More than 80 of our members joined our international student experience seminar on 12 April in London.
We were joined by Yinbo Yu, International Students’ Officer at NUS. He spoke enthusiastically about the importance of international students and for the international education sector to work together to offer the best experience. Adding:
“International students have the hopes and dreams of so many people behind them. These students are assets to the UK.
“We must not underestimate the power of international education. I want as many students as possible to have the same opportunities that I did. We need to work together as a sector.”
Delegates heard and discussed five presentations about international student experience pilot projects and research funded by UKCISA. Topics featured included immigration, teaching and learning, employability and students’ unions:
Lincoln’s research explored whether students’ union activities, events and opportunities were accessible and made suggestions to encourage international students to engage further. They discovered key findings:
- International students don’t feel they have enough spare time to engage.
- Focus groups and surveys found that studying to international students longer due to language barrier
- Cost put some international students off of engaging with activities, after paying substantial tuition fees
- Friendship groups of home students were often already established which is off-putting
- International students were less aware of who their course rep was, and if they did know who they were they were often discouraged from engaging due to language barrier
They’ve since taken various steps to engage more international students:
- ‘You are not alone’ campaign. They have a large map and students use paint to put their own fingerprint where they’re from
- Trips around the UK are very popular
- Multilingual student advisors have been recruited to encourage international students to be comfortable to engage
Read the full report or slides from the seminar.
Durham University discussed their pilot project which involved supporting international students to become curriculum advisers for academic writing courses.
The idea for the project came about after realising that while international students had contributed texts, self-study materials and cultural and/or disciplinary insights to the academic writing courses at the Durham University English Language Centre (ELC) it was on an ad hoc basis and often at the end of the year when it was almost too late to implement.
Terri Edwards, Assistant Professor (Teaching) in the English Language Centre, who ran the project said:
“I was staggered by the knowledge international students bring. They have great skills and assets and bring expert knowledge to institutions.
“We need some input from international students. Tutors don’t necessarily know what it’s like to be an international student, or to write an essay in a different language.”
She added:
“I imagine writing an essay in a different language to be like trying to dance backwards in high heels.”
Students involved in the project have said that they really enjoyed taking part and that it was a chance to be “taken seriously” by the institution.
Read the full report or view the slides from the seminar.
Essex University shared findings and a taster session from their project about using principles of product design to help international students analyse, reflect and explore steps to support their personal development.
Speaking as advocates of launching and using Life Design in the UK, Helen Standage and James Rodwell explained that Life Design is based on using the steps adopted during the design process and applying them to personal or social contexts. There is a focus on empathy, collaboration and creativity.
Helen explained that this is great for international students and the more diverse the group, the more successful and varied the ideas.
She added that when running the sessions there needs to be an explanation that “failure is okay, and expected. We have a phrase that we use: fail fast and fail forward’ to get the most from the process.
View the slides from the seminar.
After witnessing a spike in their entry clearance refusals, Northumbria University launched a pilot project to support overseas staff.
Led by Joy Grenyer, they created an online toolkit for all overseas colleagues which features different scenarios and quizzes.
Agents who work with Northumbria University have to take part and answer the quizzes twice a year. Joy describes this as “not very popular” – but the refusal rate has since decreased.
Read the report or view the slides from the seminar.
This pilot project was designed to involve a select team of international students to deliver formal and informal curriculum activities on subject-specific issues relating to their home country and/or culture.
Clare Newstead explained that they “wanted the programme to internationalise the curriculum in science” having noted various challenges for international students including group work and integration with home students.
“We wanted to highlight and demonstrate that international students are a rich and diverse learning resource, they bring different perspectives that can benefit the whole classroom.”
Clare added that involving international students was beneficial to the students themselves as well:
“Students involved with the Global Voices project shared that they felt like they gained confidence to put their hands up in class”.
Read the full report or slides from the seminar.
More than 80% of attendees have told us they plan to use the research or projects featured last week. For other ideas from our pilot projects and research, have a look in our
resource bank for reports about mental health, safety and much more!