Page 105 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience
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required weekly virtual check-ins between students and academic tutors. The head of Engineering at an IBC created a temporary “academic safety net” to allow students to erase any failing grades during the COVID-19 pandemic. Several academic staff divulged offering more lenient grading; one noting that it was “the least that could be done” given all that students were going through. Students who were asked did not feel that the grading had become more lenient, however. An engineering student pointed to the opposite, saying “There are a lot of changes in how the questions are being asked in exams” and that the online versions are harder than the physical versions.
RQ2: How has the relationship between the IBC and the home campus changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
All leaders and academic staff interviewed reported that the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in increased inter-campus and intra-campus collaboration in teaching. All reported having increased meetings with counterparts at the home campus. Additionally, in many cases, universities used IBCs to continue operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, leveraging resources to respond and adapt to the crisis. For example, one interviewee recounted that the home campus had to look to the Malaysia campus to help deliver classes to students; another shared that academic staff at all campuses had pooled together to mark exam papers.
The pandemic’s disruption to established teaching routines made academic staff think of new ways to teach effectively, resulting in increased collaboration within and between campuses. A student recounted that lecturers for her engineering course carried out experiments over Zoom for them to observe, since the students themselves could not access the labs on campus. A lecturer at an IBC pointed out that, prior to the pandemic, “we were kind of doing our own thing, and if we were to talk it would be about other things. The move to online has made us talk more about teaching, and there is a lot more collaboration in terms of teaching.” Because IBCs and home campuses moved online at the same time, academic staff across campuses collaborated to find ways to create an engaging learning experience.
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Effects of COVID-19 on IBCs
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