but possibly erroneous) conclusions one might make based on the appearance of an individual in relation to their surrounding society. It is presented below in Table 7.  Kim (2018) detailed examples of Korean "returnees" (Korean citizens who were educated abroad for 3-12+ years as children) who experienced discrimination by "native" Korean students upon return to university in Korea. The negative side effects of such situations can also be seen to some degree in the studies of ethnic/racial minority distance students in the United States mentioned above where there was an associated academic performance gap (see Kaupp, 2012;Salvo et al., 2019;Smith & Ayers, 2006;Xu & Jaggars, 2013) due to underlying historical and cultural hegemonies (Aman, 2013;Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena, , 2014Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2009;Hewling, 2005;Hoare, 2013;Miike, 2004;Smith & Ayers, 2006).
Recognizing that differences exist in these key ways is merely a first step. The substance of the work involves actually addressing underlying theory and pedagogy that curricula, learning environments, and educational tools are built on.
Theory, Pedagogy, and Curriculum The development of VLEs, and growth in distance education, has also coincided with research and the generation of theory meant to address growing online teaching challenges (Harasim, 2000;Moore, 2013). A few relevant examples include: • transactional distance which proposes that as the level of teacher-student interaction decreases, student autonomy should increase (Schlosser & Anderson, 1994;Moore, 2013); • equivalency theory which proposes that distant students should be provided with learning experiences of equal value, not necessarily the exact same experiences of face-to-face students (Simonson, 1999); • connectivist theory that describes learning as a decentralized, chaotic process that can also occur in non-human appliances (Siemens, 2004); • the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework which outlines the goal of developing teaching, social, and cognitive presence in virtual environments (Garrison, 2007).
But even in the case of the "best" planned designs for instruction, student motivation strategies also require equal consideration. Without motivation or understanding a student's particular motivation, great instructional plans can still end up being ineffective (Keller, 1987a;Keller, 1987b). Moreover, the theories and frameworks briefly presented here illustrate two salient points: a) the ongoing development of theory and frameworks in response to increasingly diverse and complex learning situations, and b) the dominance of the singular/national frame of reference. To be equitable for all students, a one-size-fits-all solution is inadequate (Harrison et al., 2018).

Curricular Modification
Harrison et al. (2018)  Hoare (2013) additionally likened this challenge of making curricular modifications as though one were swimming in the proverbial deep end. Given the wide range of information to keep in mind and the numerous potential considerations to make, the caution in the analogy is understandable. For example, in a joint project Meier (2007) noted that an e-learning environment could be challenging for Finnish and South African university distance students because common cultural cues (in addition to verbal linguistic ones) were absent in the digital environment. She also noted that the "assumed clarity of words" was often not the case in the various student discussion posts which sometimes caused misunderstandings or offense. She therefore suggested a deliberate focus on designing the curriculum and online course in a way that took communication cues into account to support students in developing implicit cultural awareness versus explicit or surface level cultural knowledge (e.g., local clothing, food, music). Selinger (2004) described a global, corporate, e-learning program that was designed "to teach Internet technology skills and prepare students for industry certification" (p.223) and highlighted how the instructor's "role was pivotal in making the curriculum culturally and pedagogically relevant for their students" (p. 236). In each of the corporate training locations, "reactions to the pedagogical approach of the online curriculum varied considerably between the countries" (p. 230). As a result, the differences encountered at the training locations highlighted the complexity and scope of the changes needed to ultimately make the program successful. Yet in these two examples, despite the fact that students and instructors were able to communicate in a common language at a high level of proficiency, difficulties in adapting/modifying the curriculum were still present. Language, though potentially an obstacle, was less important than understanding and modifying underlying cultural programming (Dobos, 2011 While the ability to consider curriculum and deliberately make pedagogical changes can fall under the locus of control of an instructor or institution, there are educational tools and resources that do not. The lack of direct control over the implicit design decisions of software necessitates thoughtful analysis and consideration as well (Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Lane, 2009).
Consider a few common colors in daily life, and particularly the ones used in educational media such as web 2.0 tools and course management systems. Depending on the cultural context, these colors can have different (and sometimes opposed) meanings associated with them (Cyr et al., 2010;Marcus & Gould, 2000). Researchers have conducted studies examining color and various aspects of nationality and culture in relation to online interfaces; however, few have specifically examined the relationship of color to religious views and interface preferences (Ishak, Jaafar, & Ahmad, 2012).
In various religious traditions, certain colors like white, gold, and blue are associated with the sacred in Jewish and Christian traditions, while green carries significance in Islam (Marcus & Gould, 2000), whereas in Buddhism, yellow is a prominent color. Ishak et al. (2012) suggested that "users of different faiths have different cultural dimensions and interest in the use of different interfaces" (p. 799). In socio cultural traditions in East Asia (e.g., China, Korea, Japan), red and gold signal prosperity and good fortune, whereas black and white are associated with death in funerary traditions (Marcus & Gould, 2000). Awareness of the meanings associated with colors and particular student populations are crucial to the successful design of materials and interfaces (Marcus & Gould, 2000). Additionally, colors are also often associated with genders traditionally (e.g., pink for women, blue for men) and may be found more or less meaningful depending on the target audience. Further, these colors may not even share the same gender associations in other cultures (Ishak et al., 2012;Knight, Gunawardena, & Aydin, 2009;Marcus & Gould, 2000). Similarly, information density and the content of images, as well as the focus on visual information varies from culture to culture (Hall, 1959(Hall, , 1976Marcus & Gould, 2000). For example, the emphasis on students in images versus the focus on school leaders can be explained as a reflection of power distance in Hofstede's model (Marcus & Gould, 2000).
Even the type of images used, such as icons or raster graphics reflect culturally bound meanings that may lose their intended meaning(s) when viewed outside of the original cultural context (Knight et al., 2009 (Lane, 2009), the visual elements used to assist students in navigating the system, or the colors used to call attention to interface elements, can also pose unexpected obstacles (Knight et al., 2009;Marcus & Gould, 2000). Transnational students, who come from comparatively different backgrounds than those of the CMS designers and course peers, may have to invest more time to address such concerns adequately in their online courses (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018).
Beyond design decisions and factors such as colors, information presentation, image or symbol choice, the design of course management systems themselves (like all software) have intrinsic biases (Lane, 2009;Marcus & Gould, 2000). While bias in and of itself is not necessarily a problem (Creswell, 2013), bias is often implicit and below the level of articulation. For Lane (2009), this lack of explicit recognition and consideration of culture is insidious as educators often do not explore these complex applications beyond system defaults and by extension, the default biases. Thus, the educational experience to some degree is shaped by invisible forces that need to be brought to light.  (Aman, 2013;Furham, 2012;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2009;Harrison et al., 2018;Hewling, 2005;Pearce & Rice, 2013;Pyvis, 2011). In the same vein, these potential sources of mis-alignment are not necessarily limited to VLEs or digital resources.
There are numerous other guidelines that apply to print media and their digital counterparts that come from the field of instructional design (Morrison et al., 2011).
There are design prescriptions for layouts and interfaces that come from the field of cognitive psychology; namely the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (see Mayer, 2002;Mayer, Heiser, & Lonn, 2001;Mayer & Sims, 1994;Moreno & Mayer, 1999).
Mayer (2002) and Mayer et al. (2001) pointed out that there are obvious limitations on these principles, however. These principles (e.g., coherence, contiguity, signaling, modality, redundancy, etc.) are typically intended for beginner learners in any given field, and there are clear boundary conditions for effectiveness depending on the individual context of the learner. For example, the redundancy principle suggests that information should be presented in only one modality (e.g., audio) to avoid extraneous cognitive processing (Mayer, 2002;Mayer et al., 2001). However, in the transnational context, presenting information in only one modality may be a disadvantage for certain students when the common language of the course may be an L2 or L3. For example, Bell et al.
(2015) described the history of a "global" classroom project that included online course work and activities with students from multiple institutions around the world. Not only were materials made accessible in multiple languages to make the course as accessible as possible, software translators were also experimented with to facilitate communication (albeit unsuccessfully). Even certain linguistic strategies where implemented where small groups were allowed to communicate in native or a common group language whereas the class as a whole was required to communicate in English as the lingua franca.
Nevertheless, additional limitations include (but are not exclusive to) the level of prior subject matter knowledge, as well as the students' own metacognitive learning skills. Grow (1996) also strongly emphasized the contextually sensitive nature of learning efficacy in this regard. Simply stated, a one-size fits all design solution (i.e., color, image, icon, layout, multimedia choices) will not be equally effectively for all learners. It may disadvantage some students (Aman, 2013;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2009;Harrison et al., 2018;Morse, 2003;Pearce & Rice, 2013). This tension is similarly present in the theoretical and pedagogical choices that make up the foundations of curriculum and online courses.
Examining Unstated Assumptions Gunawardena and LaPointe (2008) rightly pointed out that "one of the main criticisms of globalization is the underlying tendency to colonize and import dominant paradigms into contexts that are either unfriendly to those paradigms or that can be harmed by those solutions" (p. 52). Technologies imported from one particular context are not value neutral (Feenberg, 2003), and they can be considered "culturally biased amplifications" (Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008, p. 52). The tools themselves can present barriers to students and hinder learning outcomes in distance education (Hart, 2012). Means et al. (2014) stood in support of this assertion, noting that "online pedagogies assume a level of independence, motivation, and self-regulation on the part of learners" (p. 140), in addition to the assumption of "skilled" technology use.
Moreover, the sum of such considerations may be viewed collectively as the creation of a culturally and pedagogically inclusive ecosystem, or a larger affordance network (Rasi, Hautakangas, & Värynen, 2014). This holistic view has also been described as glocalization which is characterized by "blending and connecting local and global contexts while maintaining the significant contributions of the different cultural communities and contexts" (Patel & Lynch, 2013, p. 223), as well as "the respectful exchange of cultural wealth among learners and teachers to inform and enhance higher education pedagogical practice" (p. 225). These perspectives can be useful when examining the phenomenon of transnational distance students.

Overlooked Distance Student Complexity
Jones (2001) pointed out that "past assumptions about who the typical college student was and how, what, when, why, and where that student attended college are no longer valid" (p. 108). The enrollment trends and increasing numbers of non-traditional students in face-to-face courses, distance programs, MOOCs, and other informal distance learning opportunities arguably reflect this change (Bean & Metzner, 1985;Lorenzo, 2015;Means et al., 2014). Jones' point about recognizing and questioning traditional assumptions about students is equally relevant in transnational education (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Harrison et al., 2018;Stewart, 2017 Harvard University in the United States (see Wilkins, 2016). Three key characteristics stand out from a relational perspective: a) student nationality, b) national origin of the educational provider, and c) actual geographic location of both.
In the United Kingdom, Gemmell and Harrison (2017) similarly recognized this subtlety and identified students through EU related tuition categories. Likewise in Korea, Stewart (2017) recognized and described the same nuance by virtue of sojourn status (i.e., visa classification of foreign-residents) using a very basic descriptive survey. When examining the enrollment of so called 'international students' in the United States, Allen et al. (2016) pointed out that American institutions "serve very few international distance education students, less than 2% in any sector", while an additional 3% reside in a location that is unknown to the institution (p. 15). However, in light of the relational nuance described by Wilkins (2016), Gemmell and Harrison (2017), and Stewart (2017), the interpretation of these statistics may not necessarily be so straightforward.
Contemporary globalization trends can make such relatively straightforward analysis problematic (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017). Distance students who live outside of their country of citizenship may not necessarily be able to provide the university with a local address from their host-nation for a variety of reasons such as incompatible portal interfaces or language barriers (Lituchy & Barra, 2008). They may also opt to use a legal address in their country of citizenship out of convenience (Stewart, 2017). In other cases, students may simply use a home of record due to frequent movement (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Selwyn, 2011a;Stewart, 2017).
Furthermore, in cases of dual or multiple citizenship holders, property ownership or rental in both home and host countries, the recognition of residency, marriage, or longterm work visa holders, exactly how distance students should state their "legal" address to the university is not necessarily clear; more than one plausible option may exist (Stewart, 2017). Thus, the potential for multiple addresses, frequent transnational movement, and portal interface limitations can all complicate or obfuscate how students in related research statistics (e.g., Allen et al., 2016) are actually identified, classified, and ultimately reported (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017).
Moreover, in supranational political and economic organizations, nationals and residents of member-states can freely move across borders irrespective of visas, complicating methods of identification (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017). Examples of such entities include the European Union (EU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and in a much more limited and restricted capacity, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Economic Community (AEC). Categorizing students through tuition fee classification and sojourn status are but two possible ways described in the academic literature. However, Gemmell and Harrison's (2017) fee classification approach is not without its own limitations since their definition of transnational distance student is relative to membership in a supranational political economic organization (i.e., the EU), making its utility questionable for countries who do not belong to such an entity. Nevertheless, while these types of distance students are proportionally small, they are not uncommon (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Dobos, 2011;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Selwyn, 2011a;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016).
Such cases are only increasing as universities increasingly rely on distance and transnational distance education opportunities for revenue (Hoare, 2012;Rovai & Downey, 2010;. Likewise, for individuals in careers that require frequent international movement, that live in well-connected geographic Counterintuitive Circumstances Dobos (2011) pointed out that "offshore courses are increasingly offered to students of many nations" (p. 31), though this characteristic of a changing student body is not exclusive to face-to-face programs. She described the case of an offshore campus in Malaysia that began adapting the program's Australian curriculum for the local Malay student population. However, in doing so it became increasingly apparent to educators on the ground that the local Malaysian population itself was ethnoculturally diverse, and that not all of the students were in fact local Malaysians. Their attempt to modify the Australian program was consequently more challenging than initially anticipated.
Although the majority of the student population in this case was in fact local, this proportion is not necessarily so in other transnational programs.  (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Dobos, 2011;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016). The conventional transnational programs in Korea, however, typically reflect (at least for now and in the near future) a niche population and proportional student demographics (Jon et al, 2014;MoJ, 2016 In more recent history in the port city of Incheon, Korea, the national government worked in partnership with the local municipality to build a "global" campus with the intention of creating a regional education hub to attract foreign universities to offer select programs to citizens and non-citizens alike (IFEZ, n.d.; IGC, n.d.; Jon et al., 2014).  (2017) voiced this same point of frustration from a different perspective by arguing that prior scholarship seems to consistently oversimplify or generalize student differences by using the label of "international". This point is further discussed by Harrison et al. (2018) who also noted that more attention needs to be paid to students in these settings. While the overall characteristics of these students will probably not vary significantly to distance students as a whole, the value in recognizing these differences comes in the refinement of teaching and learning practices (Harrison et al., 2018).
Consider the following example where Erichsen and Bolliger (2010) explored the perception of isolation among international students in traditional and online learning environments in a mixed-methods study. Though the term international is used, these students were in fact living in the United States and taking classes both face-to-face and online; these students could plausibly be international (moved to the host country to attend the program on a student visa), expatriates (long-term foreign residents with work, marriage, or residency visas or nationals commuting from a host country into the home country), or transnational students (living as a foreign-resident in a host country while commuting into a different host country to attend the program) using Stewart's proposed definitions. As Stewart (2017) argued earlier, this oversimplification can be confusing as such students are situated in distinct contexts. The phenomenon of expatriate and transnational students (as defined by Stewart) has not been disambiguated in both the distance and transnational education literature. This point is further emphasized by Harrison et al. (2018) who noted that such current research is scant, and that the literature base on students who live outside of the university's home nation is fragmented.
In another example, Selwyn (2011a; 2011b) examined globally situated learners from a large federal university in the United Kingdom. However, despite the geographic dispersion, there was no clear distinction to indicate whether at least some of these students also happened to be citizens of the United Kingdom and simply living and working abroad. Selwyn (2011a;2011b) noted that the sample was comprised of both native and non-native speakers of English, however, L1 or L2 is not necessarily an indicator of citizenship, location, or national origin (Dobos, 2011;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Glass et al., 2016;Nesterko et al., 2013;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016). Gemmell and Harrison (2017) and Stewart (2017) both argued that in addition to knowing the administrative classification of a student assigned by a university, knowing their national origin and current geographic location would more clearly delineate students and enable the possibility of a more nuanced investigation. The lack of this particular information is a limitation in relatively recent prior scholarship (e.g., Dobos, 2011, Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Selwyn, 2011a;Selwyn 2011b;Ziguras, 2008). Lorenzo (2015) noted "it is difficult to speak singularly about online learning" (p. 1), and this acknowledgement is also very relevant when narrowing the scope of the complexity to students specifically. Historically, other analogous demographic changes and trends have been recognized in the literature.

