In December, we ran a one-day hackathon looking to find out more about the experience of international students, specifically looking at their experience of teaching and learning. The hackathon uncovered three key themes: wellbeing, community and engagement, the latter of which we will be exploring in more detail in this post.
A story emerged from the three themes, of which ‘engagement’ is the final part. Wellbeing is at the core of all activities and interactions – it is the essential part that makes anything else a success. To have good wellbeing, one needs to be a part of a community – or communities – and to be a part of a community, one needs to engage.
Engagement is what makes students feel part of a community, which in turn is good for wellbeing, and is what makes for a positive, enriching experience.
The theme of ‘engagement’ came up in every activity we completed as part of the hackathon, from flip chart discussions to final presentations and we’ve tried to group all of the contributions in the topics in the following groups:
- University structure and administration
- Teaching approaches
- Group work
- Attitudes and behaviours
- Language
- Motivation
University structure and administration
Size really does matter when it comes to classroom environments. Large group sessions – often lecture theatres with hundreds of students – are not conducive to engagement with others. Large group sessions along with a very module system means students can really struggle to make genuine connections with others as they do not often get opportunity to speak. Similarly, students were supportive of smaller group sessions, such as seminars, as this gave opportunity for them to get to know others in their class they see regularly.
A few students discussed the use of participation credits as a good way to get students to engage. When we have raised these in previous hackathons, however, they have had a more negative reception, suggesting a potential difference in the way home/ international students view “forced” engagement in classroom environments.
Formative assessments were also welcomed by students in our hackathon – they believe that it gives students a chance to have a good experience of feedback from the lecturer and potentially peers if this is done in a group work format.
Teaching approaches
Efforts by academics to get students to speak to others (think, pair, share, for example) in lectures or using polling software, are greatly appreciated by international students. Polling and live questions – one student suggested a live question board shown alongside the PowerPoint slides – are a great way to get students to engage and make the session feel more dialogic.
Including a variety of assessment methods in the unit also helps students to engage. Students that have been offered choice in their assessments (whether that be in the format submitted or in the question they can answer) felt like they engaged better and learnt more from the assessment, both in terms of content and skills development. Units that offered assessments that were authentic were also greatly favoured and were easier to engage with.
Finally, students were very appreciated of resources that were available in different formats – many were surprised that they did not receive any paper copies of materials and instead just required a laptop for all of their students. However, there was discussion around the importance of having the lecture materials available before the session, if possible. Students also really liked when resources were embedded in the ‘real-world’ – having to listen to a podcast or watched something (in my second year of university, a lecturer encouraged us to watch ‘The Wire’ when taking a unit in the sociology of gang culture) made it easier to engage with content and apply it to real-world situations.
Group work
Group work is another topic that comes up repeatedly in hackathons – often a point of contention (both between peers and between students and academic) – but is largely a popular activity if it remains ungraded.
It is one of the most ‘authentic’ activities students can do – regardless of the task – as almost all employed roles requires a form of group work. Learning to work with others is an essential skill and is one of the most common interview questions.
The students in our hackathon were largely in favour of unassessed group work, but wanted to emphasise that group work didn’t necessarily mean team-work. They were also supportive of breaking up friendship groups to help learning – something we have definitely heard mixed opinions on from other groups of students and from academics, citing the anxiety it can cause when being made to work with others they are not comfortable with.
Attitudes and behaviours -open environment and safe place to fail
The students in our hackathon offered a number of ways lecturers can create environments that makes students comfortable to engage. Sharing a little about themselves and their background is one way to create a more personable atmosphere. Including anecdotes in teaching is another. Asking students to introduce themselves or asking them to use name placards is another simple way to encourage student to engage and feel a part of the learning process. Giving positive affirmations when students have answered a question also encourages them to contribute again in the future and creates a ‘safe environment to fail’. Students want to be seen as junior academics, where their ideas, contributions and research are given respect and encouraged.
Office hours and drop-in support are hugely appreciated by students, but not always well advertised. Student suggested that lecturers can remind students of their office hours at the end of lectures and suggest the ways in which they can be used (i.e. ask questions, to affirm understanding, etc).
In terms of their peers, students in the hackathon emphasised the importance of coming to the sessions prepared so that working together can be smooth and everyone starts with a similar understanding.
Language
Before starting the hackathon, we expected the issue of language to be a lot more prevalent. We’ll discuss this more in our next post, but in previous sessions with academics, language has been one of the main issues when discussing international students.
Some of the students in our study were home students that had a year abroad, and, as they self-selected to take part in the hackathon, all students had a good level of English language skills. However, the issue of language did have some discussion, with students citing it as a reason they may not engagement. Issues were not only around the linguistics, but also dialect and accents made it difficult to understand. Adding in academic lingo and jargon further contribute to issues.
Motivations to engage
For many international students, they come to University with a clear idea of what they want to achieve; they have a clear career path in mind or goal, and focussing on this goal motivates them. For others, they have a great amount of parental pressure and feel the need to meet their parents expectations. Students wanted to highlight these differing motivations and provide an explanation as to how they affect engagement.
Conclusions
Within the theme of engagement, we can draw some confident conclusions. “Real life” learning – whether that is using resources that are already embedded in students’ lives (e.g. podcasts, Instagram accounts, …) or authentic assessment that incorporate either current events or ask students to perform tasks that mimic those in the workplace, are great ways to engage students – regardless of whether they are international or not.
Creating classroom environments that are accessible – both in terms of nurturing peer to peer relationships or between lecturer and students, and fostering an ‘fail safely’ atmosphere will encourage students to engage. Praising contribution- whether ‘correct’ or otherwise, will help with this, as well as promoting space for questions, which could be an open space (like a Padlet) or office hours outside of the session.
Diversity of assessments, as well as regular opportunities for formative group work, are two brilliant ways to ensure that students are developing skills and learning from assessments.
