During the past few years, many universities have been actively internationalizing their curriculum. The increasing portability of digital educational media makes that process even more important. Internationalisation of the curriculum encourages students to take advantage of the growing body of internationally produced online educational materials. At the same time, internationalized institutions have a more global, multicultural outlook that lets them more easily produce educational materials that are likely to be useful to those in other parts of the world. Local lecturers and tutors are crucial in helping students to contextualize and appropriate international materials.
Teachers act as a bridge between the producers and users of educational media.
They are able to frame and interpret the content for students, and help incorporate that content into the students broader education. This role becomes increasingly important as the cultural and geographical distance between producers and users increases. In international education, local teaching staff often have little control over the content and form of educational materials, which are often produced in another country. There is a great need for international collaboration in the production of educational media to ensure that content that is useful locally is also useful to educators and students in other parts of the world. In every discipline there is a balance between more universal and more local knowledges.