Nontraditional Students
As a result of changing demographic trends in the United States, Bean and Metzner (1985) posited that there were demographic reasons underlying differences in undergraduate student attrition rates. They concluded that younger, full time, on campus resident student enrollment was declining with an increase in 1) older, 2) parttime, 3) off-campus resident enrollment (Bean & Metzner, 1985). To denote the difference and categorize students, they used the terms traditional and non-traditional.
Despite the rather simple labeling, Bean and Metzner (1985)  Thus, rather than interpreting categories and their characteristics as rigid or fixed, the focus should be on, and guided by, a more central factor that distinguishes nontraditional students from their traditional counterparts: the "lessened intensity and duration of their interaction with the primary agents of socialization (faculty, peers) at the institutions they attend" (Bean & Metzner, 1985, p. 488). For example, a student enrolled in two courses one semester and classified as nontraditional student while enrolling in five courses the next is not suddenly a traditional student as a consequence of full-time enrollment status.
The three broad components (i.e., part-time status, living off campus, and older than 24) still apply in the aggregate. Further, what the lessened intensity of interaction is like for students who live outside of their home countries (especially when languages and cultures are different), is not particularly clear.
Tinto (in Bean & Metzner, 1985) concluded that although students traditionally attend institutions for both academic and social reasons, the academic factors (i.e., quality) are often the priority for nontraditional students. However, this generalized view is arguably oversimplified. For national, international, expatriate, and transnational students, additional relevant motivational factors may also include proximity to the university, affordable living costs, ease of travel, and familiar cultural settings (Jon et al., 2014). Picciano (2002) noted that the prioritization of academic quality over other factors can be true for distance students, but also that socialization or peer interaction is not necessarily required for academic success, and neither is being physically co-present in a classroom. The social aspects of a traditional school experience may not even be considered a quality criterion, or generalizable to all students (Picciano, 2002).
Nevertheless, given that many community college students and virtually all adult distance students qualify as nontraditional in Bean and Metzner's model, the categorizations could benefit from questioning long held assumptions (see Jones, 2001), and being updated and reimagined to account for closely linked 21st century technological, mobility, and demographic trends. Student demographics are not static or homogeneous (Dabbagh, 2007;Dobos, 2011;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016).

Emerging Student Categories
Some clear limits in the academic literature have surfaced that are evidenced by various geographic, linguistic, and demographic discrepancies (e.g., Allen et al., 2016;Christensen et al., 2013;Dobos, 2011;Nesterko et al., 2014;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Glass et al., 2016;Wilkins, 2016;Stewart, 2017). The increase in new combinations of relationships between students, the academy, national status, and other factors require further consideration (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harasim, 2000;Stewart, 2017). The studies from Ziguras (2008) Table 1. He also acknowledged that these categories were equally applicable to students in conventional brick-and-mortar classrooms due to their basis on non-tourist sojourn status (i.e., visa classification). Though these authors are using different descriptions, terms, and classification approaches, the same distance student phenomenon is being described.
The global growth in distance education (Allen et al., 2016), and parallel advancements in ICT and educational technology (Tracey & Richey, 2005) have at the very least enabled the possibility for such students to exist; but they ultimately need adequate recognition (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Stewart, 2017). For the students that arguably do currently fall into these emerging categories retrospectively, the literature indicates various, complex social, political, economic, and cultural circumstances at play.
And these factors have all influenced their decisions to seek out and take advantage of distance education opportunities (Dobos, 2011;Selwyn, 2011a). What remains to be further investigated, however, are the relevant characteristics and trends of expatriate and transnational distance students, and how and why they may be similar or different when compared to other student categories (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Kosmützky & Putty, 2016;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016).

Summary
The currents of globalization, demographic changes, advancements in ICT, and the proliferation of the Internet have all affected the composition of the distance student body (Furham, 2012;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008). Earlier models and scholarship that assisted in categorizing and understanding students have limitations, particularly in terms of wider view of global trends and circumstances. Although expatriate, international, and transnational distance students continue to surface in virtual classrooms, their voices and position are poorly recognized (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Harrison et al., 2018). While some prior scholarship has recognized this phenomenon in distance education in limited ways (e.g., Dobos, 2011, Gunawardena, 2003Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008;Selwyn, 2011aSelwyn, , 2011bZiguras, 2008), only more recent literature displays a clearer and deliberate focus on transnational distance students (e.g., Gemmell & Harrison, 2017, Harrison et al., 2018Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016).
Consequently, there are numerous opportunities and avenues for subsequent and ongoing research (Wilkins, 2016).

Conclusion
The literature on distance education is robust in documenting its evolution alongside parallel advancements in technology from its historical origins to the modern day. With each technological iteration and innovation (e.g., print media, radio, television, satellite broadcasting, computer networking, the Internet, VLEs, web 2.0 tools, etc.), the scope and reach of distance education has increased tremendously. This point is clear from the relatively humble access afforded by the postal service to the now global availability of programs and courses (e.g., Allen et al., 2016). This transformation is also evident when considering the case of the Society to Encourage Studies at Home in the United States. Over a 24-year period from 1873-1897, the program enrolled approximately 10,000 students from the Boston, Massachusetts area (Casey, 2008;Gibson, 2008). At present, by contrast, millions of students take distance classes annually at open universities (Latchem et al., 2006), in addition to distance courses offered from brick-and-mortar universities (Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Simonson et al., 2012). Distance education participation numbers are even more staggering when considering the fact that average enrollment in a single MOOC (from well-known North American MOOC providers such as Coursera, edX, HarvardX, Udacity) is around 45,000 students with the upper end of enrollment numbers sometimes reaching hundreds of thousands (Jordan, 2014(Jordan, , 2015Onah et al., 2014). Moreover, for the aforementioned MOOC platforms, nearly 66% of participants were actually distributed across numerous countries around the world, not exclusively in the MOOC provider's nation (Glass et al., 2016). This scale and global reach stand in remarkable juxtaposition to early correspondence programs like the Society to Encourage Studies at Home. The impressiveness of the scale and global access notwithstanding, the increased connections between diverse groups of students, instructors, and universities is at the heart of transnational distance education (Harasim, 2000;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Simonson et al., 2012).
Nevertheless, three broad and related themes have recurred throughout this review of the literature: 1) complex educational entities are frequently oversimplified; 2) various curricular, cultural, and conceptual models have often only represented a homogeneous frame of reference; and 3) implicit assumptions about the circumstances of distance students are not adequately examined or recognized. As a result, Stewart's (2017) proposed emerging student categories (i.e., the expatriate and transnational distance student) have fallen through a few proverbial cracks. Wilkins (2016) reminds us that transnational education is a relatively new field of research and has evolved rapidly over the last 20 years, and most certainly it will continue to do so over the next 20.
CHAPTER III: Study One: Recognizing the Expatriate and Transnational Distance Student: A Preliminary Demographic Exploration in the Republic of Korea

Abstract
Descriptions of distance students in the literature are robust. Yet when speaking about students outside of a national context, nuance is lost by the failure to identify the complexity in borderless higher education. The student body is often too broadly categorized as "international" outside of a national context when in reality, this can be further refined to produce two additional student classifications that more appropriately identify and describe a hitherto under-researched phenomenon: the expatriate and transnational distance student. Utilizing respondent-driven sampling, student demographic and academic program data were collected using two operational definitions proposed by the author. The resulting data suggests a potential profile for the expatriate/transnational distance student phenomenon as manifested in South Korea for a subset of foreign residents, along with their broader demographic and program characteristics. As a nascent phenomenon and introductory inquiry, the research is limited in scope with the intention of a) establishing a taxonomy for the distance education community, b) a practical method for investigation, and c) avenues for further research such as student characteristics, motivation, attrition/retention, etc. Such insight would assist policy/guidelines for universities, their programs, and instructors.

Introduction
Online distance education has grown tremendously in the 21st century (Allen & Seaman, 2013;Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012). Yet, despite growth each year in online course enrollment (Allen, Seaman, Poulin, & Strout, 2016), it "is very difficult to speak singularly about online learning, as there are numerous factors within different disciplines and course and program environments" (Lorenzo, 2015, p. 45 Two categorizations that stand out in absentia, however, are the expatriate and transnational distance student. In light of this absence, this researcher hopes to inspire discussion and further research into this otherwise under-recognized distance student body that suffers from a poverty of recognition (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Harrison et al., 2018;Kosmützky & Putty, 2016). Equally valuable are the lessons learned from an introductory study into an amorphous and distributed population, and the insights gained from their demographics.

Background
Expatriation and immigration are not new phenomena in and of themselves.
Work assignments abroad in the corporate sector, government and military posts, and even missionary assignments have been studied extensively from the perspective of cultural models and adaptation (Hall, 1959;Hall, 1976;Lewis, 2010;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). Individuals may choose to self-initiate expatriation, and even a study of expatriate workers in academia was conducted in Korea by Froese in 2012. However, while a wealth of information exists regarding distance students in their domestic contexts in addition to a robust amount of literature regarding expatriate workers abroad, there is a noticeable paucity of scholarly reference to the phenomenon of expatriate and transnational distance student where these two entities overlap. Ziguras (2008) only briefly mentioned the term expatriate distance student and assumes that "the experience of expatriate students in distance education provided from their country of origin is very similar to that of domestic students located in the institution's home country" (p. 640), and shifted focus back to the experience of international distance students. However, this assertion is an assumption rather than an evidence-based conclusion. Living and learning cross culturally has profound effects on the individual (Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). Moreover, there are more activities and processes involved in the distance education enterprise beyond the virtual classroom from student support services at an administrative level (e.g., academic advising, registration, student support) to specialized services unique to/required by the particular host country of the student (e.g., apostilles). This gap in knowledge was the impetus for conducting an exploratory study into these two categories of distance students proposed by the researcher, and to begin the conversation by simply recognizing who they are demographically and describing some of the characteristics of their academic programs.

Globally Distributed Distance Students
One of the challenges associated with discussing distance learners is their heterogeneity (Lorenzo, 2015). This reality also extends to any attempt at having a more meaningful discussion regarding students outside of a national context. Often the main area of focus is the potential difficulties that can arise as the result of differences in one's native language or cultural heritage, and how these perspectives relate to pedagogical, curricular, and technological designs (Selinger, 2004). Such obstacles, however, are true of domestic multicultural populations as cultural/linguistic profiles can vary and differ across a broad spectrum at the national, regional, and local level (Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). As noted with the concept of distance and nontraditional students, global distributed distance students are difficult to speak singularly about (Lorenzo, 2015). Erichsen and Bolliger (2010) recognized "that the graduate student experience can be intensely stressful and perplexing" and "it can be particularly so for international students" (p. 312). One reason the scholars noted for this is the lack of social knowledge in comparison to their domestic peers, but there is no reason to exclude expatriate/transnational distance students from that experience as well, especially since this type of cultural isolation or insulation has been well documented to have significant impact on the individual (Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). Feelings of isolation online and the detrimental effects it can have on student retention is also well documented, though this effect may be even more pronounced for international students (Erichsen & Bolliger, 2011). This out, of course, can be equally true for the expatriate and transnational who live and learn cross-culturally, particularly in locations where the culture(s) and language(s) may be significantly different from their own, and where they may have spent extensive periods of time (Pollock & Van Reken, 2009).

The Similarity of Twins
A notable discrepancy in applying the generic label of international to all distance students situated outside of a national context, however, is the lack of internal refinement in this broad categorization. On the surface, the international, expatriate, and transnational distance student can appear very similar if not identical. When speaking singularly about such a population, it is difficult to know whether such students are truly "international" (present only for the duration of the educational program), have immigrated (moved to the country for reasons and a duration unrelated to an educational program), or potentially expatriates/transnationals which blurs the boundaries of local legal status, reasons for moving/living abroad, and potentially linguistic/cultural heritage (Froese, 2012;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). Yet like twins, it is crucial to recognize the differences and individuality of each potential category of student.
Habib, Johannesen, and Øgrim (2014) described the use of a virtual learning environment by international students in an on-site program and tried to address this same classification problem among the international students in their study. They While it is easy to apply a single label to a heterogenous and complex group, this oversimplification does not allow for more meaningful distinctions to be made, or a more sophisticated filter to be applied when considering the diversity of potential student circumstances. In an increasingly global and/or internationalized field of higher education, it behooves us to adequately and appropriately represent the complexity of a given phenomenon (Creswell, 2015). The literature, while informative in exploring numerous (and disparate) characteristics of distance learners in the 21st century, is noteworthy in this absence of clarity, and as this researcher posits, has been too quickly dismissed (see Ziguras, 2008), or inadvertently mixed together under a catch-all label of "international".

