Page 50 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience
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Chapter 2
It is also important to design teaching and support systems geared toward boosting language proficiency and supporting learning both inside and outside the classroom. Academics play a role in this, as they are the ones who will communicate expectations and oversee the feedback and grading/marking. Teaching staff and academic advisors may be the first to notice when a student is falling behind academically, and therefore best placed to trigger an intervention. Support services play a role, too, in offering programs during orientation and throughout the university experience that help students anticipate academic expectations and providing links to resources and support for international students struggling academically.
This study has implications for both theory and practice in international higher education. It lifts fog from the factors that may be mitigating the link demonstrated in previous research between nationality and satisfaction. Though findings suggest that social and academic integration are important factors, they only partially explain the variation in student satisfaction. Qualitative analysis of the comments written in to the ISB by the international students would add insight to the findings. Analysis of the effectiveness of curriculum and teaching strategies in promoting integration, and thus satisfaction, would be elucidating to universities seeking to develop such interventions. However, further research down this line should acknowledge that ‘integration’ is not always the end-point or goal of interaction. Anderson (2008) asserts that interactions in higher education occur multi- directionally, not only between international and domestic students; and that practitioners must recognize students as unique, with ‘complex and unexpected’ similarities and dissimilarities. Considered in this light, a qualitative approach focused on the experiences of individual students would allow a nuanced understanding of how culture, context, and personal characteristics interact to shape the student experience.
The International Student Barometer, which provided the dataset used for the study, has limitations. It does not measure university






























































































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