Best Practice Exchange - i-graduate Practice Exchange RSA House, 30th April 2015 i-graduate’s Student arometer , the global benchmark for the student experience, has obtained feedback

Best Practice Exchange

RSA House, 30th April 2015

i-graduate’s Student Barometer™, the global benchmark for the student experience, has obtained feedback from 2.3 million students. We have worked with over 1,400 institutions worldwide, including over 100 universities in the UK. On 30th April 2015, delegates gathered at the beautiful RSA House in London for i-graduate’s 9th Best Practice Exchange, to assist the UK Higher Education sector in using Barometer feedback to implement positive change. The event focussed on a series of roundtable discussions, giving delegates the opportunity to share their thoughts on how to improve the student experience. There were informative presentations from experts across the sector including from the University of Huddersfield, University of Aberdeen and University of Warwick. Session 1: Assessing and managing the student experience. Interpreting sector challenges Jon Baldwin, MD of Market Development, Tribal Group Jon Baldwin opened the conference with an overview on assessing and managing the student experience. He discussed the importance of attracting and retaining international students, who he advised provide 17% of universities revenue. Jon highlighted seven universities from around the world who are renowned for their student experience including the University of Sheffield, Loughborough University, University of Sydney and the University of British Columbia. Using University of Warwick as a case study, Jon advised their current ranking in the UK as 8th for security, 9th for accommodation and 10th for high quality facilities. Jon shared a quote from Professor Arvind Gupta, President of the University of British Columbia, on the importance of investing in our students to create global citizens: ““UBC is still the people’s university, we are still a provincial university without provincialism – and students are still UBC’s heart and soul. Today universities continue to shape our youth and ensure students become great global citizens in every respect. I felt a responsibility to make sure we give our youth every opportunity to succeed in every way possible – and in any way they choose. In this rapidly changing world, there is no better or more reliable investment we can make.” Jon concluded by posing some questions for further consideration through the day. These included:

The definition of the student experience – what are we selling?

Lip service or real commitment?

What makes you famous?

What is a higher education for?

Session 2: Explaining international student satisfaction: reflections on i-graduate data Richard Garrett, Director, The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education Using ISB data Richard explored associations between international student satisfaction and particular student and institutional characteristics. He provided data from a sample group of 48 universities (20 US, 19 UK and 11 Australian) that took part in the ISB autumn 2013 wave with over 400 respondents for each institution. The sample showed a modest negative association between international undergraduates as a proportion of all undergraduates and international student satisfaction. About 10% of the variation in international student satisfaction appears to be explained by the international student ratio (the higher the ratio, the lower the satisfaction as shown in Graph 1). This suggests that institutional policies and practices matter more than numbers or ratios. A more significant relationship was apparent between the proportion of international students from a single country and satisfaction with integration with host students. The higher the ratio of international students from one country, the lower the satisfaction with integration (see Graph 2 for data on postgraduate students from China). This highlights the risk of dependence on one or two markets for international student recruitment and the need for institutions to think about the balance as well as the size of their international student population. Graph 3 shows that satisfaction is lower for international students whose parents were not educated to degree level. This is a reminder that as international student numbers continue to grow, international diversity should be expected to increase, not least in terms of socio-economic background. Graph 3 suggests that less “traditional” international students may be harder to serve, consistent with institutional experience seeking to widen participation among domestic students. Graph 1: Graph 2:

Graph 3:

Richard also showed some UK trends in learning experience satisfaction over time. The data showed that, on average, UK institutions have raised their game on key aspects of the international student experience, such as teaching, technology and library facilities, but other important areas exhibited less movement. For example, ISB survey items relating to employment, such as work experience and career advice from faculty, were still characterised by a UK average below the “satisfied” threshold. As international student numbers continue to grow, studying abroad will be more commonplace and less a guarantee of a great first job and successful career. Just as domestic students take an increasingly instrumental view of higher education, international students will follow suit. Institutions that can offer all international students substantive career guidance and work experience, recognising often challenging national policies that restrict work opportunities for international students and recent graduates, will stand out in a crowded market.