Key Research Objectives
There were three main objectives that this researcher intended to accomplish with this study: a) provide a practical taxonomy for describing and discussing global distance students for the distance education community, b) suggest and demonstrate a practical methodology to collect data on an invisible and distributed population, and c) highlight some of the applications of this knowledge. In tandem, these three objectives should be able to serve as a foundation for more meaningful research and discussion. To that end, the first priority was to document and offer potential demographic characteristics of the expatriate and transnational distance students as found in the Republic of Korea (as a consequence of where this researcher resides), as well as the characteristics of the distance programs they were involved in. Since no prior documentation or research exists from this particular perspective, it was considered essential to identify and describe, at least in basic ways, the students themselves. As a result, descriptive and contextual data could be offered to start a discussion. Similarly, an objective was to compare how students in these two categorizations were similar with/different from distance student demographics in studies that Selwyn (2011a;2011b) conducted in terms of demographics.
Second, by collecting such data and testing the viability of the sampling method, unexpected challenges were illuminated. While these limitations affected the ultimate sample size in this instance, it was valuable nonetheless to highlight how departmental and/or university record keeping can benefit from a slight modification in recording whether or not their distance students live abroad and where. In effect, the result is a blueprint that can streamline future studies in Korea and elsewhere in the world.

Operational Definitions
Given the notable ambiguity in speaking clearly about the distance student population in an "international" context, this researcher developed and proposed a taxonomy based on the student's relationship to their host country and that of the academic institution. This descriptive relationship is beneficial for two reasons since a) it avoids socioeconomic, cultural, and/or ethnic bias which is easily observed (and exemplified) in the argument between the terms expatriate and immigrant (and the classifications used by Habib et al., 2014), and b) because it practically describes the nuance central to the expatriate/transnational distance student phenomenon. Therefore, the two terms below are the foundational lenses for this study.
• Expatriate Distance Student: A student from country A, sojourning via a nontourist visa in country B, attending university online in country A.
• Transnational Distance Student: A student from country A, sojourning via a non-tourist visa in country B, attending university online in country C.

Visibility
The expatriate/transnational distance student population, though not necessarily a sensitive one, is amorphous. While census data is collected and published by the Korean Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Immigration Department, there is no inferable relationship or obvious way to extrapolate the number of foreign residents who could be expected to complete distance programs online while abroad. These characteristics make random or probabilistic sampling unfeasible (Creswell, 2015;Levin & Fox; internet/social media forums that cater to expatriates (in addition to word of mouth).
Given the context of public social media forums, it was important to establish credibility as a researcher and research project. The website was hosted on this researcher's university's server, and all contact was directed to a university email address that shared the same domain name (Perkins, 2011).
The design of the website also took into account advice from the literature for universal access as it was made mobile friendly (Andrews et al., 2003), and the survey tool chosen, SurveyMonkey, specialized in conducting surveys (Waclawski, 2012).
Moreover, SurveyMonkey would also provide better data security (Barchard & Williams, 2008), easier logic features, and a question bank to draw from if needed (Waclawski, 2012). Several revisions of the overview page, as well as the layout of the information were made in order to make it as clear as possible to respondents (Evans & Mathur, 2005).
This researcher also had the survey items reviewed and piloted by several known acquaintances who fit the definition of expatriate distance student as a formative evaluation for wording, clarity, and to point out any discrepancies or errors (Bennett & Nair, 2010;Burford et al., 2009;Morrison, Ross, Kalman, & Kemp, 2011).
By observing and timing trial runs, the length of time needed to complete the survey was documented and advertised as an effort to increase participation (Andrews et al., 2003;Archer, 2008;Sinkowitz-Cochran, 2013;Trouteaud, 2014).
The survey ultimately resulted in 25 fixed items that ranged from basic demographics (e.g., gender, age range, area of residence) to characteristics of the academic program (e.g., level of study, location of the program). A 26th item was an optional, open-ended text-box that allowed respondents to add any additional or clarifying information. Equally important was recognizing the complication of respondents potentially having completed more than one program online while living abroad. For such a scenario, participants were asked to simply list the most recent/highest level of study and list additional online programs such as certificates, licenses, or other degrees in the optional text box.
The survey was advertised prior to the opening date for two weeks and collected responses through various channels (i.e. email link, web link, embedded form) for one week following the announcement period. Throughout the collection period, additional reminder-announcements were made, and personalized reminder/follow-up emails were sent to participants who signed up for the survey mailing list in an effort to increase the response rate (Edwards et al., 1996;Heerwegh, Vanhove, Matthijs, & Loosveldt, 2005).

Results
The initial response count was 38 over the seven-day collection period with 5 incomplete responses. The completed total response rate was n=33. The most effective channels through Survey Monkey proved to be the direct email link (19 responses) for the mailing list, with the direct web link (17 responses) that was advertised on various public and private social media forums coming in second. The embedded survey form on the research project website was the least effective (2 responses). Response activity was also clustered around the opening of the collection period, though throughout the week there was a low but consistent response rate until day 6. This researcher offers the following profile extrapolated from the data. A more detailed presentation of demographic and program characteristics are presented in Table 8 and Table 9.
The foreign-resident distance students from this data are: • most likely studying at institutions in their home countries (69.7%); • disproportionately male (87.8%); • most likely single/not-married (57.6%); • around 35 years old at the start of/during their degree program (45.5%); • begins the program on average around 5 years of expatriation (60.6%); • lives in the capital-metropolitan area (81.9%); • studies almost exclusively at the master's degree level (84.9%); • most likely to be studying online in their home-country (69.7%); • has no prior online course experience (78.8%); • has a program GPA of around/above 3.6 (69.7%); • the program and field of employment/study are congruous (84.8%).

Discussion
As an exploratory study, the primary goal was to collect and offer data that was descriptive and indicative rather than anything generalizable to other populations, or anything predictive as was noted in a study with similar scope and purpose conducted by Hughes in 2013. This effort would allow comparison to other literature regarding characteristics of distance students, and more importantly provide a starting point with insight and context for discussion and further exploration.
The general profile of the expatriate/transnational distance students fits the three characteristics of the non-traditional student proposed by Bean and Metzner in 1985, but more relevantly is very similar to the students in studies that Selwyn (2011a;2011b) conducted, particularly in terms of age, prior educational attainment, and GPA. Although the data has stated limitations from sampling methodology, linguistic bias, and sample size, the most salient characteristic that stood out was the gender distribution. Broadly speaking higher education statistics tend to have women students/degree earners as a slight majority (Hoyt & Simon, 2016). Although the most recent data published by the MoJ detailing Korean immigration statistics does not report the gender distribution of visa types, they do provide entry numbers by gender with a majority being women at 55.6%, and by gender and age with there being nearly double the amount of women entering Korea between the ages of 20-29 at 1,060 versus 1,908 respectively, and a slightly higher amount of women between the ages of 30-39 at 1,243 to 1,452 respectively (MoJ, 2016, p. 24).
Although these numbers vary from year to year and age bracket to age bracket, there is a large disparity between that of foreign male and female entries. The results presented here for expatriate/transnational students cannot be generalized without the caveat of them potentially being grossly inaccurate, but the gender ratio is definitely not reflected by Korean Immigration statistics (MoJ, 2016), or general higher education statistics (Hoyt & Simon, 2016). It is possible that they are mostly male for reasons that are unclear; but ultimately more data is required to make any reasonable conclusion.
Moreover, if universities and/or departments tracked these characteristics, there would be an additional point of reference to compare against local immigration statistics, especially if relying on a sample selected from a single university/department.
Although looking for any kind of statistical relationship among the data was not a part of the original research questions, the exploratory nature of the study, and disproportionate gender ratio, an opportunity was presented to examine any potential relationships in relation to gender. This researcher offers the reminder that the focus of this paper, however, is on offering the conceptual taxonomy, a practical research experience, and highlighting future research avenues and issues more so than an emphasis of the insignificant statistical results given the small (and homogeneous) sample size.
This researcher has provided a two-way chi-square test to examine the likelihood of a relationship between categorical data; and in this particular case, gender, in Table 10 below. Non-parametric tests are appropriate since they do not assume "a normal distribution in the population nor interval-level data" (Levin & Fox, 2011, p. 235). Basic cross-tab and chi-square analyses suggested that the following potential relationships are statistically insignificant, nonetheless. Note: The chi-square statistic is 0.0606. The p-value is .805539.
The second preliminary data point that stood out was student age. Nearly 55% of respondents reported being older than 35 within the ranges of 35-44 and 45-54 being the most prominent. Bean and Metzner's (1985) criteria for the non-traditional student all apply (i.e. classified as a part time student, not living on campus, and being older than 24) but arguably to a degree far beyond what was originally imagined, even in the case of graduate students. Living in a different country with a different language and culture for years is arguably quite different from not living on campus. Nonetheless, additional chi-square tests below in Table 11 suggest some statistical relationships but also reveal the challenge of having low cell counts in several categories. Levin and Fox (2011) noted that the counts per cell should not be too small, although exactly what this threshold should be depends on a number of factors. Notable again was the gender distribution.
According to the MoJ (2016), as of 2015 there were more women entering the nation than men for comparable age categories. Also related to age was the length-of-time abroad when students decided to enroll in online programs. It is not widely known what the average length of expatriation is in South Korea but this researcher suggests/speculates from personal experience (having lived nearly a decade in-country) that two to three years is probably the most common.
Respondents that have lived in country for a decade or more are quite interesting from this researcher's perspective as it is unclear what the impetus is to complete a graduate degree at such a later point in time, or not taking advantage of local education opportunities. This information is detailed in Table 12. Some respondents noted that a certificate of some kind was completed as a component of their master's program, or in addition to it (given the structure of the survey, it was included in the optional comments section). Graduate or professional certificates may not be valued as much as a full degree is. As noted earlier, while master's level study is logical, there is no obvious reason why those who came to Korea already possessing graduate degrees are not pursuing additional or higher levels of study such as a doctorate, especially if they work in higher education or advanced fields.
A brief explanation of the visa categories is provided below but not all statuses necessarily have a direct relationship to any particular employment industry. This is exemplified with the F categories of visa, and to a much lesser degree with the E category. Broadly speaking, the visa classifications that participants held are described below, with an additional set of chi-square analyses in table 13.
• E1 -University Professorship o While this is required for official designation as a professor, many working for Korean universities do not necessarily hold this visa and are designated assistant professors or work in other non-credit programs. In practice, this is not necessarily adhered to and circumvented with the E2.
• E2 -Foreign Language Instruction in Conversation Only o As noted above, in practice this visa status is should be granted solely for instruction in conversational aspects of a foreign language, although practically speaking many of these visa holders work in areas beyond the scope of the designation (e.g., writing instruction).  Chi-square = 5.64 Degrees of freedom = 7 Probability = 0.582 In briefly scanning the types of programs students were enrolled in, they are almost entirely related to education which is congruous with the visa categories.
However, limitations of the snowball sampling method and linguistic-bias (i.e., the survey was offered in English and Korean only) probably skewed the responses in this regard. Additionally, the geographic distribution of students in the various Korean provinces also reflects the regular population distribution within Korea with about half of the nation residing in the capital (approximately 10 million) or the surrounding metropolitan area (an additional 13 million).

Contributions
Although this study is a proverbial first step into uncharted territory, it has provided three pillars for future research to build on in the form of a student definition and taxonomy for global distance students, experiences from a practical research methodology along with limitations/suggestions for future surveys, and a discussion of avenues for future research below.
Globalization has challenged the traditional relationships between nations and people, and with greater patterns of migration and access to higher education, there are new relationships to consider and explore in the domain of distance education and the students therein. The hope is that this paper provides the distance education community with a better way to address distance students as a whole, and more effectively identify and address their needs. Moreover, universities and departments can better tailor programs to meet the needs of such students or simply market their programs more effectively. For example, in the field of education, the Korean context presents a number of challenges to the application of inquiry based learning or self-directed learning given that this not the norm in Korean education. How western-based education departments understand or address this for expatriate/transnational distance students remains to be answered. Other legal compliances such as FERPA or COPPA do not exist in this context. Similar regulatory/statutory content may ultimately prove to be less useful from a practical standpoint, among other significant differences in how the education systems function, and the perpetually limited roles and influence that expatriate/transnational students have in it as working (but immigrant) professionals. These considerations go far beyond the pedagogical implications for learners that Selinger (2014) described.
Other more germane requirements like degree authentication through apostilles and notarization regulations are required in Korea and presumably other comparable requirements exist elsewhere. The question is whether or not universities, their departments, and support services are prepared to accommodate these unique needs that otherwise do not necessarily exist for national students.

Limitations
First was the unexpected difficulty of identifying distance students under the proposed categories from within a known database (i.e. a department database), in addition to recruiting participants from an in-situ population locally. These hurdles necessitated the use of non-probabilistic respondent-driven sampling that limited the ability to obtain more data in the form of a larger sample, as well as broader applicability. Furthermore, the language of the survey (English and Korea) may have limited access to other foreign residents who were not skilled enough to understand either (Korean Immigration forms are only offered in Chinese, Korean, and English).
The absence of Chinese is an acknowledged omission, especially when Chinese nationals are the largest single foreign resident group in Korea (see MoJ, 2016).
However, as noted by Hughes (2013) in relation to a similarly small sample of 25 participants with international students, "the findings are intended to be descriptive and indicative, rather than predictive or generalisable" and to offer "personalised, contextualised insights" (p. 139).

Conclusion
This paper has discussed the complexity and nuance of the global distance student population by clearly articulating a definition of the expatriate and transnational distance student (as well as international). This distinction highlights this phenomenon's absence in the current literature, as well as the more than likely investigation to address these questions, and explore others not currently asked. This call for additional research is envisaged in not only the Korean context, but at a regional, and global level as well.

