By Fiona Hartley – 5 minute read
Last Wednesday 10th July 2024 saw colleagues from across the University coming together to take part in the annual Bristol Institute of Learning and Teaching (BILT) Conference under the theme of ‘Voice and Choice: student agency, empowerment and co-creation’. It was a jam-packed day with four concurrent streams. I was fortunate to be able to Chair some of the sessions around the theme of ‘Enhancing International students’ experiences’, which has been one of the BILT project themes this past academic year 23/24. Being a BILT Education Development project holder myself, this theme is close to my heart, and I would like to share some of my takeaways from the presentations.
The day began with our Pro Vice Chancellor, Education, Tansy Jessop, sharing her thoughts on ‘Fostering student agency and engagement in assessment and feedback: taking a programme approach’. This was later followed by Jason Arday’s keynote on ‘Reasons to be Cheerful: Is higher education becoming a more inclusive space?’. A common theme of both talks was the need to look at who our students are, and not viewing university education just as a factory pushing out students with degrees but seeing it as a place for people development. Meehan and Howells (2018) in their research found that the values of belonging, being and becoming were really important for students to be able to develop and succeed in their learning journeys.
Building a sense of belonging from the outset seems a valuable starting point. As the saying goes, first impressions count, if we can promote this sense of belonging, our international students, as well as our home students can feel welcome, valued and respected. By getting this right, students will hopefully be themselves and be comfortable to work to become what they intend to. Without a sense of belonging, it will be difficult to establish trust and our students’ journeys to success are going to be more challenging.
Being and belonging
Under the strand of ‘International students and empowering students’, Kevin Haines, Sue Horseman and Catriona Johnson introduced three challenges students need to navigate to belong in an international context – language, culture and didactics or, as they explained, the Bermuda triangle. If these aspects are not addressed, students can get lost. You can share your promising practices related to this on their International Classroom Padlet.
These challenges came through in many of the talks, with Polly Barr sharing her students’ views about how their experiences could be supported in the cultural aspect by having time to build relationships with peers and share cultural similarities. In this way they would not disappear in the Bermuda triangle, but instead have the capacity to be themselves and build a sense of belonging.
Claire Spencer highlighted similar views from her Postgraduate students, students felt the need to matter (Gravett, 2021) or be seen and valued. Similarly, there was a desire from students to share aspects of their own culture and understand more about British culture with their peers and educators, which I discovered in my own research.
Time spent learning about each other and ‘breaking down stereotypes’, as one student mentioned, or creating a comfortable ‘third space’ (McKinley et al, 2018) where students can negotiate their learning together, could ultimately promote more global citizens and enable our students to develop the skills to work together to solve world problems, which resonates with Bristol’s vision and strategy.
Becoming
The ‘Supporting students transitions’ strand, saw Kristopher Magee shared findings from students transitions and touched on the need to unpack the expectations of the university experience more for all our students to promote their success. We cannot assume because students are at university that they will know what to do.
Catriona Johnson described a scaffolded research project where students developed skills needed to engage in future projects, which benefitted them greatly. And Annika Johnson shared her Python project that helped students see the value not only of collaborative work, but also the process of learning, all of which can support them in becoming more successful students.
There was also mention of the need to continue to reorientate students (Morgan, 2024) throughout their learning journeys. Just because students are in their second year, does not mean they will know the expectations for this new context and we need to be mindful of guiding them.
In general, it can be said that providing our students with the time and space to develop relationships with peers, and outlining expectations, we can help not only our international students but also our home students feel welcome, valued and respected so that they can be, belong and become successful in their learning journeys.
Through my research I have come into contact with many colleagues across Bristol who are working towards enhancing the international students experience. Ivory Wang, one of our BILT Student Fellows has produced a great guide, take a look at her interesting blog on What do Chinese International Students want their university to know? – Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching Blog (bilt.online)
By writing this blog, I hope to encourage all of you with an interest in this to come together and collate your knowledge to ensure that not only our international students, but also our home students will have smoother learning journeys. Please register your interest on the international student experience form.
References
Gravett, K., Taylor, C. A. and Fairchild, N. (2021) ‘Pedagogies of mattering: re-conceptualising relational pedagogies in higher education’, Teaching in Higher Education, 29(2), pp. 388–403. doi: 10.1080/13562517.2021.1989580.
McKinley, J. et al. (2018) ‘Developing intercultural competence in a ‘comfortable’ third space: postgraduate studies in the UK’, Language and Intercultural Communication, 19(1), pp. 9–22. doi: 10.1080/14708477.2018.1545028.
Meehan, C. and Howells, K. (2017) ‘‘What really matters to freshers?’: evaluation of first year student experience of transition into university’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 42(7), pp. 893–907. doi: 10.1080/0309877X.2017.1323194.
Morgan, M. (2024) Improving the Student Experience
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