Session 3: International students – changing your culture on campus Professor David Taylor, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, International, University of Huddersfield

Over 5 years, the University of Huddersfield has taken part in the ISB 7 times. This information has been used to improve the learning and living experiences for students significantly. The chart below shows the learning survey scores from 2010 in red compared to the 2014 scores in blue. David explained that the two areas that scored lower in 2014 were due to a power outage and they expect to see improvements in the next ISB wave.

Huddersfield’s ISB results highlighted that the main areas in need of improvement in 2010 were worship facilities, social activities, visa advice, experiencing host culture, international office support and careers services. Using this data, the university invested £25m into a new hub – Student Central. The Student Central integrated all support services into one building alongside a new student union, social space, sports facilities and learning areas. Recruitment and admissions teams have become part of the back office and students now go to one person, an International Student Advocate, who is their only contact for any support service needs. The university also invested £125k to refurbish the faith centre. The charts on the next page show the impact the Student Central and faith centre have had on the student experience.

Professor David Taylor

Huddersfield’s new student hub

Session 4: Roundtable Discussions

Delegates divided into six self-selected Best Practice Exchange groups and held open discussions around the current issues. An overview of the discussions is shown below. Integration of international and domestic students Facilitated by Caitlin Mills Lyle (Account Director, i-graduate) with delegates from various universities including Glasgow Caledonian, Portsmouth, Limerick and Anglia Ruskin. Challenges included:

Promoting the idea of a ‘global graduate’

Shifting the focus onto home students to integrate with international students. International students understand the value of becoming friends with home students, but not vice versa

Providing opportunities for student integration is simple, but is harder to encourage students to take part

Students make most of their friends at university in their first few days – this is difficult when the international students arrive a week earlier than domestic students

Language and cultural differences in the classroom

Best Practices included:

For social events allocate 50% of tickets to international students and 50% to domestic students

Integrating international and domestic students in Halls of Residence

Weekly club nights are particularly popular for the Europeans and Brazilians

Implement a buddy programme: - Provide training or buddies - Some universities found providing a financial incentive or coffee vouchers keeps buddies engaged

As well as focussing on opportunities to bring students together, we need to change the mind set of students and promote the benefits of integration

Changing international student demographics Facilitated by Richard Garrett (Director, The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education) with delegates from University of East London, King’s College London and University of Aberdeen. Challenges included:

Difficult to get background data on international students other than nationality and domicile

Retention problems with certain student demographics

Providing an international experience when course is dominated by one demographic

Staff adjustments of teaching international groups

Best Practices included:

Providing support early on to groups where integration into student life has been identified as more challenging

Contacting students early on with poor attendance and putting them in touch with a personal tutor

Implementing a student wide buddy system and peer to peer mentoring schemes

Using related courses with more demographic diversity to provide a global experience to students on courses dominated by one international demographic

Improving support services Facilitated by Jamie Taylor (MD, i-graduate) with delegates from Royal Holloway University of London, Regent’s University London, University of Portsmouth and Leeds Beckett University. Challenges included:

Integration – a lack of diversity presents a major challenge particularly across certain

departments who have an overwhelming majority of students of certain demographic

Short-term or one-year students face particular integration difficulties (e.g. Saudi PGR

students who come to study in the UK on a scholarship before returning to their previous

institution)

Cultural aspects are very important but often overlooked

Finding employment is often challenging for EU students who are dependent on part-time

work to support themselves while studying

Some institutions, particularly urban universities, have limited physical space to develop

food outlets or student hubs

Best Practices included:

Immigration services need to be integrated within international offices to provide

comprehensive advice to students

Particular attention should be paid to dietary requirements (such as Halal or Kosher dietary

options)

International food or cultural festivals are well-received and provide opportunities for

integration

Banks seem to be better prepared to accommodate international student needs (however,

application processes keep changing very frequently due to bank’s internal policies – often

prompted by legislation.) Working closely with bank branches on or near campus often

works well

Tutoring services is the single most important element to improve student retention rates

Paying particular attention to the open comments section in the ISB helps identify specific

issues or concerns

Arrival and orientation Facilitated by Lizi Skilton (Account Director, i-graduate) with delegates from various universities including University of Bristol, University of South Wales and Plymouth University.

