Introducing the ‘Teaching International Students’ initiative

Introducing the ‘Teaching International Students’ initiative • Fiona Hyland of ESCalate & TIS team member • for – ‘Preparing for success: supporting international students in the disciplines’ • held at University of Southampton • 12th November 2010

The next 30 minutes… • Setting the scene • Student experience - NSS data • Qualitative data from an ESCalate/LLAS report • HEA / UKCISA ‘Teaching International Students’ • Overview • Examples

National Student Survey Q22 Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of the course % mostly / definitely agree Data analysis by Inna Pomorina of Economics Network for the TIS project http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/detail/ourwork/internationalisation/Issue2_Economics

Q1 Staff are good at explaining things % mostly / definitely agree

Q4 The course is intellectually stimulating % mostly / definitely agree

Q8 I have received detailed comments on my work % mostly / definitely agree

Q6 Assessment arrangements and marking have been fair % mostly / definitely agree

Q11 I have been able to contact staff when I needed to % mostly / definitely agree

A Changing World: the internationalisation experiences of staff and students (home and international) in UK Higher Education Fiona Hyland, Sheila Trahar, Julie Anderson & Alison Dickens (2008) http://escalate.ac.uk/downloads/5248.pdf

‘A Changing World’ - Key Challenges as perceived by staff & students in the study

HEI strategy & staff buy-in • “internationalisation means recruitment; it means reaching out and pulling students in". Staff • “probably in a lot of cases the people who decide how many students (as many as possible) are not the people who then have to deal with them... So I think the problem is basically that the system has become too financially driven without, you know, care for the quality” Staff

Entry requirements • Concerns about how English language tests (IELTS, TOEFL) are used, what scores are required • “one person I lived with actually … it’s a sad story, because she was doing a music course, and she actually had to quit her course because she couldn’t cope. I was like ‘Well why did the University let her in?’ – I, kind of, got a bit angry… they really shouldn’t have let in if her English was so bad that she couldn’t cope with the course.” (Home Student, edited)

The other thing is we ascribe far too many of the problems that we have today with international students language, rather than cultural issues. It’s often ‘oh it’s a language issue’. But some of the issues are with our own practice and we don’t tend to question the way we present because that’s the way we were taught. (Staff)

‘I know nothing’ • I know nothing. What I know is… Anglo American content … in all my knowledge… The students I teach aren’t in that tradition, and they do teach me a lot, they do inspire me and I learn a lot from my students and I hopefully always will … but in order for a lecturer to go beyond that is asking a huge amount from a lecturer… if we had a paradigm of an international lecturer, what would they be? They’d be multilingual, they’d be well travelled, they’ll have lived abroad in a number of different countries and worked abroad … they would know the theory and content of a number of different parts of the world … and how many of us around the world fit into that category? – very few. So it’s a huge demand on the lecturer here. (Staff)

Teaching & Learning • “Yeah, when I came to the lecture room it seems like white people sit at the back, white people, and then in the middle some like me, yellow coloured people, and then at the front, black people. And when they divide groups, just like Malaysia students will go with Malaysia students. Muslim students would like to go with Muslim students. White people will get white people together.. people are still sitting (like this) for a whole year” International Student

So no matter how much I might have tried it’s only by having students from Ghana, from Nigeria, from Taiwan and from India who when they talk about (their contexts) you can begin to understand the parallels and the contrasts and comparisons and it brings a dynamic to the learning that is so real, so alive, so energised, that no textbook, no amount of me preparing to remember to say ‘oh and in Singapore it might be different, oh and in Canada they do this'. There’s no way that I could have created that. That is a very dynamic and creative element of the learning for students and for me. (Staff) Staff perspectives

Gu, Schweisfurth & Day, 2010 “Findings of the research challenge the psychological model of international students’ linear intercultural adaptation and point to the presence of a complex set of shifting associations between language mastery, social interaction, personal development and academic outcomes. It is the management of this amalgam which results in intercultural adaptation and the successful reconfiguration of ‘identity’.”

‘Teaching International Students’ • Higher Education Academy in partnership with UKCISA • Funded by PMI 2 for two years until summer 2011 • Co-directors: Janette Ryan & Jude Carroll • UK: now 15% International students and rising

TIS Aims • Raise the profile • Establish a repository of national and international research • Guidance on staff development • Establish a network of interested people

Andrew Cree, Teesside Universityhttp://tbs-staffweb.tees.ac.uk/U0003084/persuasioncaptions/persuasioncaptions.html

Empathy Game – ‘Not knowing the rules’ Based on Leask, B. (2000). Teaching NESB and International Students of the University of South Australia, Teaching Guide. Adelaide: University of Adelaide. Also quoted in Carroll & Ryan (2005; p. 143) Make a simple set of cards by cutting up paper and with different colour pens writing the numbers 1 - 10 on a few of them (draw a line under 6s and 9s to show which way is 'up'). On the remaining cards draw a few random marks such as black dots in some corners, green triangles at the base, perhaps a blue square in the top left corner and so on. Then divide participants into smaller groups of five or six people. Tell them to devise a simple card game based on Top Trumps or Snap. The rules need to be easy to learn and they need to use the numbers and markings on the card. The game needs to identify who is a winner and who is a loser in each round of play. Groups are bullied NOT to devise too complex a game! Allow groups to practise for three or four minutes until everyone is an expert. Then ask one person from each group to leave the room. Pass round the room a sheet of paper that specifies a change in the rules – for example, that all red numbers are doubled for everyone who has stayed in the room but not for the returner (i.e. a 3 becomes a 6 etc). Or that anyone with a green triangle is automatically the winner – which applies to incomer plus the remaining group. Or that black numbers don't count. The groups now play the game with the additional rule, until it goes smoothly - maybe a minute or two. Invite the people who had gone outside to return and re-join the game. The groups are instructed to be friendly but not to explain what is different, just play. The groups are allowed to play for a maximum of five minutes. After this, ask groups to discuss how they felt about the outsider; and ask the outsider to express how they felt. What was going on for the outsider? How much 'head space' was devoted to trying to understand the new situation? Ask groups to consider how they could have helped the outsider?

Achievements 2009-10 • 40 Events and counting • Website & repository • A community of practice • An international conference 16-17 June 2011 ‘Internationalisation of Pedagogy and Curriculum in Higher Education: Exploring New Frontiers’

Getting involved Contact internationalisation@heacademy.ac.uk Via website: www.heacademy.ac.uk/internationalstudents

Introducing the ‘Teaching International Students’ initiative