COVID-19 has transformed higher education learning and teaching practices globally. Tertiary students, internationally face both opportunities and challenges in learning and adapting to this paradigm shift in the delivery of education. It remains unclear how students in international contexts are responding to these changes in digital learning during and post-COVID-19. This paper aims to compare student perceptions of digital competence, confidence, and resilience in present times using data from surveys of tertiary students from Australia, Cambodia, China, India, and Malaysia. There are disparities not only in the teaching and learning pedagogies amongst these countries but also in the levels of technological advancement, infrastructure support, and pace of digital innovation in the delivery of courses. These differences have put in focus students’ both digital competencies and resilience as they pursue higher education on various digital learning platforms. Resilience includes the ability to bounce back or adapt from stress (Smith et al., 2008) Digital resilience is students’ tech-savviness and preparedness to adapt to different digital environments as they pursue higher education. This paper examines the perceptions of tertiary undergraduate students from these countries in this emerging new digital learning norm-. A total of 687 tertiary students from the aforementioned countries participated in a survey to questions related to digital competence, confidence in using and/or adapting to digital innovation, and resilience. Statistically significant attributes are identified to help better understand the challenges these culturally diverse students perceive in digital learning environments. This study will reveal barriers that impact the digital transformation of undergraduate students which can be used to recommend necessary teaching and learning support frameworks to enhance their digital competence and resilience. This will help tertiary institutions better equip all stakeholders in adapting to the new normal of higher education in the future.

Adapting new learning and teaching practices during COVID-19 pandemic has impacted students’ learning in higher education. Using a cross-sectional research methodology, the study attempted to understand the cross-cultural impacts of COVID-19 on higher education students in Cambodia, Nigeria, Oman and Spain to determine the changes that COVID-19 has brought about in higher education students; examine how students' learning behaviour and attitudes have changed during COVID-19; identify the challenges they have experienced; and identify the changes that have taken place in learning and teaching in the selected countries. A total sample of 242 students was randomly selected from four higher education institutions in each of the selected countries. The study provided a cross-cultural understanding of how COVID-19 has affected students’ well-being, behaviors and learning. The results show that COVID-19 had adverse effects on the well-being of students in the four countries. Students received inadequate social support and security protection from others and instructors when they needed it. Omani students received less social support compared with the other three countries. COVID-19 had the worse effect on students’ employment in the four countries. The effect pressed much concern on Nigerian students who experience a great job loss. Students from the four countries were required to put a lot of effort and energy to fulfil the requirements in the program.

In higher education, the ability to navigate and function well in a diverse digital ecosystem is now essential to student, academic, and professional flourishing and productivity. Universities had to respond to a pandemic that catapulted face-to-face offerings into online and hybrid environments. More recently, a preference for working from home in addition to remote work and the emergence of generative artificial intelligence is straining the capacity of educational leaders to effectively support their workforce. In this international study, we survey 533 university employees (primarily academics) and provide evidence for the effect of authentic leadership on digital productivity through digital capability and digital preparedness to work and to teach. Through structural equation modelling, we identify opportunities to prioritise effective leadership development with nested digital capability to support universities to build more resilient and productive workers to achieve better educational outcomes. Critically, recognising and developing authentic leader behaviors should be embedded into higher education policy and strategy to improve productivity, including programs to develop academic capability to use digital technologies effectively in their teaching or other academic roles.

The rapid transition to emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges for teachers, students, and higher education institutions, impacting students' learning and engagement in the learning process. Based on Self-Determination Theory, this paper employs a collective case study research methodology to examine teachers' strategies for supporting students' learning and engagement in virtual learning environments during emergency remote teaching in the pandemic era, with the goal of offering guidelines to assist teachers in fostering student learning and engagement in these virtual settings. The inductive thematic analysis of eight semi-structured interviews with teachers from Spain, Oman, Nigeria and Cambodia revealed some challenges faced by teachers in engaging their students in virtual environments and some teaching and support strategies that teachers adopted to enhance students’ engagement in virtual classrooms. The study synthesised a set of strategies for teachers in higher education to support students’ engagement and learning in online environments. Teachers’ autonomy, structure and involvement support strategies had a behavioural, emotional, cognitive, and agentic engagement on students’ learning process. The paper discussed limitations and future research endeavours in online teaching and learning and students’ engagement.

Many published literature reviews use the term critical review in their title, abstract, and introduction. Yet, on closer examination, a fundamental disconnect often exists between claimed criticality and actual engagement with critical theory. Most do not interrogate power relations, ideological assumptions, or knowledge hierarchies, instead offering descriptive summaries that reinforce rather than challenge dominant paradigms. Reported methods are frequently ambiguous, lacking transparency, rigour, and reflexivity. In this systematic review, we apply the PRISMA framework to identify, and a thematic analysis to evaluate higher education critical review papers published over a 20-year snapshot. The interdisciplinary scope of higher education research offers a useful cross-section of scholars and methodological traditions. This paper identifies gaps in current approaches and, through an iterative presentation of results, illustrates good practice across five key steps in conducting a robust critical review: define the problem, develop boundaries, assure quality of inclusion, analyse published papers and generate meaning. We propose a scholarly framework for conducting a critical review and provide a practical checklist to ensure a critical review is contextualised and justified for quality and rigour, fulfilling the aims of advancing and generating knowledge, and offering guidance for future research directions.