International students in Europe keynote

Abschlusskonferenz des Verbundprojekts „Internationale MINT-Studierende in Deutschland (InterMINT)“ am 21.06.2024 in Bonn
[23.11.2023]

10:15-11:00 International Students in Europe
Keynote: Prof. Bart Rienties (Open University UK)
Questions and discussion

Im Fokus der Abschlusstagung des vom BMBF geförderten Verbundprojekts „Internationale MINT-Studierende in Deutschland“ der FernUniversität in Hagen und des Bayerischen Staatsinstituts für Hoch­schul­forschung und Hoch­schul­planung (IHF) steht der Studienerfolg inter­na­tio­na­ler MINT-Studierender.

1. @DrBartRienties [email protected] Professor of Learning Analytics All papers referred to in this presentation can be accessed via https://iet.open.ac.uk/people/bart.rienties International Students in Europe

2. Internationalisation can be described as one of the key developments in global higher education of the last two decades (Jing et al., 2020; Mittelmeier, Lomer , Al- Furqani , et al., 2024). According to a recent UN World Migration report (2024), despite short-lived negative impact of COVID19 on student mobility, in 2021 numbers of international students reached historically highest figures and reached almost 6,4 million (Jing et al., 2020; Mittelmeier, Lomer , Al- Furqani , et al., 2024) In 2021 international student numbers in two top international destinations –United States and United Kingdom were also highest in history reaching 1,057,188 students (or 5,6% of the total number of higher education enrolments) in the USA (Open Doors, 2023) and 679,970 (or 24% of total number of higher education enrolments) students (House of Commons Library, 2023) in the UK. However several governments are wanting to cut the number of international students. 5

3. Internationalisation can be described as one of the key developments in global higher education of the last two decades (Jing et al., 2020; Mittelmeier, Lomer , Al- Furqani , et al., 2024). According to a recent UN World Migration report (2024), despite short-lived negative impact of COVID19 on student mobility, in 2021 numbers of international students reached historically highest figures and reached almost 6,4 million (Jing et al., 2020; Mittelmeier, Lomer , Al- Furqani , et al., 2024) In 2021 international student numbers in two top international destinations –United States and United Kingdom were also highest in history reaching 1,057,188 students (or 5,6% of the total number of higher education enrolments) in the USA (Open Doors, 2023) and 679,970 (or 24% of total number of higher education enrolments) students (House of Commons Library, 2023) in the UK. However several governments are wanting to cut the number of international students. 6

4. My aims with you today is to discuss some of our research on internationalisation Internationalisation and academic performance Internationalisation and group work Internationalisation at a Distance

5. Internationalisation and academic performance Most previous studies combined international students into “one” category A national study in the Netherlands exploring whether international students had different experiences and academic outcomes (2005-2010) In our first “big” study with 5 business schools and 958 students we compared their academic and social adjustment and academic performance 8 Rienties, B., Beausaert, S., Grohnert, T., Niemantsverdriet , S., & Kommers, P. (2012). Understanding academic performance of international students: the role of ethnicity, academic and social integration. Higher Education , 63(6), 685-700. Impact factor: 4.767.

6. 9 Rienties, B., Beausaert, S., Grohnert, T., Niemantsverdriet , S., & Kommers, P. (2012). Understanding academic performance of international students: the role of ethnicity, academic and social integration. Higher Education , 63(6), 685-700. Impact factor: 4.767. We wanted to explore the more classical SACQ approach with social integration and their impact on academic performance

7. 10 Rienties, B., Beausaert, S., Grohnert, T., Niemantsverdriet , S., & Kommers, P. (2012). Understanding academic performance of international students: the role of ethnicity, academic and social integration. Higher Education , 63(6), 685-700. Impact factor: 4.767. Significant differences across four groups of students Non-western lower personal-emotional adjustment Western and Mixed western international students seem well adjusted

8. 11 Rienties, B., Beausaert, S., Grohnert, T., Niemantsverdriet , S., & Kommers, P. (2012). Understanding academic performance of international students: the role of ethnicity, academic and social integration. Higher Education , 63(6), 685-700. Impact factor: 4.767. Academic performance primarily predicted by academic adjustment, but social adjustment was negatively predicting performance for Western/Mixed Western students

9. 12 Rienties, B., & Tempelaar, D. T. (2013). The role of cultural dimensions of international and Dutch students on academic and social integration and academic performance in the Netherlands. International Journal of Intercultural Relations , 37(2), 188-201. Impact factor: 3.686. Academic performance primarily predicted by academic adjustment, but social adjustment was negatively predicting performance for Western/Mixed Western students

10. My aims with you today Internationalisation and academic performance Internationalisation and group work Internationalisation at a Distance

11. What is this, and what might the green diamonds be? Rienties, B., Héliot, Y., & Jindal-Snape, D. (2013). Understanding social learning relations of international students in a large classroom using social network analysis. Higher Education , 66(4), 489-504. Impact factor: 4.767 .

