Online university education carries the promise of breaking down intercultural barriers, promoting global citizenship and expanding access to large populations. Yet, nations appear to have taken very different paths to expanding online BA and MA programmes for teachers with varying degrees of success. In this paper I contrast the growth of Japanese and U.S. online education programmes, identifying barriers that inhibit the expansion of these programmes as well as analysing the problems of quality and consistency in systems that rapidly expand. These two cases offer insights for higher education administrators and policy makers in nations that are considering using online education to expand and internationalise their teacher education programmes.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.36197/INT.2-2020.04