Page 133 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience
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Discussion and Conclusions
the student experience. The limited causality makes it difficult to derive specific practical recommendations from the results and raises the question of which factors or combinations of factors have the greatest impact on the experiences of international students. In addition, the availability of longitudinal data would have enabled the exploration of causal relationships and deepened understanding of differences in satisfaction between different phases of study. Nonetheless, awareness of limited causality in and of itself is helpful in understanding the complexity of student experiences.
  In addition, the International Student Barometer (ISB), which we used in three of the studies, is primarily a quantitative survey instrument. In a study by Benckendorff, Ruhanen & Scott (2009), it was found that “in deconstructing the student experience, the range of factors identified in the literature that appear to influence the student experience can be grouped broadly into four dimensions” (p. 85), namely institutional, student, sector, and external. The ISB focuses exclusively on the institutional and student dimensions. While this provides insight into how universities and staff can better shape the learning experience and the perceived quality of the learning experience, it does not consider sector-wide dimensions such as trends resulting from competition or collaboration, nor external dimensions such as national policy, student mobility, or global pandemics. Access to data in these dimensions would paint a more comprehensive picture of the student experience.
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Though ISB data were paired with qualitative data in the analyzes and to interpret the results, the survey was not modifiable in any way to fit the purposes of the studies. There are other aspects of the student experience that were not measured by the ISB that could have provided additional insight into the research questions. For example, research has shown that some pre-arrival factors-including proficiency in the host country language, familiarity with the host country, and previous travel experiences-significantly affect international students’ potential to adapt to their new environment (Schartner & Young, 2016). In addition, knowledge of students’ backgrounds, expectations of the experience, and motivations for studying abroad would have illuminated some of the
 




























































































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