Future Research
There are numerous opportunities and avenues for future research. In a local context, possibilities include expanding the sampling scope within South Korea through more active participant recruiting methods, a longer announcement and data collection period, and being offered in more languages. These adjustments should more effectively address the relatively small and uniform sample size in this study. The demographic study can be replicated in other countries to see if there may be trends among the expatriate and transnational distance student population at national, Exploring aspects of isolation in the virtual classroom would be interesting as well since distance students living in nations with cultures and languages that are different from their own may compound the online isolation often described by distance students more broadly. There is no clear data, either, on the success/attrition rates of this particular population that would yield insight on why either result is the case. While the sample here reported significantly high GPA's, how many do not actually complete their programs and why? Such data could inform university, department, and/or program policies, provide better guidelines for academic support staff, or offer suggestions for instructors to adapt curriculum and/or pedagogical approaches for such students.
Moreover, given that local academic opportunities exist in Korea at all academic levels, often with generous scholarships for foreign residents, it is not known why students are choosing to study elsewhere. In this particular study, the majority of degree programs were focused on master's degrees in language education and reputable, nearly 100% scholarship granting programs are offered locally in English in the same field. As distance students, numerous opportunities exist to explore technology specific issues as well such as self-regulation or self-directedness in a virtual environment situated in a foreign culture. In short, there is a virtually limitless horizon to explore and numerous future discussions to have.
This researcher hopes to start that discussion by providing a taxonomy to identify and describe expatriate and transnational distance students in a way that is practical, equitable, and globally applicable, share experiences of expected challenges that may be proactively addressed in light of this study, and to inspire the distance education community to explore national, regional, and global trends that are intrinsic to the expatriate and transnational distance student phenomenon.
Demographic trends tend to portray the typical MOOC participant as relatively young, western, English-speaking, and male as evidenced in data from high profile north American MOOC providers such as HarvardX, MITx, edX, and Coursera (Christensen et al., 2013;Glass et al., 2016;Jiang, Schenke, Eccles, Di Xu, & Warschauer, 2016;Nesterko et al., 2013;Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016). However, while some of these characteristics can be correlated with the respective geographic location (i.e., North America) and linguistic profile (i.e., English-speaking) of the MOOC providers themselves (Veletsianos & Shepherdson, 2016), the geographic data from these studies presents a more complex portrait. Further, the data suggests that this relationship is not necessarily the case overall. In the data from edX, Coursera, and HarvardX, roughly two-thirds of total participants were located outside of the United States, with one-third in the European region, and the remaining third distributed around the world (Christensen et al., 2013;Glass et al., 2016). In short, most students in American MOOCs from these aforementioned studies were not American. The subtlety of the relationship that students have with educational providers and their own geographic locations is equally applicable when considering conventional face-to-face and distance education programs and courses (see Dobos, 2011;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Rensimer, 2016;Stewart, 2017Stewart, , 2019Wilkins, 2016).

The Problem
While there may not be drastically different characteristics between students in a national context versus students that are not, their perspectives and characteristics have otherwise not been included in the conversation as a whole (Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Harrison et al., 2018). Although cases of expatriate distance students, and transnational/international distance students are comparatively small to their national counterparts (see Allen et al., 2016), the statistics themselves are not necessarily so straightforward since students may not report their actual current addresses for a variety of reasons such as home-country orientation, administrative ease, or general convenience (Stewart, 2017(Stewart, , 2019. Additionally, cases of distance students who straddle more than one country, are likely to grow through the currents of globalization and widespread use of modern transportation and information and communications technology (ICT) (Pieterse, 2007;Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008). Although international students have been conventionally conceived of as a form of educational migrant (Cha & Chang, 2009), the phenomenon of expatriate and transnational distance students has only emerged in varying degrees in recent literature (e.g., Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Hoare, 2012;Hoare, 2013;Stewart, 2017;Ziguras, 2008).
This recognition is still underdeveloped and complicated by a lack of consistent and/or clear terms and definitions.
The distinction between international distance students and transnational ones is unclear in the literature (Kosmützky & Putty, 2016) as both terms share the same key characteristic: a student being located in a country different from where the awarding institution is based. Rensimer (2016) similarly critiqued that "[t]he overlapping language of all things international-international students and international institutions in (inter)national spaces-appears to have made the term all but redundant as a useful research analytic in a globalizing era" (p. 79). Furthermore, geographic location of the student and university does not adequately capture a wider range of possible relationships (Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Stewart, 2017). For example, neither of these two terms explicitly accounts for the possibility of expatriate students. And even when transnational distance student perspectives have shared their experiences, the cases themselves are not necessarily the same (see Singh et al., 2012). Additionally, similar to the term international, transnational is not used uniformly and requires readers to explicitly determine what is meant in individual scholarship (Pieterse, 2007). To address this complication, both Gemmell and Harrison (2017) and Stewart (2017) have called for the study of the geographic location of students, their nationalities, and an administrative classification to better delineate students.

Background of the Study
The Republic of Korea, also referred to as South Korea and simply "Korea",

Purpose of the Study
The foreign resident population in Korea has increased from approximately 30-40,000 over the last 35 years to more than 2 million today (Kim, 2014;MoJ, 2016;Socinet, n.d.). Though the nation's demographic makeup has remained predominantly ethnically homogeneous compared to other relatively more diverse countries or regions (e.g., the United States, Europe), this fact understates a rather quick change in the national makeup given the peninsula's 5000 years of otherwise relative homogeneity (Kim, 2017). These demographic changes have given rise to a foreign-resident population whose educational needs/goals are not necessarily being recognized or met (Shen, 2019).
Nor are these obstacles limited to foreign-born immigrants; Korean returnees, third culture kids, or members of the Korean diaspora that immigrate to Korea can experience a similar lack of appropriate or viable secondary and tertiary education opportunities due to differences in educational systems, linguistic capabilities, and prior socio-cultural knowledge (Greenholtz & Kim 2009;Kim, 2018;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009, Seol & Skrentny, 2009). Rensimer (2016) noted how similar discrepancies among expatriate students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were similarly overlooked and highlighted a "call for nuanced approaches to research on expatriate and international students and recognition of their differing constraints, needs, resources, and aspirations" (Rensimer, 2016, p. 93).
Stewart (2017) preliminarily recognized a subset of foreign residents who chose to study online abroad rather than enroll in local national or transnational programs, but the study was limited to exploring demographic and program characteristics. What these students' experiences are like, how they apply knowledge locally, or what their motivations for doing so were unclear. Moreover, the experience of studying at a distance while situated in a culture distinctly different from one's own is under described in the literature (Harrison et al., 2018;Stewart, 2017). Thus, the impetus for this multicase study was to build on top of Stewart's (2017) exploratory descriptive study, and calls from other researchers (e.g., Andrews & Tynan, 2010;Harrison et al., 2018;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Rensimer, 2016) and contribute to the literature by investigating cases of distance students that may look similar to their national or "international" counterparts, yet are situated differently.

Methodology
As a qualitative approach and multicase study method, this researcher took the same philosophical view that Stake (2006) does where knowledge-building and meaning-making are viewed as interpretive and constructive acts, and where the researcher attempts to document these experiences in collaboration with the participants by interpreting them. Therefore, the study here, guided by five research questions, ultimately presents descriptions, interpretations, and analysis as coconstructions by the parties involved.

Figure 1. Stewart's Model of Distance Students
Moreover, the target cases aligned appropriately with a multicase method as the particulars of the case could be investigated, and where the cases were bound to one another categorically (Stake, 2006) by three traits: national origin of student/university, sojourn status in the host country, and actual geographic location of student/university.
And since variation along these dimensions was considered possible, a multiple case approach was an appropriate research design to capture potential variation (Yin, 2009).
Further, "multicase studies are usually studies of particularization" (Stake, 2006, p. 57) and "attention to the local situation" (p. 58). The specific categories of distance students being used as the foundation of this study aligned with these characteristics well.

Research Questions
The multicase study was guided by a relatively narrow scope of five research questions:  (2015) called maximal variation sampling. This is a "purposeful sampling strategy in which the researcher samples cases or individuals that differ on some characteristic or trait" (Creswell, 2015, p. 206). Therefore, the intention was to recruit participants from: • multiple national/regional backgrounds and genders; • who were studying online at universities located in various nations/regions; • at various levels of study and in different fields; • and at various stages in their programs.
The theoretical variation was considered to be an emergent characteristic of the study; however, the researcher was ultimately unsuccessful in achieving a wide degree of variation in national origin and fields of study, as is subsequently discussed.

Data Collection
For the purpose of this study, a "case" was defined as a single foreign-resident who was or had been studying "abroad" while living in Korea. Data was collected over a two-month period, and ultimately from eight foreign-resident distance students. The  Figure 2. Interviews were recorded and processed in transcription software with manual editing for correction/accuracy, and subsequently imported and organized in NVivo, and prepared for memoing and initial coding. The initial analysis helped determine whether or not to continue data collection efforts or to consider if data saturation had been reached.
The range of participants can vary greatly in qualitative studies (Creswell, 2013;Creswell, 2015), and is also dependent on the emergent nature of a qualitative study. A number in the range of four to six participant range would reasonably represent both target cases and yield some case variety. Although it can be difficult to predict when data saturation is reached (Crouch & McKenzie, 2006), Fusch and Ness (2015) pragmatically suggested that if a qualitative study is being guided by theoretical sampling and data saturation, researchers simply need to be "explicit regarding how data saturation is reached" (p. 1413). To that end, the researcher explains the rationale for saturation in this study.
On one hand as a multicase approach, too many cases can become unwieldy and may also mean the study is presenting redundant information (Creswell, 2013;Stake, 2006;Yin, 2009) whereas on the other, purposefully sampled and homogenous groups may present relatively similar information and enable saturation more quickly (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006). Due to the homogeneity of actual participants, after six cases, information was relatively uniform with only minor variations of codes produced in interview seven.

Data Analysis
After initial code generation, codes were more formally established, along with case descriptions, including a preliminary cross-case analysis that compared/contrasted the cases (Stake, 2006). Then, the preliminary codes were further aggregated to form larger themes and/or patterns (Braun & Clarke, 2006). An analysis of themes began, and assertions made where "the researcher makes sense of the data and provides an interpretation of the data" (Creswell, 2013, p. 294). In general, four prevalent themes emerged describing convenience, a home-country orientation and/or a non-local future, and perceived benefits of their programs. At this point, a more detailed portrait of the cases and case categories were presented using narrative writing, tables, and/or figures that present naturalistic generalizations or "generalizations that people can learn from the case either for themselves or to apply to a population of cases" (Creswell, 2013, p. 200).

Validation Strategies and Trustworthiness
The researcher followed an interview protocol for uniformity and systematicity. A log of activities was created and kept in order to document the sequence of research events, along with field/interview notes, and a project file that organized recording audio, transcriptions, and related data to enable an audit trail (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Data from program websites (i.e., tuition costs, degree names, marketing materials) was used to triangulate what participants discussed during interviews (often due to simple memory lapses) as well as a mode of establishing contextual validity where a piece of evidence can be compared with other similar evidence (e.g., similarities/differences between degree programs), and where the source of the evidence can evaluated for any potential inconsistencies (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Furthermore, peer review of coding/analysis with a faculty member served as an ongoing external check of the study as it progressed (Creswell, 2013). Tentative case descriptions were sent to participants as a means of member checking so that they could "judge the accuracy and credibility of the account" and make changes before they were finalized (Creswell, 2013, p. 252). All participants approved their case descriptions and made appropriate modifications/feedback where they felt necessary.  Duncan (a pseudonym) had been struggling to find work in his early 20s "because I'm inexperienced, too young, etc." and was "sick of getting knocked back from menial jobs in the UK, because they would constantly say, if you got a graduate school degree, you will leave at the very first opportunity, so we're not going to hire you". It had been suggested to him that in order to get international work experience relevant to NGO work, he might consider going abroad to teach English. Trey (a pseudonym) had always had an interest in Korea which was responsible for her travelling to the nation four times prior to moving to Busan for work. She had been curious about working in Korea, but she had no interest in teaching, and "didn't really want to be an English teacher" since she had had a career as a graphic designer.

Case Analyses
However, she did not enjoy living in London, and was unhappy with her job, and decided to use an English teaching position in Korea as a short term means of securing a work visa. Once in country, she would be able to more easily look for more appropriate or desirable work. Yet, "I actually realized how much I enjoyed teaching. So yeah, I, for the next, for the foreseeable future, that's [education] my career path". When asked about living in Korea and studying "abroad" online, she noted that she can easily seclude herself and focus on studying, and that the cost of living is much lower compared to London. She has also enjoyed the diversity of students in her program with peers from all over the world. However, she did not anticipate or realistically estimate how much work was actually involved and often can find it exhausting. She expects to graduate in March 2020.
Case 4 -Selene, 40, American, 14-sojourn, Ed.D. program Selene (a pseudonym) immigrated to Korea in 2005 because she was "crazy" about Asian cinema; upon her completion of a master's in cinema studies, she "had an idea that if I could go to Korea and study the language, master the culture, then I could go back, get a doctorate in film studies and become one of the foremost North American experts on Korean cinema--because at that time, nobody was talking about Korean cinema, and I knew it was going to be huge." She looked into the Fulbright ETA program and thought "well, at least I'll be in Korea, I can take Korean language lessons and watch Korean movies while I'm there and learn about the culture. And, ugh, if I have to teach, I guess that's okay." Upon walking into her first classroom, however, she immediately fell in love with teaching, and her career goals completely shifted.
After three years of teaching, she pursued a CELTA, and four years after that she decided to pursue a second master's degree in Literature, Culture, and Language Education (LCLE). A couple of years after graduating, her LCLE program opened a distance EdD, and she jumped at the opportunity to enroll. Her experience thus far has been overwhelmingly positive: "My classmates are awesome. I love my cohort. They are the most supportive, generous group of people I've ever met. I absolutely love interacting with them online." They have even traveled to conferences and presented together. She currently has finished doctoral coursework and is preparing for comprehensive exams.
She anticipates graduating in 2020.
Case 5 -Toben, 45, American, 8-year sojourn, M.A. program Originally from southern California, Toben (a pseudonym) came to Korea to specifically to teach English. As a Korean-American, he was eligible for an ethnic heritage visa which allowed him to live and work freely unlike other visa types that are directly tied to an employer and/or particular industry. "After three and half years in Island, a province situated about 200km south of the peninsular mainland. While starting work in Korea in the private academy system, he noted that "even before I came to Korea, I knew eventually I wanted to teach at the university level. And once I got some experience here, and I looked into the general requirements for teaching at universities in Korea, I thought that having a graduate degree would be very beneficial to me. So I decided to pursue a master's program". He enjoyed living in Jeju, developed a community of friends, and was not interested in relocating to attend classes (either domestically or abroad) and decided to enroll in a distance program located in the United Kingdom. He graduated in 2016.
Case 8 -Rob, 56, Canadian, 20-year sojourn, M.A. in a UK (Scotland) program Rob (a pseudonym) came to Korea in the late 1990s for "work and adventure" and has been living and working in the capital-metropolitan area for 20 years. While the adventure part of his motivations has since subsided, he has continued to work in higher education. He had always planned on going to graduate school, but the programs available or accessible to him circa 2001 were very limited. He was planning on getting a master's degree in TESOL in order to repatriate to Canada. Ultimately, he looked to the British universities and chose to study at a program in Scotland since it was not only a renowned institution, but one he had an interest in due to his family's Scottish "heritage connection, however, tenuous it might be". Rob, however, would not complete his program. For him: It was not the easiest. The usual support systems that you would have in a, in a brick and mortar university simply weren't there. And even among our colleagues, there, there wasn't a lot of people you could turn to, if you, if you needed help, and like say, you know, face to face.
He also noted that an online course "plays to my very worst instincts of procrastination".

