Does mobility matter?

Exploring the impact of international student mobility on cross-cultural awareness

Dr Monika Foster, PFHEA

Edinburgh Napier Business School

UK Students Welcomed

by Chinese Staff

Context

Globalised higher education with student mobility growing rapidly (0.8m

students in 1975 to 5m in 2014) (OECD, 2014)

Exchange and Study abroad programmes on the rise (Sweeney, 2012)

Mobility a key aspect of internationalisation of HE (HEA, 2014)

Motivating students to take part often relates to how they perceive long

term benefits (Brooks and Waters, 2011)

Does mobility matter?

Is enhancing international student mobility a strategic objective at your

Business School / university?

What is done to encourage it where you are and what is the students’

engagement with it?

What pre-and post-mobility support is offered to students (beyond visa

applications and travel costs)?

What benefits of mobility can your students identify with? How do you know?

The study

Aims

To inform the School’s internationalisation strategy and University’s strategic objective ‘to

internationalise our work’

To apply innovative approach to exploring impact of outgoing mobility on students’ cross-

cultural skills’ development

Tools

Qualitative semi-structured interviews before and after the study abroad

experience.

Reflective journals (paper based or blog/video)

and

Creative interventions or ‘cultural probes’ (Gaver et al, 2004)

Data analysis

Theme analysis guided by the literature on ‘culture of learning’

(Cortazzi and Jin, 1996).

Content analysis (Rose 2007; Kress & Van Leeuwen 1996)

Sample:

26 Students

in outgoing mobility in China

(17 from the Business School and 9

from Design)

Creative Interventions

•Touch - photo + 1min audio

•Smell - photo + e-postcard

•Friend – 3min video interview

•Sound – 1min audio

! 1!

SCHEDULE OF SPECIAL ACTIVITIES

Frequency: 0ne every 2 weeks, or at a time of your choosing when you can fit it in with your studies before 7th June.

Touch 1. Find an object from your host country that you would like to show to your fellow

students back home. It can be anything you like but it should be able to sit on a

table. 2. Photograph it against a white background (see illustration).

3. Record a 1 minute narration or anecdote as to why you have chosen this object. Is it something you bought as a memento, or a new product that you have

discovered, or a gift you have received while abroad? Is it something you use or

wear everyday?

Smell New places can have different smells to home, these can be pleasant and unpleasant,

but a smell can bring back memories. It is hard to capture a smell, but sometimes a

photograph and a written description can communicate where smells come from. It can

be the smell of snow, rain on the street, or a brewery, a street of food stalls, a sweetshop or a garden of flowers and cut grass.

1. Find a place you would like to remember in your host city and photograph a scene that has a strong sense of smell.

2. Write a description of the smell or your memory of the smell.

3. Email the image and your description as an e-postcard to friends and family (and either Vivien/Monika/Richard/Iain).

Friend We hope you have found and made new friends in your host university. We would like to

meet them.

1. Make a 3 minute video of you talking with a new student friend from your host

university.

2. Introduce your friend to people at home: who are they, what do they do, do you study together?

Findings

A rich picture of student interaction with the new academic environment

2 striking findings:

- Students enthusiastically embraced capturing the experience through a self-

selected lens of a video or a blog

- Student experience in the new culture is very complex and evolves over

time, changing perceptions of own as well as host culture of learning.

Both emphasise that mobility serves as a platform for consolidating students’

intercultural skills.

Recommendations:

Framework for a systematic pre- and post-mobility intercultural skills’

development

• Embedded in the curriculum, not an option for a few selected

• Taking a holistic and student-led approach:

Pre-mobility

Buddy up scheme with students who took part in mobility

A student exchange / staff mobility workshop to familiarise ourselves with each

others intercultural skills’ development and capture of experience

During

Capturing experience – record developing intercultural awareness through

various media (student driven)

Post mobility

Creative and student driven assessments based on mobility experiences,

perhaps part of the final year project/thesis

Returning exchange students present a video/slideshow to prospective

exchange students

References

Brooks, R., & Waters, J. (2011). Student mobilities, migration and the

internationalization of higher education. Palgrave Macmillan.

Foster, M and Anderson, L. (eds.) (2015) Exploring Internationalisation of the

Curriculum to Enhance the Student Experience, Journal of Perspectives in

Applied Academic Practice, Vol 3 No 3 2015

http://jpaap.napier.ac.uk/index.php/JPAAP/issue/current

Gaver, W., Boucher, A., Pennington, S., and Walker, B. (2004) Cultural

Probes and the value of uncertainty. Interactions, 11(5) 53-56

Higher Education Academy (HEA) (2014) Internationalising Higher Education

Framework. HEA.

Sweeney, S. (2012) Going Mobile: Internationalisation, mobility and the

European Higher Education Area. [Accessed 25/03/14]

http://www.britishcouncil.org/going_mobile_brochure_final_.pdf