Challenges included:

Banks hesitant to allow pre-sessional students to open an account

Difficult to find activity for first night that works well for both the University and students

Challenge to ensure biometric cards arrive before the students do

Students are no longer sent a prompt for police registration and so it is another item to be covered during university registration

Best Practices included:

International Welcome Weeks: - running events purely for international students before domestic fresher students arrive - Creating a ‘welcome lounge’ to provide a chance for international students to meet student ambassadors, have campus tours and receive help with bank letters - Running an International Student Fresher’s Fair and invite international and domestic students to help with integration

Providing an online enrolment service where once students have enrolled they receive an automated email with all the bank information they need

Providing online videos to prepare students pre-departure of the arrival procedure

Airport / train station pick up: - Where possible provide free pick-up services from nearby airports and train stations - Students arriving to airports further away from the university to be greeted by an ambassador to help them buy tickets for onward travel

Providing goodie bags for students first night at the university

Organising a movie night with free pizza for the first night

Increasing response rates

Facilitated by John Taylor (Consultant, i-graduate) with delegates from various universities including

University of Oxford, University of Hull and Kingston University.

Three important stages to increasing response rates are: 1. The ‘pre-launch’ period leading up to the launch date. This is the time to actively promote

the Barometer to students and establish a robust marketing campaign. Also, this is a good

time to communicate with key members of staff / heads of departments who will be able to

encourage student participation and raise awareness prior to launching.

2. The ‘live’ period. Once the Barometer is launched, actively advertising the survey to

students, encouraging them to provide their feedback and letting them know that it’s their

word that really matters. Regular communication to key members of staff on how many

students have filled the survey in. i-graduate are able to provide various breakdowns by

Faculty/Nationality/Study Level/Campus. This is ideal for institutions with lower response

rates as you will be able to identify areas of weakness and action.

3. The ‘wave-close’ period. This is a time to promote any prize-winners and let students know

that there is a genuine prize to be won. Institutions may also want to publish the results of

the Barometer and make these available to students that participated.

Best Practices included:

Pre-loading is a valuable tool for assessing who to send reminder emails to

Email to engage with students to be signed off by a prominent figure such as the VC

Incentives play an important role in increasing response rate. Some universities offer big prizes such as iPads or trips to Paris. Others offer free drink vouchers to all respondents as well as a larger prize

Publicising prize winners at the end of the wave encourages future survey engagement

Reminder emails are important for increasing response rates with new copy each time

Making the most of social media throughout the process

Using the arrival and orientation period to promote the Barometer to international students Preparing international and domestic students for employment Facilitated by Rory Govan (Technical Director, i-graduate) with delegates from Durham University, Brunel University London and Coventry University. Best Practices included:

Developing relationships with local employers to find work placements especially for international students, emphasising the opportunity to celebrate diversity

Introducing a grant system for unpaid work placements

Dedicated section of the Careers Service to look after non-EU international students

Creating opportunities with employers exclusively for international students

Working with the SEED scheme (Social Engagement for Employability Development)

Restricting working hours to 20 a week which complies with visa rules and also reduces the chance of work experience interfering with studies

University staff visits to students on work placements

Requesting feedback from students on work experience

Running a regular CV clinic to assist students

If less interest from one demographic, appoint an ambassador to promote directly to this student group

Careers service staff to attend regular networking events to link with employers and maintain relationships

Session 5: Adapting organisational structure to improve the student experience Dominic Milne, Deputy Head of International Office, University of Aberdeen Duncan Stuart, Head of Infohub, University of Aberdeen

Dominic and Duncan provided an overview of the structural changes at the University of Aberdeen

that have been implemented to improve the student experience. This 10 year journey has led to the

directorate name being changed to Student Life and the implementation of a brand new reporting

structure.