Cross-case Analysis, Findings, and Discussion
RQ1. What are the demographic and program characteristics of expatriate and transnational distance students in Korea?
Aside from the common demographic characteristics of participants (western nationalities, English-speaking, mostly male) in this sample, most of the cases decided to pursue further education after a sojourn period of five to ten years (with Trey, Toben, and Rob being the exceptions at two to three and a half years). One prevalent theme was their initial lack of credentials/qualifications in their professions. Though their reasons for immigration ranged from adventure, career change, and work, other reasons were more specific, such as becoming an expert in Korean cinema and getting international work experience for NGOs. Nevertheless, despite the variation in factors that led to immigration, participants found themselves funneled into the same niche industry due to limited employment options as non-Korean speakers, and as a function of national origin(s), native language, and prior college education.
These three qualifications easily enabled work visas in the EFL industry, regardless of their original intentions. Though working as English teachers was initially thought to be a temporary job for Stephen, Trey, and Selene, they were surprised at how much they enjoyed teaching and decided to make it a career. Similarly, Corey ended up enjoying education and dedicated himself to earning the related credentials, whereas for Mike and Rob, this had always been their goal. JT was working in the nightlife and entertainment industry but needed to change careers in order to better raise his young daughter. Thus, while they are all non-traditional students (see Bean & Metzner, 1985), they possess an additional layer of complexity as a result of their immigration status and the nature of transnational education (Harrison et al., 2018;Rensimer, 2016;Stewart, 2017;Wilkins, 2016).
RQ2. What is the experience like studying 'abroad' while living in a foreign country and culture?
For the students (Stephen, Corey, Trey, Selene, Mike, and Rob) whose universities were located in significantly different time zones, they experienced only minor difficulties as a result; though the time difference between Korea and North America is coincidentally 12-14 hours apart which coincidentally inverts the mornings and evenings. With the exception of Rob, all of the cases had overwhelmingly positive experience in their courses, especially the doctoral students (Corey, Selene). All programs were asynchronous with the exception of Toben who specifically wanted synchronous classes otherwise he would not have considered an online program.
Selene noted that some parts of her M.A. in LCLE were too U.S. centric, but that her doctorate, by contrast, had been wonderfully personal and customized to her setting in Korea. Mike noted how his university in England was able to send him custom print materials from the library within a week, considering their support and services to be excellent. Their academic performance, whether characterized as a GPA (i.e., 3.5+) or a distinction (i.e., 60-70%+), is very high and in line with prior research on graduate students in distance programs (Colorado & Eberle, 2010).
RQ3. What are any notable experiences that expatriate and transnational distance students have in their programs/courses? Trey noted that the isolation and cheaper cost of living made it easier for her to work and study in Korea compared to London, though she noted how exhausting and overwhelming the coursework could be at times. Both Trey and Rob noted how the usual support structures (family, coworkers, classmates) were not readily available or linguistically accessible, and as immigrants, could compound the difficulty. Such constraints of expatriate students have often been an overlooked nuance (Rensimer, 2016). By contrast, Corey stated how incredibly important and valuable it was to have a wife and family that supported him throughout his EdS and PhD programs, and that "it's wonderful that technology has afforded the opportunities for people like me [immigrants/expatriates], who would not have previously been able to attain such a degree as either an MA an EdS or a PhD".
RQ4. Do students perceive any benefit(s) from their academic program in their host country?
While further education was not always necessary for employment due to prior minimal qualifications, these cases all wanted to be eligible for better future employment opportunities both in Korea and abroad. The benefits attached to those employment opportunities, however, are not necessarily so straightforward. Mike was able to meet his goal of employment at a local university, however the difference in pay or workload from his previous job in the public-school system was not significantly different. Duncan noted that when completing his EdD "I will earn an additional 100,000 won [90 USD] a month" and that the pay increase will take "another 40-50 years to pay it [the degree] off". He expects that it likely only helps with job security versus actual career advancement. Despite these cases being highly credentialed (i.e., multiple bachelor's, master's, and terminal degrees, certificates, etc.), Duncan and Corey were very direct about the realities of a professional ceiling as foreigners. Duncan stated that "the thing that potentially halts it [the doctorate] being useful is simply the ceiling of my own position as a foreigner" and that "I will not have the opportunity to enter those [higher] positions". All of the cases mentioned a possible benefit and value of the degrees for if-or-when they return to their home countries, though paradoxically none of them had any definite plans to do so. Corey and Rob both had once decided to repatriate but those plans eventually changed. The current typical sojourn period of these cases is in excess of 10 years.
RQ5. Do students apply what they have learned into the host country's society?
As students, immigrants, and education workers, they do not necessarily intend to apply what they are learning from "abroad" in Korea. Their reasons for this vary and range from being unsure of applicability for cultural reasons as Mike explained: some of the things I would like to do is, it's not as easy here in Korea, specifically, interacting with fellow students, I find that to be difficult sometimes to get certain students to want to speak with their fellow classmates, or do group activities or activities that involve moving around and interacting with other students, that can sometimes be difficult.
For Corey and Selene, applying knowledge and skills developed in their degree was not intended since Corey wanted to repatriate and specifically sought out American administrative credentials. Selene wanted intellectual challenge, but that did not preclude her from applying these skills to her classroom practices, noting that "I wasn't doing my best for my students, and I wanted them to have the absolute best possible experience". By contrast, Rob felt that the nature of his original master's program "they kind of sold it as being, you know, practical, but, but it wasn't, it was, you know, it was academic, it was theoretical" and he was left to figure out how to apply those concepts on his own.

Implications
As this study explored two distinct cases of students, it highlights the subtlety of certain differences that have been overlooked in prior scholarship (Harrison et al., 2018). For example, participants were mostly living as unmarried skilled migrant laborers in Korea (see Shin & Moon, 2019) and described lacking the usual support structures (i.e., family, friends, coworkers, immediate access to classmates) that their national counterparts would most likely have. Or where an international distance student might have these support systems available, there may be issues with language competency unlike expatriate or national student categories. Simply put, more refined classification can result in better support.
When situated across two countries, the concept of home, and which "home" is actually oriented to, is complex (Nowicka, 2007;Ralph & Staeheli, 2011).These cases uniformly stated how much they appreciate and enjoy living and working in Korea and have made it home in numerous ways (marriage, property ownership, families, children, careers), yet education uniquely was sought out in the "other" home. On one hand, for universities outside of Korea, there is a niche student demographic that is not only willing, motivated, and capable of affording their programs, but that also perceives their degree offerings as being convenient and beneficial, despite the geographic, time zone, and sociocultural differences in Korea. Further, comparatively longer periods of sojourn (10-15 years) seem to have no effect on distance student willingness to study online in their home countries, or other third-party countries in the case of transnational distance students. On the other hand, for universities within Korea these cases represent a potential loss to the local economy since the cost of these programs ranged from 10,000-55,000 USD. Moreover, the loss is not purely financial as students (particularly doctoral ones) are not necessarily networking or participating directly in the local academic community where they might collaborate on research and publish in conjunction with local scholars and universities.

Limitations
Participants represented in this study were relatively homogenous, all coming from western English-speaking countries, working in the same field (education, TESOL), and studying similar topics (ECLE, TESOL, Applied Linguistics, Educational Leadership). Thus, when viewed in conjunction with the knowledge that the overwhelming majority of foreign residents in Korea are Chinese nationals or from the Asian region in general (see MoJ, 2016), there are arguably clear boundaries with their experiences, and those of other foreign nationals. For example, there was a synergy between these students' work/careers in education and a need for higher qualifications, particularly in tertiary education that would not necessarily be the same in other fields or careers.
Additionally, these cases were not compared against cases of foreign residents who have immigrated to Korea for work but decided to enroll in Korean programs, or students who started programs (both distance and local) but withdrew (with the exception of Rob). Moreover, these students volunteered to participate (no compensation was offered for participation) and represents both purposeful sampling and a kind of self-selection bias which can disproportionately represent their views over cases of expatriate and transnational distance students who simply chose not to participate (Heckman, 1979). However, as a qualitative research approach, the findings are not meant to be generalizable, nor are they intended to be representative of all potential cases of expatriate or transnational distance students in Korea, the region, or elsewhere in the world.

Conclusion
This study makes a contribution to the academic literature by investigating distinct cases of students as called for in previous research (e.g., Kosmützky & Putty, 2016;Rensimer, 2016;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Stewart, 2017Stewart, , 2019, and providing a glimpse into a subset of the foreign-resident population's experiences in Korea. The cases presented here illustrate general reasons for needing (lacking credentials, a condition of employment) or wanting (intellectual challenge, career change) further education. Further, the specific degree fields were contextually related to a lack of alternative career options as non-Korean speakers, or an easier path into one particular immigrant-centric industry in Korea by virtue of western origins and by being native English speakers. The cases also present subtle constraints from being situated transnationally such as not having familial or institutional support structures due to living in Korea that other types of distance students (i.e., national, international) should generally have available. This multicase study, however, is an incremental contribution to the literature; there are numerous avenues for further investigation.

Future Research
First, there is ample opportunity to explore the distance student experience of other foreign nationals in Korea that this researcher was unable to recruit, as well as ones elsewhere in the region and the world. Second, though there was some variety in degree programs, many (though not all) of these degrees are available in Korea, particularly those in, TESOL/EFL, or Applied Linguistics. Furthermore, such programs are offered at both well-known Korean universities (e.g., Sookmyung Women's University, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul National University) and face-to-face transnational programs (e.g., Birmingham University, Framingham State University). Both local national and transnational programs are also comparatively less expensive due to government tuition subsidies, discounts, or scholarships for foreign nationals (Stewart, 2017). While models of college choice do exist (e.g., Jackson Model, Chapman Model, Hanson and Litten Model), these describe the decision processes or phases that high school students and their families make towards high education (see Vrontis, Thrassou, & Melanthiou, 2007). Related studies (e.g., Griffin, Del Pilar, McIntosh, & Griffin, 2012;Nora, 2004) have similarly looked at high school students but from the perspective of minorities and immigrants in the United States, or, for example, expatriate college choice in the UAE at face-to-face programs transnational branch campuses (Rensimer, 2016). These perspectives, motivations, or conditions, however, are not necessarily the same as graduate, expatriate or transnational distance students, and particularly those in the Korean context.
A grounded theory, for example, could suggest or approximate an explanation of why a phenomenon exists (Creswell, 2013), and potentially "generate or discover a theory or abstract analytical schema of a phenomenon" that is "grounded in the experience and perceptions of the participants" (Creswell, 2015, p. 451). This approach could shed light on the motivations and decision-making process of expatriate and transnational distance students. At present, a low birth rate in Korean society is one contributing factor to declining enrolment numbers at universities nationwide (Anderson & Kohler, 2013;Shin & Moon, 2019;Yoo & Sobotka, 2018), necessitating that universities employ additional enrollment strategies such as looking outward by means of internationalizing the campus (Jon et al., 2014). However, in light of these cases, looking inward may be another viable and complementary recruiting strategy by recognizing an "international" resident population that is already present (Patel & Lynch, 2013). Yet, why such students decide to study abroad, and what their decision-making process and motivations are, is not clearly known and worth further study.

Introduction
The 21st century has become increasingly globalized where various regions and nations are becoming more interconnected by means of information and communications technology (ICT) (Gunawardena & LaPointe, 2008), and simultaneously interdependent and affected by broad social, economic, cultural, and political forces (Aman, 2013). The internationalization of face-to-face higher education as a whole has steadily become a complex and nuanced migration industry (Beech, 2018;Choi, Tartar, & Kim, 2019). The rise of educational migrants in primary, secondary, and tertiary education (e.g., Fang & Wang, 2014;Kim, Bankart, Jiang, & Brazil, 2018;Park, 2018;Park, 2019) highlights the push-pull model of international student destination choice where various factors in one's home country may "push" one to seek education abroad, as well as other factors, such as a university's reputation or prestige, that may simultaneously "pull" students towards institutions abroad (Cha & Cheng, 2009, Lam, Ariffin, & Ahmad, 2011Rensimer, 2016). These conventional factors are challenged, however, when considering differences between student motivations who attend offshore/transnational campuses rather than those who attend the "home" campus abroad (Fang & Wang, 2014;Wilkins, Balakrishnan, & Huisman, 2012).
For example, returnee students (who have lived abroad for significant periods of time during youth and/or adolescence) may lack the linguistic ability or sociocultural knowledge to attend national college programs successfully after having repatriated to their home countries (Greenholtz & Kim, 2019;Kim, 2018;Pollock & Van Reken, 2009). As a result, K-12 international schools, transnational programs, and local "international" branch campuses of foreign universities may be the only viable options for further study. Moreover, complicating the discussion on student choice is also the simple fact that international students are heterogeneous typologically (e.g., official exchange, short-term visiting non-degree seeking, directly enrolled degreeseeking) (Beech, 2018;Madge et al., 2015). The distinction between "international students" and other potential classifications of face-to-face and distance students (e.g., expatriate and transnational) is unclear in the literature (Kosmützky & Putty, 2016;Stewart, 2017Stewart, , 2019. Rensimer (2016) made the critique that "[t]he overlapping language of all things international-international students and international institutions in (inter)national spaces-appears to have made the term all but redundant as a useful research analytic in a globalizing era" (p. 79). The term 'international' is often a catch-all label that oversimplifies complex and subtle situational diversity among student populations (Madge et al., 2015;Stewart, 2017Stewart, , 2019. Rensimer (2016) called attention to this situation at a face-to-face transnational campus in the United Arab Emirates where expatriate students were inadequately recognized and homogenized as "international", making a "call for nuanced approaches to research on expatriate and international students and recognition of their differing constraints, needs, resources, and aspirations" (Rensimer, 2016, p. 93). Similarly, when considering the different constraints, needs, resources, and aspirations of distance students situated outside of a national context, similar limitations have started being discussed in recent research (Madge et al., 2015;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Stewart, 2017Stewart, , 2019. Thus, while college choice is itself a complex decision making process comprised of many dimensions such as push-pull factors and the individual student's habitus, there are additional layers of complexity in distance education (Lansing, 2017) and international or transnational settings (Fang & Wang, 2014;Stewart, 2019) that are underrecognized. Additionally, "international" students who go abroad, national students who study at local "international" campuses, or foreign residents (expatriates) studying at local national or transnational branch campuses will likely not share the same habitus, motivations, or decision-making processes as their conventional, nationally situated counterparts (Rensimer, 2016). The contexts of students can be so different that more dynamic, adaptable, and holistic models may be more beneficial than conventional choice-based perspectives (Iloh, 2018).
While the differences between various types of students may not necessarily be revolutionary in nature (Harrison et al., 2018), their voices have been glossed over in silence (Andrews & Tynan, 2010); there may be additional or overlooked nuance among expatriate and transnational distance students when it comes to such factors that have otherwise gone unnoticed (Stewart, 2019). Therefore, the purpose of this grounded theory study is to investigate the motivations and decision-making process of expatriate and transnational students in the Republic of Korea and present their rationales and thinking behind enrolling in distance programs abroad, rather than local national or transnational ones in-country.

