Page 135 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience

ConCluSionS
This thesis examines international students’ experiences and the factors that influence them. It offers insight into how students’ experiences are shaped by perceptions of their environment both inside and outside the classroom. It takes into account characteristics such as students’ nationalities, genders, and stages of study, as well as various indicators of the universities they attend. Four published studies addressing seven research questions contribute to the research findings on the experiences of international students.
Far from answering the research questions definitively, the findings suggest that the student experience is a complex web of interwoven threads. Each thread represents an aspect of the student experience, and all are interconnected; looking at any one thread provides little insight into what the overall concept looks like.
Thinking further about the metaphor, what this “experience tapestry” is made of and how it is woven is different for each student. While one student’s tapestry may be woven with multicolored strands representing the importance of social relationships, another student’s tapestry may be defined by a thick cord of employability that snakes along its length and grows thicker toward the end. In summary, each student’s experience is as unique as his or her own DNA—there may be many common aspects, but none are identical.
This work underscores the importance of including student voices in research when it comes to influencing higher education policy and practice. Understanding students’ perceptions is critical to meeting their needs because it is their subjective experiences that make up the reality of their lives. The research in this thesis uses data collected from students themselves to update and renew models for understanding the student experience. “All models are wrong, but some are useful,” said statistician George Box; the most useful models provide an understanding of a phenomenon based on reality. Ultimately, this thesis offers an understanding of students’ myriad realities based on their perceptions of their lived experiences.
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Discussion and Conclusions
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