‘Internationalisation at home; creating cultural insights .’ Maria Hussain (FHEA)

1. ‘Internationalisation at home; creating cultural insights.’Maria Hussain (FHEA)

2. Overview • Defining ‘internationalisastion at home’ • My context at Leeds University Business School (LUBS) and current challenges • A pilot project; Cultural Insight Wednesdays- the story so far • Challenges encountered and lessons learnt • Looking ahead

3. Defining ‘Internationalisation at home’ ‘Internationalisation at home’ touches upon everything from the academic curriculum, to the interactions between local [home]students and international students and faculty, to the cultivation of internationally-focused research topics, to innovative uses for digital technology. (European Association for International Education, 2019)

4. Current context at LUBS; challenges • 25% of current UG first year population are international (non-EEA); this is a two per cent increase on 2017-18 (Provisional HESA census results) and set to increase • Increase in tandem with an established internationally dense PGT student population currently over 80%. • Student population; majority of international PGT students from one country thus creating a significant imbalance in the student-mix. • Home students; limited voluntary engagement with international students in/outside of classroom leading lost opportunity to develop cultural/global awareness • Diversification of student population does not automatically create or facilitate diversity in student interaction. (Haines, 2007)

5. ‘Integrated Threat Theory’ (Stephan and Stephan, 2000) Harrison & Peacock (2010: 887)

6. Intercultural Competence (ICC) development • ‘Intercultural competency is the ability to interact effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations, based on specific attitudes, intercultural knowledge, skills and reflection.’ (Deardorff, 2006: 247) • Another approach: • Intercultural competence is not something that needs to be acquired anew but that needs to be recovered from our past experience of small culture formation developed during the process of socialization from birth. This small culture formation is on the go because it is a constant activity in response to everyday engagement with other people… (Holliday,2016: 1) • Other benefits • ‘ICC is an important graduate outcome in such a [globalised] world.’ (Leask, 2009: 205) • ‘Intercultural competence is increasingly gaining prominence in a variety of sectors around the world…core competency for the 21st century workforce (Deardorff, 2015)

7. Cultural Insight Wednesdays (CIW) • Key objectives; • To develop greater intercultural competency/awareness/appreciation in LUBS students • To promote collaboration/working relationships between ‘home’and international students • To further support and integrate international students into the faculty, with particular focus on the most highly represented countries in terms of student numbers • Session format; • Students engage in short ice-breaker activities to engage with fellow audience members • Student-presenters showcase an aspect of their culture for 20 mins. followed by Q&A • Group discussions on points raised in the presentations or wider issues that may have arisen; facilitating inter-cultural discussion(s).

8. Key findings so far • Collected qualitative and quantative data from participants; presenter –reflections, audience evaluative feedback and facilitator reflections • 16Student presenters over 9 weeks and 126 overall participants • Diversity in student participation is encouraging; over 25 nationalities have been represented in both presenter and audience participation across the Faculty of Business. • Over 20% of participants were ‘home’ students.

9. Student-participation breakdown

10. Student-presenter reflections • Key themes: • Considered value in ‘sharing’ culture; developing deeper understanding of own in the process • Built knowledge of other countries for travel, study or work related purposes • Opportunity to develop language skills and soft skills in presentation and organisation • Interested in ‘exchanging’ cultural insights with other students • Opportunity to present complex information to a diverse audience

11. Audience participant evaluations • 56 respondents out of 126 overall provided feedback • Key strengths of CIW: • Opportunity to engage with an unfamiliar culture • Learn something unusual/surprising about a new culture • Meet people across LUBS(UG and PG) • Develop intercultural understanding to improve ‘employability’ • Areas to improve: • Greater number of shorter presentations • More participants- scale-up? • Social media presence

12. Challenges encountered • Timetabling and student/room availability constraints; flexibility and a dynamic approach essential (It was an iterative approach) • Timing; student feedback suggested having more time for discussion. This was then incorporated at both the beginning and end of each session. • ‘Home’ student participation was not always consistent towards the end of the term. • Varied levels of staff ‘buy-in’ and awareness of CIW across divisions in the faculty possibly impacted on student numbers

13. What does this mean? • Students do see the value and potential of such co-curricular ‘internationalisation’ opportunities • With greater visibility and ‘buy-in’ this could be scaled-up to engage a larger number of students and to target ‘home’ students specifically • Student-led activities could provide greater potential in developing ICC more implicitly (Holliday, 2016)

14. CIW incorporated in large-scale event ‘Global Careers Week’; CIW Showcase

15. CIW in session…

16. Looking ahead • Development of CIW with greater active ‘home’ student participation through ‘incentivisation’ (Harrison and Peacock, 2010). E.g. HEAR credit and possible creation of faculty ‘Student Ambassador’ roles • Engage with student societies and more academic staff about CIW and similar projects to; increase student ‘buy-in’ at all levels and increase visibility across the faculty • Further IAH faculty-wide activity to raise awareness and the profile of ICC and its central role in enhancing employability and graduate outcomes to staff and students • Further structured opportunity for ‘Home’ and international students to work collaboratively on small-scale projects

17. Post your questions at; menti.com using code; 933748

18. My contact details: Maria Hussain Faculty International Tutor Leeds University Business School (LUBS) Email: M.Hussain1@Leeds.ac.uk

19. References Deardorff, D. K. 2006. Assessing Intercultural Competence in Study Abroad Students. In Byram, M. and Feng, A. (eds.) 2006. Living and Studying Abroad. Research and Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 232-256 Haines, D. 2007. ‘Crossing lines of difference’: how college students analyse diversity Intercultural Education, 18(5), pp, 397-412. Harrison, N. and Peacock, N. 2010. Cultural distance, mindfulness and passive xenophobia: Using integrated threat theory to explore home higher education students' perspectives on 'internationalisation at home'. British Educational Research Journal. 36(6), pp. 877-902. Holliday, A. (2016) Revisiting intercultural competence: small culture formation on the go through threads of experience. International Journal of Bias, Identity &Diversities in Education, 1 (2), pp. 1-14 Leask, B. 2009. Using formal and informal curricula to improve interactions between home and international students. Journal of Studies in International Education. 13(2), pp. 205-221. Rose-Redwood, C. and Rose-Redwood, R. 2018. Building Bridges Across the International Divide: Fostering Meaningful Cross-Cultural Interactions Between Domestic and International Students. Journal of International Students. 8(3),pp.1328–1336