Conventional College Choice Scholarship
Scholarship on college choice for high school students/young adults is well researched with publications investigating various perspectives from the late 1960s to today. By contrast, there are few studies that examine the college choice motivations of distance students who enroll in distance programs outright (e.g., Harris & Martin, 2012;Jaggars, 2013;Lansing, 2017;Roblyer, 1999), or even the more recent phenomenon of students attending K-12 virtual schools (e.g., Rice, 2006;Barbour, 2017). On the one hand, the absence of research on distance program choice is logical prior to the widespread adoption of the Internet and proliferation of online distance programs.
However, it should be noted for good measure that there are massive scale distance education programs delivered as telecourses today, most notably in India (Panda, 2005).
Nevertheless, on the other hand, the poverty of recognition of distance program choice is a glaring omission today given its ubiquity (Lansing, 2017). Nonetheless, common among most of the studies presented is a high degree of homogeneity; notably the focus on a) traditional secondary school students (i.e., 16-24 years old), b) undergraduate college choice as first-time freshman, c) the face-to-face mode of delivery, and d) a national frame of reference (Lansing, 2017). An overview is presented below in table 15 in chronological order.   Allen, & McDonough, 2004), first-generation immigrants (e.g., Griffin, Del Pilar, McIntosh, & Griffin, 2012), or undocumented students (e.g., Perez, 2010. The potential variety in national contexts notwithstanding, the motivations of transnational students and the factors that influence their decisions to attend international branch campuses at home (or the home campus abroad) over local national programs are markedly different .

Transnational College Choice Scholarship
Over the last 20 years, transnational education as a field has rapidly evolved and changed (Wilkins, 2016). Since the 1990s, various universities began pursuing revenue growth strategies by exporting their brand and educational offerings in the form of transnational programs and the establishment of branch campuses in various host countries around the world . For example, the national and local municipal governments here in Korea worked in partnership to build a Global Campus in Songdo, Incheon to serve as a regional educational hub which currently houses four American universities (Stonybrook, FIT, University of Utah, George Mason) and one Belgian university (Ghent) (IGC, n.d.). Due to the change in student population from national to "foreign", as well as the university relationship directly with a national government versus individual students, the impetus for research on college choice including offshore campuses begins largely from 2000 onwards. Table   17 was adapted from  and includes additional scholarship on international and/or transnational college choice up to 2019. Similar to Table 15, Table   16 calls attention to the target student population, level of study, medium, and various college-destination and student-originating countries/regions. Notable again is a certain degree of homogeneity, particularly the student type, level of study, and medium of delivery.   These studies present a recurring focus on high school/undergraduate students and face-to-face delivery, as well as ambiguity when investigating students under the broad label of "international" (see Rensimer, 2016). Only  and Rensimer (2016)  Korea that only enrolled foreign residents since they could not legally enroll Korean citizens due to the program operating without local government accreditation. This type of a branch campus can be considered a hidden outpost, and just one more variation on the more conventional offshore campus since it was "located in a separate policy and regulatory environment" (Kinser & Lane, 2015, p. 4). These examples are meant to point out that, although international branch campuses, offshore campuses, or transnational programs typically cater to local national students, local students in transnational programs are not necessarily citizens (Rensimer, 2016;Stewart, 2019).
Despite such recurring situations, there are few college choice studies in transnational settings (e.g., Rensimer, 2016;Wilkins & Epps, 2011) that explicitly disambiguate between local citizen students, expatriate/immigrant students (long term foreign residents), and international students (temporary education migrants). As noted earlier, the overly broad use of "international" as a research analytic (Rensimer, 2016) or a student category (Stewart, 2017) continues to be problematic since it glosses over potential nuance and complexity (Stewart, 2019). Moreover, this practice of overly broad student categorization has not been limited to face-to-face programs; it is equally problematic or unclear in distance education literature (Harrison et al., 2018;Kosmützky & Putty, 2016;Stewart, 2017Stewart, , 2019. Though early recognition of expatriate distance students was dismissed (see Ziguras, 2008), recognized ex post facto (see Dobos, 2011), or unclear due to conventional terminology usage (e.g., Selwyn, 2011a;2011b), subsequent recognition is currently only burgeoning (see Singh et al., 2012;Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Stewart, 2017Stewart, , 2019Wilkins, 2016).
Further complicating the matter is the fact that individual scholars tend to conceptualize and use conventional terms (e.g., international, transnational) in different ways (Pieterse, 2007). For example, Gemmell and Harrison (2017) described transnational distance students at a university in the UK as ones located outside of the European Union (EU) by virtue of tuition fee classification, whereas Stewart (2017) proposed a definition of transnational distance students as foreign residents of a given country by virtue of non-tourist sojourn status, studying online in a country where they neither have citizenship or legal residency and presumably classified administratively as an "international" student. Kosmützky and Putty (2016) noted the additional problem that there seems to be little to no difference between an international distance student as seen from the perspective of distance education literature, or a transnational distance student in the transnational literature base; both terms are defined as a distance student living in a country different from where the institution is located. Thus, to avoid the aforementioned difficulties in speaking clearly about the particular type of student as the object of inquiry, Stewart's (2017) model of distance students and terminology for expatriate and transnational distance students is used throughout this paper (see Figure 3).

Characteristics of College Choice
College choice models can generally be described as outlining three broad phases from exploration of available institutions, listing a set of colleges to choose from/exclude for various reasons, and ultimately enrollment (Lansing, 2017). Models can be economic in nature which present the internal decision making process as one based on the perceived economic value an institution can provide through its degrees, or models can be focused on status-attainment which take into consideration a host of determinant variables (e.g., prior GPA, parents' highest level of educational attainment, socioeconomic status, etc.) (Vrontis et al., 2007). The models, pragmatically, are not mutually exclusive and combining both economic and status-attainment perspectives can more holistically analyze push-pull factors and present a more detailed picture of individual (e.g., socioeconomic status, culture, religion, gender, parental educational attainment, personal values, aspirations, academic ability) and environmental (e.g., economic ability, financial aid, social influence, marketing/recruiting influence) determinants, and characteristics of the institutions (e.g., cost, location, program availability, reputation, prestige) (Vrontis et al., 2007). Moreover, the combination of economic and status-attainment perspectives may be far more powerful explanatorily than any one perspective alone (Vrontis et al., 2007). In transnational settings, other applicable factors such as geographic distance from one's home country, cultural distance, linguistic ability, religious compatibility, and even travel attractions play a part in the choice process (Lam et al., 2011;. By contrast, Iloh (2018) argued that the notion of "choice" itself may be a limiting and/or problematic way of conceptualizing prospective college students due to increased access to and participation from nontraditional and post traditional students. However, regardless of the approach, three relevant trends stand out in prior scholarship in both national and transnational perspectives: 1) contextual homogeneity, 2) lack of distance programs/virtual institutions as a choice object, and 3) ambiguous/homogenized student categorization.

Limitations in Prior Research
Distance education programs are no longer a fringe experience (Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2018). Millions of college students in the United States alone complete undergraduate and graduate degrees at a distance (Allen et al., 2016). Moreover, there are numerous open universities around the world serving tens of thousands of students annually (see Castañeda, 2005;Davis, 2001;Gulati, 2008;Means et al., 2014;Moiseeva, 2005;Moore & Kearsley, 2012;Park & Kim, 2004;Schlosser & Anderson, 1994), in addition to brick and mortar universities offering their own catalogues of distance programs at virtually all levels of education (Means et al., 2014;Moore & Kearsley, 2012). Furthermore, mega-universities (with more than 100,000 students) such as the Open University of China (OUC), Anadolu University in Turkey, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in India, or Western Governors University (WGU) in the United States, have emerged over the last 20 years with annual student enrolment over a hundred million combined (Latchem, Özukel, Aydin, & Mutlu, 2006;Li, 2018).
Despite the ubiquity of distance programs with massive scales of enrollment compared to conventional brick and mortar universities, research on how or why students choose these specific programs is notably sparse (Lansing, 2017) Modern distance education, enabled predominantly (but not exclusively) by the Internet, has made all levels of study accessible at a distance from the primary/secondary level (e.g., Barbour, 2017;Means et al., 2014;Rice, 2006), to undergraduate and graduate school from virtually anywhere in the world (Lansing, 2017;Means et al., 2014;Moore & Kearsley, 2012). Additionally, there is a lack of scholarship on college choice for expatriate or transnational students who not only cross national borders in face-to-face transnational programs, but also at a distance (see Table 16 and 17). For example, Lansing (2017) Stewart's (2017) model.

The Current Study: The Korean Context
One salient and common characteristic of expatriate and transnational distance students is simply that they forgo local educational opportunities and choose to study online at universities "abroad". On one hand, this decision may have a relatively simple explanation (i.e., no local options) to more complex underlying circumstances such as ethnic/racial discrimination (Selwyn, 2011a), or impractical commutes (e.g., across islands for residents in archipelago nations) (Singh et al., 2012 (Kim, 2017;Joo, 2019). There are both national and transnational education programs that offer a wide range of courses, degrees, and programs in English as an international or common language (Jon et al., 2014;Kim, 2018). For a subset of the foreign-resident population in Stewart's (2017) survey, respondents indicated that they were taking programs online despite analogous programs (major, level of study, and language of instruction) existing at various Korean universities and local transnational programs. This phenomenon was intriguing since the Korean government offers various scholarships and stipends to attract "foreign" students (Study in Korea, 2019) that would also be beneficial financially. Currently, no analysis of college choice for foreign residents exists which investigates/approximates the college choice process of expatriate and transnational distance students. Further, no such investigation currently exists specifically the Korean context.

Key Research Objectives
Given the limited amount of college choice scholarship on distance students in general, and expatriate and transnational distance students in particular, this study sought to investigate why such students choose to study online "abroad" versus locally. The study was guided by the following research questions: 1. What are the demographic and program characteristics of expatriate and transnational distance students in Korea?
2. Why do students not study at national or transnational institutions/programs in their host country?
3. What factors influence/motivate students' decisions to seek distance education opportunities outside of their host country? 4. How do students identify and choose their respective institutions outside of their host country?

Methodology
Since student choice was the primary concern in this investigation, a grounded theory approach was an appropriate research method since its purpose is to suggest or approximate an explanation for why a given phenomenon exists (Creswell, 2013). In more specific terms, the intent of the grounded theory method is to "generate or discover a theory or abstract analytical schema of a phenomenon" that is "grounded in the experience and perceptions of the participants" (Creswell, 2015, p. 451). In this particular study, this researcher took the interpretive, constructivist epistemological view that "the findings are a construct produced by the interaction between the interpreter and the interpreted as situated in society. Knowledge of the observed is constructed rather than discovered" (Levers, 2013, p. 4).

Sampling
Since the literature is inconsistent in both terminology and definition (e.g., home student, domicile student, national student, expatriate, home student abroad, international, transnational, etc.) (Kosmützky & Putty, 2016;Rensimer, 2017l Stewart, 2017), Stewart's (2017) conceptual model was used to delineate the "foreign" resident distance students in Korea. To be eligible for participation, participants needed to be residing in Korea, and be taking or have completed a distance program based outside of Korea. In order to recruit participants, one strategy was to use what Creswell (2015) called maximal variation sampling. This is a "purposeful sampling strategy in which the researcher samples cases or individuals that differ on some characteristic or trait" (Creswell, 2015, p. 206). Therefore, the intention was to recruit participants from various national/regional backgrounds and genders, and currently studying (or graduated) while living in Korea.
The theoretical variation was considered to be an emergent characteristic of the study.
However, this researcher was unsuccessful in achieving a wide degree of variation by national/regional background and gender and is discussed in detail below. uncommon and recent phenomenon) blur these boundary conditions and would be excluded from participation. However as noted earlier, the effort was unsuccessful in achieving a wide degree of variation and is discussed in subsequent sections.

Data Analysis and Saturation
The range of participants can vary greatly in qualitative studies and is contingent upon the emerging nature of a study (Creswell, 2013(Creswell, , 2015. Therefore, while it can be hard to predict when there are "enough" participants (Crouch &McKenzie, 2006), Fusch andNess (2015) suggested that researchers simply need to be "explicit regarding how data saturation is reached" if being guided by data saturation (p. 1413). To that end, this researcher offers the rationale for data saturation in this study.
During analysis, the constant comparison method was used to combine coding and analysis simultaneously in order to recognize and develop emerging concepts (Kolb, 2012). Glaser and Strauss (in Kolb, 2012) described four stages in the constant comparison method where researchers are "(1) comparing incidents applicable to each category, (2) integrating categories and their properties, (3) delimiting the theory, and (4) writing the theory" (p. 83). Thus, analysis and data collection occurred iteratively through three broad stages: open coding (initial identification/tentative labels for ideas expressed); axial coding (identifying relationships among the codes such as sequences, patterns); and selective coding (identifying an overarching label combines and reduces the codes into a core idea statement) (Creswell, 2013). At interview 10, the vast majority of ideas expressed by the participant coincided with existing codes (sometimes verbatim) and themes that had been developed throughout the analysis of earlier interviews, and no new information was discovered. Purposefully sampled and homogenous groups may present relatively similar information and enable saturation more quickly (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006). Therefore, given the homogeneity of participants and lack of new information in interview 10, data saturation was considered to have been reached and data collection was discontinued.

