Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre

Increasing student mobility and successful national policies to recruit international students have led to more culturally diverse higher education landscapes around the world.

In the UK, the second phase of the Prime Minister's Initiative (PMI2) was launched in 2006 to encourage managed growth of UK international education and to work towards improving international student experiences.

This initiative recognised that teaching and learning experiences are central to any improvement.

The Academy's "TIS" Project

The Higher Education Academy has combined forces with PMI2 and the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA) to launch a new two-year project focused on teaching and learning for international students, called the 'Teaching International Students' (TIS) Project.

The project is hosted by the Academy and is supported by a team which comprises members of six Subject Centres concerned with internationalisation issues; the Engineering Subject Centre is one of the partner Subject Centres with a special interest on group- and project-based working.

Aims

The project aims to move beyond the identification of international students’ ‘problems’, to instead focus on the ways that lecturers and other teaching staff can better meet the diverse learning needs of their international students (and in ways that will benefit all students).

The specific aims of the TIS project are to:

• raise the profile of teaching and learning for international students
• establish a repository of resources and research on teaching and learning for international students
• identify and disseminate information and guidance
• provide guidance on staff development strategies
• establish a network of interested people

Website

The Academy’s project website aims to provide a 'one stop shop' for staff who teach international students and who are looking for networks, events and resources (both academic and practical) to support their teaching.

Resources

The resources from the project for teaching staff will be organised around the ‘International Student Lifecycle’ and will include suggestions for improving teaching and learning in areas such as:

• postgraduate supervision,
• group- and project-based work,
• academic writing,
• language issues
• developing intercultural communication.

It will also include suggestions for further reading, including research that examines the complex issues and challenges and often contested concepts and theories in these areas.

Case stories

Case stories from students as well as teaching staff are being collected which will illustrate these challenges, as well as the ways that lecturers can respond to these challenges more effectively. Download the templates to write your own case story.

Events

A series of project events is being run throughout 2010/11. Many are 'free of charge' workshops, co-organised by the Higher Education Academy's Subject Centre network who are partners on the TIS Project, where the workshops focus on research, evidence-based practice, case studies and staff development. Although the workshops have a disciplinary perspective to meet the needs of many staff calling for disciplinary-specific guidance in this area, each event is open to all academic staff from across the Subject Centres’ communities. The Engineering Subject Centre's event was held in June '10 at Nottingham, in anticipation of the launch of its Teaching Guide, Working with International Students, and followed up with an online seminar in March 2011 under its "Speak with the Authors" series of events. The TIS Project will be holding its Conference at Warwick on 16th/17th June 2011.

The Centre's work under the TIS Project

The Centre received funding to undertake a research project on international students' engagement in group- and project-based teaching. The research was based on a number of structured interviews with academic staff in departments where HESA data was used to identify HEIs with significant numbers of international students. The interview responses have been reviewed and written up as a number of case stories and examples of practice; the Teaching International Students (TIS): an engineering perspective with a focus on group and project-based work research report with downloadable resources is now available from the TIS Project website and from the Centre. The Centre is also presenting its work under TIS at a workshop at the TIS Project Conference in June 2011.

Working with International Students: a Guide for Staff in Engineering

The Engineering Subject Centre commissioned the University of Nottingham to produce its latest Teaching Guide: “Working with International Students” as part of the Centre’s work under the TIS project. The Centre's event in Working with International Students held at the University of Nottingham in June 2010 was used to further inform and develop the content of the Guide. The Guide was also the basis for an online seminar held in late March 2011 under its "Speak to the authors" series of events.

Read Working with International Students: a Guide for Staff in Engineering

Courses

The Centre for International Curriculum Inquiry and Networking (CICIN) at Oxford Brookes offer a number of courses and complementary resources that focus on internationalising the curriculum.  Details of their courses and how to book.