Students from the International Communications Studies degrees in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) have been the subject of an exploratory study into the effects of international exchange and mobility, the results of which were recently presented at two international education conferences in Asia.
In November, 2014, Dr Sean Matthews, Head of School and Convenor of the Knowledge Without Borders Network, and his collaborator Dr Vanaja Nethi, Regional Director for the Fischler School of Education, Nova Southeastern University, USA, travelled to the 10th QS Apple Conference in Taipei, Taiwan, to share initial findings of their research into the impact on second year students of Nottingham’s unique tricampus mobility and exchange programme. Dr Matthews was also invited to speak at the Asia Pacific Association for International Education (APAIE) Conference, in Beijing, in March 2015, where he gave two further papers drawing on the project data.
The Matthews/Nethi study grew out of an earlier project, funded by Universitas 21, entitled The Global Graduate, which drew together researchers from Nottingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Newman University. This work was concerned specifically with international student experience and employability. It explored, for UK students, what is attractive about study abroad, and to what extent they believe that their international experience has been a transformative process, specifically in terms of career aspirations and perceived employment opportunities. One interesting finding was the researchers’ observation of a clear disparity between employers’ expectations of graduate capabilities and competencies, and the students’ own ability to communicate, perhaps even appreciate, their experience and skills.
The qualitative study involved interviews with 20 students who had studied the Part I, Cultural Politics module in 2013/14. The majority of participants were from a group who took this module at Nottingham Malaysia. This group comprised UNMC students (both international and local Malaysian), and a number of Nottingham UK and Nottingham Ningbo students who had chosen to be in Malaysia as part of the tricampus mobility programme. A further group of UNMC students were interviewed who had, during the 2013/14 session, themselves studied abroad either in at Nottingham UK or Nottingham Ningbo. Even with such a relatively small sample the researchers were able to gain suggestive insights into three particular issues which are currently of interest to researchers into transnational education (TNE) and the internationalisation of Higher Education.
First, Matthews and Nethi drew some encouraging and reassuring conclusions about the nature and value of international experience, comparing substantive student perspectives with those of employers and indeed universities. Second, the interviews enabled them to contribute to the better definition of the international perspective which most of the students felt they had acquired. Third, albeit more hesitantly, they could comment, in relation specifically to student experience of an international campus, on the thorny issue of internationalisation at home (i.e. international experience for those students who are not internationally mobile, but remain in the country, and campus, in which they enrolled). Only relatively small numbers of students can ever be internationally mobile, so Higher Education institutions are eager to find ways to ensure that those students who stay home have access to a comparable international experience. UNMC is a uniquely international environment, and our students are for the most part already at a high level of international motivation or international predisposition, but the initial findings of this study suggest that even for those students who do not travel, taking a degree at an international campus provides a transformative international experience.
Delegates at the two international conferences responded favourably to Matthews and Nethi’s findings, and the researchers have been invited to contribute a chapter on the project to a major forthcoming volume concerned with international student mobility and exchange. At the same time, they are considering scaling up the project to embrace other programmes and faculties. This would make possible an assessment of how far the student experience of internationalisation in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, or of the Arts and Social Sciences more generally, is typical of the wider Nottingham experience. Watch this space!
Sean Matthews, March 2015
Posted on 8th April 2015