Participants
Despite the multilingual recruiting materials and dissemination to multinational online community groups and government centers that provide services to foreign residents, participants surfaced only from western, English speaking countries. An overview of their demographic and program characteristics are presented in Table 18, and their locations in Korea depicted in Figure 4. Ultimately 10 participants were interviewed over a three-month period. The sample population (n=10) was predominantly comprised of expatriate distance students (70%), overwhelmingly male (70%), mostly master's degree students (60%), and represented only three western nationalities and otherwise very similar to the characteristics of respondents in Stewart's (2017) exploratory descriptive study. Moreover, Table 18 provides a response to the first research question in this study regarding the demographic and academic program characteristics of expatriate and transnational distance students that participated in this study. The homogeneity of the profile gleaned here is not representative of the foreign-resident population as a whole (see MoJ, 2016) and will be discussed further in the limitations section.  percentages, and distinctions. Since the researcher was based in Seoul, Korea, interviews were conducted in person with participants living in or around the capital metropolitan area (n=6) whereas interviews with participants living in cities along the southern coast (n=4) were conducted by VoIP software as a matter of practicality and convenience (see Figure 4). Each interview lasted around 30-40 minutes. Once the interview was completed, an audio file was initially processed in transcription software, and subsequently both the audio and transcript files were placed into an NVivo project file for review, manual transcription editing for accuracy, and thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).
Interview topics were relatively narrow and focused on compiling some basic demographic traits and characteristics of the academic programs that these students were enrolled in. The predominant focus was the reasons why students did not enroll in local Korean or transnational programs, any specific factors or influences that played a part in their decisions to seek educational programs abroad, and how they learned about distance programs in general, and how/why they chose the program they actually enrolled in. The various themes and concepts that emerged from the transcripts were constantly compared with the transcript content as an effort of achieving validity. Once the analysis was mature, the categories, codes, and relationships were visualized and represented diagrammatically in Figure 8.

Validation Strategies and Trustworthiness
Each interview followed an interview protocol for uniformity and systematicity prior to, during, and after the interview. Field notes were kept, as well as an audit trail, that documented when and where raw data was collected, including interview and analysis notes, as well as chronicling the sequence in which categories, themes, definitions, and relationships were developed (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Data from websites was used to triangulate related information (e.g., program costs, program names, duration, etc.) presented during interviews, as well as a mode of establishing contextual validity where a piece of evidence can be compared with other similar evidence, and where the source of the evidence can be evaluated for any potential inconsistencies (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).
Furthermore, peer review with a faculty member served as an ongoing external check of the study as it progressed (Creswell, 2013). Initial (and iterative) drafts of the logic model (see Figure 8) were sent to participants as a means of member checking so that they could "judge the accuracy and credibility" of how their decision making processes were interpreted through analysis and subsequently constructed, providing the opportunity to offer additional insight or feedback before being finalized (Creswell, 2013, p. 252). The ultimate goal in refining the construction was to enable readers and reviewers to "transfer information to other settings" or determine if transfer is appropriate (Creswell, 2013, p. 253).

Results
Unlike the plethora of college choice models synthesized from samples of traditional high school students (or young adults) as first-time undergraduate college goers, participants in this study were nontraditional adult graduate students, and importantly, first generation immigrants in Korea. Most participants (70%) were studying at "home" in their countries of national origin. In order for all participants to work in Korea in their current professions, possessing an undergraduate education (at a minimum) was necessary both as an industry standard, and a requirement established by the Korean Immigration Office for their particular visa sponsorships. Throughout the analysis, three broad phases emerged which is generally similar with previous scholarship on college choice (see Vrontis et al., 2007), however, different in this data was that the first phase was not an information gathering process; rather it was an initiating event. This idea was prevalent when participants were asked why they decided to seek educational opportunities online, as well as the impetus for that decision at that specific point in time. Or Participant 2 who needed to make a career change from the nightlife and entertainment industry to one where he could more sustainably raise his young daughter.
He recounted how a friend of his had said: Hey, if you're looking for a transition, I have a job at the university. We're looking to hire someone, I can get you in, but one of the, one of the conditions is, you got to start working on your MA immediately.
More notably among the vast majority of participants, however, was the theme of repatriation interwoven among the three categories of events that emerged (see figure 5).

Repatriation as a Transnational Influence
The idea of repatriation is complex because on the one hand, some participants (Participant 2, 6, 10) considered their enrollment in an online program as a direct and calculated step towards reintegrating into the labour force in their home countries upon graduation after having spent 3-5 years abroad in Korea. For example, Participant 2 had gotten married, had a child, and explained rather strategically that: The decision-making process of the participants relied heavily on finding out about their programs by word of mouth or familiarity, and they described applying to/enrolling in their programs so nonchalantly that this researcher found it genuinely surprising. While getting information from friends, family members, coworkers, etcetera in and of itself is not surprising and common among college choice models (Vrontis et al., 2007), the lack of further information gathering highlighted a proverbial "path of least resistance" for many of the participants in this sample. And it had been a success story for him...so just word of mouth and knowing other people who had finished the program and found success with it.
All 10 participants in this study applied only to a single university, and equally relevant, did not actually consider more than one institution with the exception of Participant 2.
His decision to repatriate included a rather strategic inquiry into gaps or opportunities in the American labour force at the time, looked at numerous distance programs, excluded programs based on his personal needs and preferences, and ultimately decided on one program. His decision-making process followed more conventional college choice models (see Vrontis et al., 2007) with the exception of the motivation to repatriate. The constraints and search process are diagrammatically presented below in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Identification of Constraints and Subsequent Search Methods
When participants were asked about why they did not choose local Korean programs (as well as local transnational programs), factors emerged that pushed them away from local programs, as well as ones that pulled them back home beyond just the idea of repatriation. What stood out among the accounts of expatriate distance students was not any individually unique pull factor, but rather the collective sum of interdependent pull factors, or more specifically as this researcher posits, an educational ecosystem pulling them to distance education programs in their home countries despite indefinitely working and living abroad, as well as being highly educated and mobile professional workers.

Discussion
Like Lansing (2017) and Rensimer (2016), Iloh (2018) noted that there has often been a "lack of nuance perspective and the square peg in a round hole view of post-traditional students" which is "rooted in the historic youth centricity of postsecondary education" (p. 232). Moreover, higher education policy is commonly driven by traditional four-year residential educational experiences despite many students not having this kind of college experience today (Iloh, 2018 When participants discussed their reasons for choosing the universities they enrolled in, the lack of actual information gathering for most participants (as discussed earlier) might be explained by the concept of an educational ecosystem as a pull factor.
For example, the ability to receive in-state tuition (in the United States) despite living abroad, alumni tuition discounts at alma maters, administrative ease due to prior enrollment, former master's students pursuing doctorates in the same program, or enrolled in a sequential degree pathway (i.e., EdS to PhD). The lack of any overt obstacles or barriers, whether linguistic, knowledge-based, or administrative, simply made it easy to access information online, and to apply and enroll from the comfort of one's own home without much effort.
RQ 4. How do students identify and choose their respective institutions outside of their host country?
Rather than performing exhaustive searches and discriminant choosing, participants simply turned to an ecosystem where information was accessible, where they had a deeper background knowledge, to other foreign residents with pertinent information, or to where they had prior educational experience. This ecosystem effect might reasonably explain the lack of effort that the majority of the participants invested in seeking out where to do a graduate degree. Iloh (2018) called the absence of such information an information desert and ascribed it to a "failure of society, not particular communities, to democratize and make college information accessible across diverse communities and contexts" (p. 236).

Implications
Korean universities (and potentially others elsewhere around the world) may not necessarily consider adult, nontraditional, foreign born, first generation immigrants as potential students and as a result, do not market to them or include them in higher education growth strategies. By contrast, there has been a considerable effort to recruit traditional "international" students from abroad in Korea (Jon et al., 2014;Choi et al., 2019). Thus, rather than looking inward at a growing foreign born adult population (see MoJ, 2016), university policy in Korea may benefit from adapting policies and conventional view of students in response to significant changes in demographic trends, immigration, and the broader effects of globalization in the 21st century (Lee & Rhee, 2019;Shin, 2012). By not recognizing the admittedly niche population (especially in Korea) of nontraditional or post traditional students (Iloh, 2018), Korean universities are losing numerous opportunities to internationalize from within, generate revenue, and to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse society.
While an information desert (see Iloh, 2018) in Korea was an experience shared by participants in this study, these participants ultimately overcame it by seeking out distance programs abroad. As first-generation adult immigrants, the convenience of the medium and information accessibility made the ability to apply and enroll a matter of simplicity and convenience. Thus, for expatriate distance students, the pull or appeal of the home country educational ecosystem (alumni discounts, in-state tuition fees, prior enrollment), though simple as an extension of their habitus, is arguably more pronounced as first-generation immigrants. Moreover, the appeal may be even stronger when there are obstacles or barriers (e.g., linguistic, cultural) that hinder access to entering the local educational ecosystem. For the expatriate and transnational distance students in this sample, the perceived and actual complexity/difficulty of switching into the local Korean educational ecosystem, despite years of residency and indefinite plans to stay, might make the characterization of their "choice" more accurately a non-decision. A diagram of ecosystems as push-pull factors is presented below in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Ecosystem of Push-Pull Factors
Iloh (2018) suggested that "some college hopefuls are limited by their location, work and family needs, and income, so their choice set is considerably narrower" (p. 239). However, when specifically taking into account the context of first-generation adult immigrants in a foreign society, the local choice set may be considerably narrower or non-existent due to inequities in background knowledge of universities/programs and linguistic abilities, and an education system built around narrower norms of college going. As a result, distance education opportunities in one's home country, enabled by modern information and communications technology, may be a practical way to overcome or compensate for barriers to education in a foreign country where access to education may be more difficult due to a greater degree of sociocultural and linguistic differences. For example, barriers for UK nationals who immigrate to Canada (or vice versa) are arguably inconsequential given a shared L1, as well as shared socio-cultural traditions related to education, unlike the cultural and linguistic differences between western immigrants in Korea.

Conclusion
The decision to enroll in distance programs in one's home country or elsewhere abroad while living in a foreign country is multifaceted. Although repatriation was an ever-present underlying thread interwoven among life changes, career, and general goals, it was not necessarily a disproportionately influential determinant. Moreover, while expatriate and transnational distance students wanted to keep working in much the same vein as nontraditional students, they were also dependent on their employment to maintain visa sponsorship and legal visa status. This dependency typically necessitated distance programs to achieve both of those goals. Though these participants wanted to pursue further education, access to local programs as foreignborn adult immigrants was not so straightforward, despite lengthy periods of sojourn for 70% of participants.
On the one hand, distance programs and the Internet have enabled foreign residents to overcome local barriers to education in their host country and continue pursuing their educational goals. On the other, the enrollment abroad is both a financial loss to the local economy, and a participatory loss to local academia, especially for doctoral students. Participants in this study in some cases were paying up to 50,000 USD for a master's degree or paying around 30,000-40,000 USD for doctoral programs. While these costs are overt, there were also covert costs for students who were required to complete residency requirements annually in their home countries.
These additional costs included thousands of dollars in airfare and lodging. Moreover, doctoral students in this sample had also completed their master's degrees at a distance while living in Korea, highlighting how significant the financial and intellectual investment in their education was, and the larger scope of financial loss to the local education economy.
Local universities could benefit by adapting their recruiting strategies to first and foremost recognize changing demographic trends related to globalization, and specifically by considering adult foreign residents as potential students. Moreover, local universities could benefit by offering distance programs in languages other than Korean (as is common for certain face-to-face programs) since these types of students also need to maintain legal visa statuses. In Korea over the last 35 years, the foreignborn immigrant population has grown from 30,000 to over 2.5 million today (Kim, 2014;MoJ, 2016;Shin & Moon, 2019;Socinet, n.d.). If universities were to market and recruit prospective adult immigrant students early on in their sojourns in Korea through local district offices, local government community centers, education fairs, or larger governmental organizations like the Seoul Global Center or even the Immigration Office itself, they might be able to bring potential students into the local university ecosystem, and establish convenient and simpler administrative pathways for pursuing certifications or degrees, just as their native born counterparts conventionally do. Moreover, Global Centers in Seoul and other large cities (e.g., Busan, Incheon), though relatively young, have steadily added services over the last 10 years (SGC, n.d.) and higher education counseling may be worthy of inclusion to their current integration strategies moving forward.

Contributions
This study contributes to the college choice literature by explicitly investigating expatriate and transnational distance students, and specifically those within the context of Korea. While certain findings presented here confirm other findings in the literature base (e.g., Lansing, 2017) or certain aspects of theoretical models (e.g., Iloh, 2018), new insights are offered. This paper presents repatriation as a prevalent theme as a motivational factor for western, first-generation, adult-immigrant, graduate-distance students to seek out distance programs at home or "abroad" rather than enrolling in local national or transnational programs. It highlights the need for universities to offer distance programs to accommodate not only employment, but also maintaining legal visa status. Further, it highlights ecosystems as macro level push and pull factors. By contrast, this study highlights the limitations of conventional marketing and recruiting strategies/policies based on traditional views of college entrance that have not taken into account first generation immigrants seeking college education, particularly at the graduate level. The collective diagram of a theory of expatriate and transnational distance students is presented below in Figure 8.

Limitations
This study has various limitations. The first is the lack of diversity among participants. Though the number of participants in qualitative studies can be small when the sample consists of relatively homogenous participants (Crouch & McKenzie, 2006;Guest et al., 2006), the nationalities of participants here is not reflective of the foreign resident population in Korea as a whole. The majority of foreign nationals in Korea are Chinese, and the largest subsequent groups are from East Asia, Eurasia, and Southeast Asia (see MoJ, 2016). Although there was nothing offered as compensation for participating in the study, these participants were willing to volunteer their time and share their experiences and represents a kind of self-selection bias which may not necessarily reflect the views of this population subset (Heckman, 1979). Therefore, the experiences and rationales of the individuals that participated here, from western English-speaking countries, will most certainly vary from other foreign nationals in Korea. This point is especially true as they represent a more privileged class of immigrant socioeconomically than individuals from developing nations (Shin & Moon, 2019). The majority (70%) of participants were male, which contrasts with immigration statistics that generally highlight a more even split of entrants into Korea by gender (MoJ, 2016), as well as higher education statistics that generally display a slightly higher proportion of female students (Hoyt & Simon, 2016). Moreover, the accounts presented here are considered to be co-constructions between the researcher and participants, and an interpretive act that others may interpret differently (Levers, 2013). The findings should be considered judiciously and analyzed appropriately in relation to other seemingly similar populations or settings.