12. 16 Rienties, B., Alcott, P., & Jindal-Snape, D. (2014). To let students self-select or not: that is the question for teachers of culturally diverse groups. Journal of Studies in International Education , 18(1), 64-83. Impact factor: 3.466 . (70% contribution). So can we encourage students to build friendships and learning relations beyond their “own group” (i.e., change group dynamics and encourage cross-cultural learning?) Yes we can  If the group work is authentic Appropriately assessed Requires cross-cultural knowledge

13. 17 Rienties, B., Alcott, P., & Jindal-Snape, D. (2014). To let students self-select or not: that is the question for teachers of culturally diverse groups. Journal of Studies in International Education , 18(1), 64-83. Impact factor: 3.466 . (70% contribution). In the self-selection condition students mostly selected friends close to them, while in the random condition we allocated students at random

14. 18 Rienties, B., Alcott, P., & Jindal-Snape, D. (2014). To let students self-select or not: that is the question for teachers of culturally diverse groups. Journal of Studies in International Education , 18(1), 64-83. Impact factor: 3.466 . (70% contribution). So after 14 weeks substantial cross-cultural friendship and learning links were developed by the magic of random allocation. Over time students in the random condition developed and maintained almost 2 ½ times more learning relations in comparison to the self-selected condition. For both conditions the best predictor for explaining the extent to which learning ties after fourteen weeks were constructed was the initial group allocation , which had eight to ten times larger standardised beta sizes than our proxies for cultural background

15. 19 Rienties, B., & Nolan, E. (2014). Understanding friendship and learning networks of international and host students using longitudinal Social Network Analysis. International Journal of Intercultural Relations , 41, 165-180. Impact factor: 3.686 . In a range of studies we repeated this finding, whereby how we as educators design our tasks and allocate groups substantially influence and predict how students develop cross-cultural learning links. A first important finding is that students’ actual social networks over time did not necessarily become more integrated. A second important finding of the present study was that ‘other’ (Western and non-Western students not from Confucian Asia or UK) students seemed to bridge a gap between the Confucian Asians and the UK students at undergraduate levels of study In four out of five modules, the primary predictor of how students build friendships, learning and working networks was the group division , which on average had three times larger impact than the cultural proxies .

16. 20 Rienties, B., Tempelaar, D. T. (2018). Turning groups inside out: a social network perspective. Journal of the Learning Sciences , 27 (4), pp.550-579. Impact factor: 6.888 . And learning relations rather than culture seems to be the primary prediction of module performance and performance after a year

17. My aims with you today Internationalisation and academic performance Internationalisation and group work Internationalisation at a Distance

18. Internationalisation at a distance A notable characteristic of internationalisation research is dichotomy between internationalisation at home vs internationalisation away (Knight, 2004). The former category focuses on exposure to international perspectives in students’ own country of residence and the latter category - on internationalisation activities across borders. With the advances of technology a third conceptualisation of internationalisation has been added in the last decade, namely internationalisation at a distance ( IaD : Mittelmeier et al., 2021; Mittelmeier et al., 2019; Ramanau , 2016; Ramanau & Tyler, 2011; Yue et al., 2023). IaD can be defined as “all forms of education across borders where students, their respective staff, and institutional provisions are separated by geographical distance and supported by technology” (Mittelmeier et al., 2019) 22 Rienties, B., Beausaert, S., Grohnert, T., Niemantsverdriet , S., & Kommers, P. (2012). Understanding academic performance of international students: the role of ethnicity, academic and social integration. Higher Education , 63(6), 685-700. Impact factor: 4.767.

19. So what forms of internationalisation at a distance can you think of? IaD can be defined as “all forms of education across borders where students, their respective staff, and institutional provisions are separated by geographical distance and supported by technology” (Mittelmeier et al., 2019) Mittelmeier, J., Rienties, B., Gunter, A., Raghuram, P. (2021) Conceptualising Internationalisation at a Distance ( IaD ): A ‘third category’ of curriculum internationalisation. Journal of Studies in International Education . 25(3), 266-282. Impact factor: 3.466 .

20. 24 Rienties, B., Tempelaar, D.T., Waterval, D., Rehm, M., & Gijselaers, W., (2006), Remedial online teaching on a summer course, Industry and Higher Education , 20(5), 327-336. 200. Giesbers, B., Rienties, B., Gijselaers, W. H., Segers , M., & Tempelaar, D. T. (2009). Social presence, web-videoconferencing and learning in virtual teams. Industry and Higher Education , 23(4), 301-310. Online Summer course: providing international students an opportunity to learn about PBL, mathematics, economics, and how to study at Maastricht University

21. 25 Rienties, B., Lewis, T., O’Dowd, R., Rets, I., Rogaten, J. (2022). The impact of Virtual Exchange on TPACK and foreign language competence: reviewing a large-scale implementation across 23 Virtual Exchanges. Computer Assisted Language Learning , 33, 577-603. Impact factor: 5.937 . Virtual Exchange (also termed ‘telecollaboration’ or ‘online intercultural exchange’) is a pedagogical approach that typically engages learners in online intercultural collaboration ‘projects’ with learners from other cultures.

22. IaD where students live in different country and follow complete degree online. “, our findings indicated that international students in distance contexts – both located in South Africa (IA) and outside ( IaD ) – were relatively well adjusted academically and socially, even to a greater degree than home students (-H1, -H2). This provides a further justification for exploring such internationalisation experiences separately, as the adjustment patterns encompassing each appears to be distinct” Mittelmeier, J., Rienties, B., Rogaten, J., Gunter, A., Raghuram, P. (2019) Internationalisation at a Distance and at Home: Academic and social adjustment in a South African distance learning context. International Journal of Intercultural Relations , 72(September 2019), 1-12. Impact factor: 3.686

23. Discussion We need a holistic perspective on how we talk about internationalization In these times of racial tensions and negative narratives around migration and international students (at least in the UK), we need a nuanced but evidence-based discussion on the impact of internationalization on higher education In my opinion, we need to provide even more opportunities for international exchange , rather than less. If every EU citizen would be allowed to study, live, and/or work for say 4-6 weeks in another country (like ERASMUS+4ALL ), many of the current social/political issues would be solved. 27

24. @DrBartRienties [email protected] Professor of Learning Analytics All papers referred to in this presentation can be accessed via https://iet.open.ac.uk/people/bart.rienties International Students in Europe