Student Experience

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Student Experience ( Employment) WorkshopPMI
Development Day, 6 December 2007
1. Introduction - Dominic Scott 2. The story
so far - Celia Partridge 3. Priorities for the
future - All
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The story so far

• What priorities did we identify?
• What are we doing about it?

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Priorities identified

• Importance of continually improving standards of
  support services
• More time and more money for staff to devise
  innovative solutions
• Managing the transition pre-arrival and
  orientation
• Realistic financial expectations for students

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Improving standards

• How do we measure how well we are doing?
• How do we avoid complacency?
• What about staff new to their role?

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Improving standards

• Benchmarking survey
• First UK-wide survey of provision for
  international students in HEIs (and a similar
  survey for FE institutions is planned for 2008).
• The full report allows you to benchmark your
  institution against the national average on all
  aspects of international student support
• We found
• Consistency between institutions in offering core
  services to international students.
• Some institutions going beyond the basic
  services, or managing to provide services to a
  larger proportion of their students.

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(No Transcript)
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Improving standards
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Improving standards
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Improving standards

• Database of best practice
• Case studies available on UKCISA website at
  www.ukcisa.org.uk/pmi covering topics such as
• Orientation programmes
• English language support
• Support for dependants Family Ambassador scheme
• One World Week
• Research on the experience of international
  students

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Improving standards

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Improving standards

• Review of continuing professional development
  (CPD) for staff working with international
  students
• Guide to dealing with the under 18s in FE HE
• Cross-cultural training DVD
• Regional sectoral workshops
• NUS/UKCISA residential conference
• Association for International Student Advisers
  (AISA) conference
• Relaunch of FE international network

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More time and more money

• Time is limited.
• Resources are limited.
• Where do new ideas come from?
• If someone has a good idea, what can they do
  about it?

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More time and more money

• Pilot Projects Scheme
• 21 projects funded so far, with grants of up to
  5,000
• to encourage innovation and develop and publicise
  examples of best practice in international
  student support

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More time and more money

• Examples of pilot projects
• Event management students organising events as
  part of assessed group project (Bring a Brit,
  Multicultural fair, etc)
• E-buddies resource
• Computer game to raise awareness of academic
  cultural differences
• Training event for student officers
• FE/HE transitions
• Remote interviewing
• Re-orientation website
• Projects on work experience, job hunting
  employment skills

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More time and more money

• Overseas Study Visits
• new this year, 5 visits funded so far, with
  grants of up to 2,000
• aims to identify relevant aspects of policy and
  best practice in institutions in key competitor
  countries overseas
• Visits supported include
• The involvement and development of international
  students within volunteer programmes at Boston,
  Massachusetts, North-Eastern, Harvard and MIT.
• A comparative study of the processes of social
  integration at Melbourne, Monash and Auckland.

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Managing the transition

• Pre-arrival preparation
• The effectiveness of the pre-arrival and
  orientation period has a real impact on the
  long-term success of international students,
  especially for those on short-term or one-year
  Masters courses, where a fast transition is
  required.
• Our HE benchmarking report showed that only
  11 of institutions offered any interactive
  online tools to prepare students in terms of
  language, culture or study skills.
• The need for an online pre-arrival interactive
  resource which institutions can customise just
  awarded the tender for this to Southampton
  University.
• This project will focus on the academic
  experience - study skills, UK learning styles,
  methods of teaching

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Managing the transition
Orientation

• Participation rate in orientation programmes
  remains not much above 50
• Production of a new guide to running
  Orientation Programmes taking into account new
  technology

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Managing the transition
Mentoring and buddying schemes

• 57 of respondent institutions ran activities
  specifically to encourage home and international
  students to mix
• Production of a guide to setting up and running
  mentoring schemes for international students

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Managing the transition

• UK students response to international students
• International studentsreally just want to work
  and they dont socialise that much and they
  knuckle down and thats how they are different in
  a way, they just dont have as much in common as
  us.
• I dont know if its a cultural thing. Because I
  lived with two different Chinese people and one
  did nothing, the other worked really hard.
• Staff students unions already do a lot of work
  to get UK and international students to mix with
  each other
• However, this is often from the perspective of
  international students
• We have encouraged research from the perspective
  of UK students

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Managing the transition

• Understanding the UK student response to
  internationalisation
• (University of the West of England and
  Bournemouth University)
• Interactions between UK students and some groups
  of international students can be limited,
  problematic or non-existent. Proximity is not
  enough
• Discomfort with difference and obstacles around
  language ability, work orientation and alcohol
  use.
• UK students report limited benefits of working in
  an international classroom
• Cross-cultural interaction in the classroom needs
  to be actively managed
• Discussion of this topic with UK students in
  itself is a positive learning intervention

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Financial expectations

• International students find it difficult to
  budget accurately or appropriately
• What are international students expectations of
  cost?
• What else do we need to think about?
• Grant to International Students House to produce
  a Guide to the cost of living and studying in
  London
• Currently working with UNIAID to develop an
  online website called the International Student
  Calculator

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Financial expectations

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Financial expectations

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Financial expectations

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More information

• UKCISA website
• www.ukcisa.org.uk/pmi
• email
• celia_at_ukcisa.org.uk

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Priorities for the future
What do you think? What are the gaps? What,
in terms of government policy or institutional
practice, are the 3 top areas where we are not
sufficiently satisfying expectations?
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Priorities for the future
What do you think? What projects, centrally
funded or supported, might best assist?
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Priorities for the future
What do you think? Which projects are most
urgent or important?