Future Research
There are numerous opportunities for future research. Similar college choice or grounded theory studies can be conducted in other countries or regions with different groups of foreign nationals to explore the complexity in the decision making process of adult immigrant graduate students, as well as the development and evaluation of university policies that are designed to recruit such students in the future. This line of inquiry would be useful since educational attainment studies on immigrants typically revolve around 1.5 or 2nd generation immigrants rather than first (e.g., van de Werfhorst & Heath, 2019). Further, given the difficulty of recruiting a more diverse participant pool, researchers might pursue a top-down approach where they can identify expatriate and transnational distance students at their own universities through departmental databases. This approach, however, is complicated by the fact that, at least from an administrative or database standpoint, expatriate and transnational distance students may not always provide their addresses abroad in order to facilitate administrative functions, degree apostilling, or maintaining residency-based tuition in their home countries (Stewart, 2017(Stewart, , 2019. This complication was present for 40% of participants in this study. Quantitative approaches that can more rigorously analyze contextually specific relationships through surveys or questionnaires such as the Traditional College Choice Scale (TCC), Distance College Choice Scale (DCC) (Lansing, 2017), or Arora's (1982) Involvement with Education Response (IE-R) and Situational (IE-S) scales could be used for statistical analysis of quantitative data. Participants in this study were all typical graduate students with relatively high GPAs or distinctions (Colorado & Eberle, into the retention or attrition rates of expatriate and transnational distance students would yield complementary data to the distance education literature which is often nationally or homogeneously sampled. It would also be beneficial to investigate the scope of the expatriate and transnational distance student phenomenon in terms how many adult foreign residents pursue local opportunities in proportion to the ones who take up distance programs in their home countries or abroad, and also in relation to the relative socio cultural/linguistic differences between first generation immigrants and the host country. In short, there are plenty of avenues and opportunities of inquiry to keep researchers busy in the transnational education space (Wilkins, 2016).
CHAPTER VI:

Summary
The currents of globalization and rapid parallel technological change with ICT have enabled not only greater access to distance education opportunities, but more diverse and complex educational entities and relations. This dissertation has focused on how this applies to distance students in particular. The three studies in this dissertation have not only argued the merits of utilizing clearly defined cases of distance students as a research analytic as called for in recent research (i.e., Gemmell & Harrison, 2017;Harrison et al., 2018;Rensimer, 2016;Stewart 2017Stewart , 2019, but they have also done so from multiple research perspectives (i.e., exploratory, multicase, grounded theory) within the shared context of Korea. Although the first study in this dissertation was exploratory and descriptive in nature, its value was in confirming/semi-validating the proposed distance student case descriptions, and collecting demographic and program data from expatriate and transnational distance students for at least a subset (i.e., skilled migrant labor) (Shin & Moon, 2019) of the foreign resident population in Korea. While many of the students' characteristics were typical of adult distance students (Lansing, 2017) and graduate students (Colorado & Eberle, 2010), several notable characteristics that stood out were that students were mostly male, mostly studying in their home countries (i.e., were expatriate distance students), and doing so despite having lived in a foreign country (Korea in this case) for 5-10 years on average. As an exploratory study, the gender disparity and various factors (e.g., student type, length of expatriation at time of study) were tested using various non-parametric tests but no significant relationships were found.
The second study, a multicase approach, explored 8 different cases (5 expatriate, 3 transnational) of foreign resident distance students but only successfully recruited western English-speaking participants despite a 20 language recruiting effort (Appendix B). These participants indicated being very satisfied with their programs regardless of geographic and time zone differences. Moreover, they also indicated satisfaction with curriculum despite the different sociocultural contexts in which their knowledge would need to be applied. Participants also highlighted how, as first-generation adult immigrants (and particularly Western English speakers), they were funneled into a specific immigrant-centric industry. The need for credentials due to not having relevant prior education was a logical reason for pursuing further study, however, it did not explain why these students were not studying locally at Korean universities or transnational campuses.
This was especially puzzling since the same or comparable programs were available, and as foreign nationals, were eligible for various government scholarships which would have been financially advantageous (Stewart, 2017;Study in Korea, n.d.).
The third study in this dissertation, a grounded theory approach, explored the motivations and decision-making process of expatriate and transnational distance students to better understand why they chose to study online abroad. Similar to studies one and two, most students were expatriates, male, and Western English speakers.
Although students generally indicated needing or wanting requisite credentials for their field/jobs, an interwoven thread of repatriation for "if" or "when" students returned to their home countries from Korea was often the impetus for choosing their specific university. This underlying thought process may plausibly explain the greater proportion of expatriate distance students versus transnational ones in all three of the studies, though one must consider the small sample sizes, sampling methods, and other stated limitations before making any unqualified conclusion to that effect. Although repatriation was not necessarily realized by participants, it was a cause for disproportionately looking at universities in their home countries (or elsewhere outside of Korea). Further, as immigrants, they often described lacking a detailed background knowledge of programs and universities, as well as a lack of Korean language ability that hindered access to information about programs. However, rather than perform detailed or thorough searches for programs, these participants overwhelmingly described their decision-making process in a way that could be explained according to an ecosystem effect as a push-pull factor where barriers to the local education ecosystem pushed them to simply look for options in their home countries due to linguistic and socio-cultural differences with the local host country. Modern ICT and distance programs enabled access to a familiar ecosystem that was easy and convenient to participate in, despite having immigrated/sojourned outside of their home countries. While conventional transnational branch campuses may primarily target and offer local citizens the convenience and comfort of staying at home while getting a "foreign" education , for immigrants with limited L2 ability and/or sociocultural obstacles to local educational systems, modern ICT enables an educational pathway that is similarly convenient and comfortable, just at a distance.

Student Categories
The findings presented here indicate subtle differences among expatriate and transnational distance student categories compared to their national and international counterparts (see Table 1). For example, expatriate and transnational distance students, as immigrants, described lacking the "usual" support structures (i.e., family, friends, knowledgeable coworkers, linguistic access) that their national or international peers would otherwise typically have. The results from study one indicated that participants had no prior experience in online courses and as a result, they made need additional support structures when starting their online courses. Moreover, as immigrants, there was an additional work/life complexity related to maintaining legal visa status that can add further complications (i.e., the inability to change jobs easily or quickly) which could potentially negatively affect degree completion. The point is that these kinds of situations are not present for other student categories, and worth consideration in order to better support such distance students if necessary. Additionally, although the participants in the three students can be considered highly mobile professionals or skilled migrants (see Shin & Moon, 2019), the behavior is one of reliance on the familiar (e.g., home country education) and is worth further exploration. However, it is also a thought process/behavior that universities can take advantage of in their own marketing efforts.

Home-country University Marketing
Wilkins and Huisman (2012) recommended marketing to specific segments of the potential college-going population as method of maximally effective marketing that in turn, creates student satisfaction, better retention, and an otherwise overall positive feedback loop from having aligned strategies to various potential student groups. This advice is similarly applicable in both home and host country universities with expatriate and transnational distance students. Marketing and/programs could frame how the degree can assist students in re-entering a home country labor force as described in study two, or by marketing high demand industries that potential students might consider. Further, programs can develop curricular elements that could assist students in transitioning into home-country centric industries or labor force contexts that may be less familiar due to potentially lengthy sojourns abroad such as program-supported networking.
Since most participants in this study indicated learning about their programs by word of mouth, it might be beneficial to use alumni representatives living in host countries to speak with other potential students locally, as well as creating an in-country network for students and potential students where more contextually-specific information can be shared that mimics how social media group communities crowdsource information. Moreover, universities should also implement a standardized address-ofrecord practice in order to improve the accuracy of statistics produced from their databases as participants may be using their home country addresses for various administrative benefits despite living abroad for both short-and long-term periods of time, or even indefinite sojourns (Stewart, 2017(Stewart, , 2019.

Host-country Universities
For universities within the host country, it is crucial to recognize non-traditional (see Bean & Metzner, 1985) or post traditional (see Iloh, 2018) students as potential students and to create alternative pathways to education. While this particular goal requires significant paradigmatic change in Korea (see Kim, 2018;Shin & Moon, 2019), the inability to capture tuition from highly motivated students as highlighted in this dissertation is, at the very least, arguably a significant financial loss to the local education economy, although it is not known how large the scale of the expatriate and transnational distance student phenomenon is in Korea. Moreover, many of the participants in the three studies presented here had completed multiple graduate degrees at a distance. Since commuting or relocating to attend a program was considered a constraint, programs from Korean universities should also include distance options that are available in additional languages (namely English as a common language), which are already offered on campus at as a part of pre-existing internationalization strategies (Jon et al., 2014;Shin & Moon, 2019).
Since immigrants will lack detailed background knowledge on local educational programs and universities and may not know how to find the appropriate information (especially if information is largely only accessible in an L2 despite being taught in an "international" language [namely English]), universities should partner with pre-existing governmental organizations such as the Global Centers across Korean and its satellite offices (see SGC, n.d.), local community or "joomin" centers, and other immigrant welfare organizations to make information available. For example, the Seoul Global Center provides help to foreign residents in the form of L1 counseling in 13 languages, driver's license exams, assistance with legal disputes, language and culture classes, business startup incubation, etc. (SGC, n.d.), yet there is currently no program that bridges foreign residents into the higher education ecosystem, especially for skilled labor migrants (see Shin & Moon, 2019). This current state is exemplary of an information desert (Iloh, 2018), and is perhaps alternatively characterized as an information divide.
English language TV and radio networks, namely the nationwide Arirang network, could similarly disseminate information bridging the linguistic and informational divide just as it currently provides information about Korean politics, current events, news, and entertainment (see Arirang, n.d.). Moreover, spaces at government buildings (i.e., local community [joomin] centers), could be used as satellite classrooms situated in the community if access to campus is inconvenient or impractical, just as the Ministry of Justice's Korean Social Integration Program (KIIP) operates in conjunction with universities and community centers to offer their Korean language programs nationwide (Socinet, n.d.). Moreover, the KIIP also offers synchronous distance versions of the integration program where priority is typically given to mothers who care for infants or young children.
Such custom support services are not necessarily revolutionary or new; they are often already in place for exchange, short-term visiting, and degree-seeking international students at universities in Korea. Larger universities often have dedicated administrative staff that handle virtually all steps of a student's admission from visa applications and processing, course registration, housing, scholarship applications, etc. due to an effort to internationalize the campus from abroad (Jon et al., 2014;Kim, 2018). However, this goal could similarly be achieved, or at the very least augmented by, internationalizing from within as the first-generation adult foreign-born immigrant population continues to grow, and now includes increasing amounts of skilled labor migrants (Shin & Moon, 2019). One significant reason for the steady increase and reliance on foreign-born adult workers is the compound effect of Korea's aging population, and low birthrate which continues to drop each year (Kim & Torres-Gil, 2008;Shin & Moon, 2019).
As the three studies in this dissertation suggest, the door to college education (and graduate level education in particular) is not necessarily closed to first-generation adultimmigrants, especially for skilled migrant workers (see Shin & Moon, 2019). At the very least, the Internet and modern ICT have enabled access to education transnationally for some when presented with access barriers. For certain students, although transnational distance education may be seen as convenient, it is also an additional pathway to higher education. The additional path, however, is a financial and participatory loss to hostcountries, and in this case Korea.

Limitations
There are various limitations to each of the three studies in this dissertation. Although the effort was made to advertise the study to numerous multinational online community groups as well as to foreign-residents who visit the Seoul Global Center, the participants that ultimately volunteered their time and shared their perspectives were from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The findings based on their views and habitus may not be similar to the findings from a more diverse sample. Further, since study two and three were qualitative approaches, they were not intended to be generalizable within or outside of the Korean context in any statistical sense, regardless of the actual samples' demographics. Moreover, the purposeful sampling methods employed and the fact that participants self-volunteered, represent a kind of self-selection bias (Creswell, 2013(Creswell, , 2015Heckman, 1979). Further, the results of these studies can be interpreted in various additional ways (e.g., different support structures, alternative ways of classifying distance students) and are not strictly limited to the interpretations presented by this researcher. Nevertheless, as noted by Hughes (2013) in relation to a similarly small sample of 25 participants in a similar study, "the findings are intended to be descriptive and indicative, rather than predictive or generalisable" and to offer "personalised, contextualised insights" (p. 139). In that vein, this researcher hopes to have offered such insight through these three studies presented herein.
Moreover, this dissertation is hopefully the beginning of a larger and longer conversation where technology, culture, human migration, globalization, glocalization, education, distance education, and transnational education all intersect in complex and dynamic ways.

Future Research
There are numerous opportunities for future research on the expatriate and transnational distance student phenomenon both in and outside of Korea. First, due to the limitations of being unable to recruit participants from more diverse national backgrounds in Korea in these three studies, additional strategies/methods for accessing potential participants would be beneficial to add more detail and nuance to the vignettes of expatriate and transnational distance students. Further, differences/similarities could be compared and analyzed by national background. Second, it is not currently known what the scope of this distance student phenomenon is in relation to immigrants/foreignresidents that do eventually enroll in local Korean universities or transnational offshore campuses. Third, a longitudinal effort to track and document transnational distance student enrollment patterns would present a valuable overall picture in much the same vein that the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) reports on the state of distance education in the United States. Fourth, it is not currently known what the relative attrition/retention number of expatriate and transnational distance students are in comparison to their national or international counterparts (as defined in this dissertation), and quantitative approaches would be useful in providing more statistically generalizable findings on that and numerous other dimensions. Fifth, research can be conducted across all regions and countries to look for broader trends or contextual differences with as many possible permutations by student nationality between home-and host-countries in both qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-method approaches. Lastly, further work can be done to explore the nuance of the categories of distance students proposed in this study, such as identifying other relevant characteristics or boundary conditions of the four respective categories. In short, there are numerous opportunities for future research in the transnational and expatriate education space (Harrison et al., 2018;Rensimer, 2016;Wilkins, 2016;Stewart, 2019).