The new structure sees the different support areas all reporting to the Director of Student Life,

providing a more collaborative way of working with shared objectives. This includes student support,

chaplains, sport, infohub, catering, careers services, residential services, recruitment and

admissions.

Duncan Stuart, head of the Infohub, explained the

objective is to be able to answer any questions

without the need for students to be redirected to a

different department. The helpdesks cover IT,

registry, finance, admissions and accommodation

and are able to help students with ID cards,

payments, accommodation booking, council tax

support and any assistance they may require.

Dominic Milne Duncan Stuart

The Infohub

Session 6: Roundtable Discussions Delegates divided into six groups each discussing how the Barometer has been used in their institution to drive change. An overview of the discussions is below. Challenges included:

Ownership of the ISB data sits with the international office and there is little interest higher

up the organisation. Challenge to get the whole university on board to action required

change

Integration of international with domestic students – when given the choice Chinese

students choose to make friends with other Chinese students.

Survey fatigue

Not using interact to its full potential to drill down the data due to not being data savvy or

time restraints

Best Practices included:

Inviting a wider group of colleagues and departments to the ISB presentations to encourage

interest across the university

To gain more support from other departments for the Barometer, they need to be made

aware that the data can be used as an early warning indicator to the NSS

Providing one-to-one appointments with international students to set-up bank accounts

Providing and promoting fixed transfer times at airports to manage student expectations

when they are being picked up. Then if they do have to wait, the students can find a café or

somewhere more enjoyable to spend their time

Specific alcohol-free events for students in the welcome week

Using i-graduate account managers to provide interact demos for any users who are not familiar with this tool

Placing pre-sessional students in accommodation on campus when there are no scheduled shuttle buses during the holidays

Simplifying the orientation process

Implementing a buddy scheme

Setting up working groups for different departments in the university to come up with ideas based on the data and show how they could be actioned

Action from the ISB / SB to be driven by senior management level in order to see effective change throughout the university

Session 7: Understanding and benchmarking internationalisation: Insights from the SB / ISB Dr Daniel Dauber, Assistant Professor, University of Warwick Daniel presented on the University of Warwick’s findings on including five additional questions to the SB and ISB 2014 summer waves. The additional questions asked to the undergraduate and post-graduate domestic and international students were as follows:

• Working in groups on my course is challenging when members are from many different countries

• Having students from different countries on my course has enriched my experience of working in groups

• Developing the skills to work effectively in international contexts is very important to me • My experiences during my degree programme are helping me develop the skills needed for

working effectively in international contexts • Within my friendship groups, there are people from different countries • I find it difficult to socialise with people who are from different countries

The chart below shows how students from different countries view group work:

The below charts shows the data from the new questions about friendship groups:

Conclusion We hope all delegates found the event informative and useful. Thank you for the kind words we have received. Some of these are below: ‘I really enjoyed being part of it and certainly learned a lot from others too. It is interesting to see how the (I)SB can be used so strategically and helped universities to improve the situation, in particular for students.’ Dr Daniel Dauber, University of Warwick ‘I thought the event yesterday was excellent, with some very practical examples of best practice in the sector in terms of how the results are being used.’ Dominic Milne, University of Aberdeen On Twitter: ‘Really thought-provoking talk and data share from David. Best part of the day so far!’ Jo Gibson, Leeds Beckett University Further reading Spencer-Oatey, H. & Dauber, D. (under review) The Gains and Pains of Mixed National Group Work at University, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development For information on the Student Barometer™ and i-graduate’s range of products, please visit: www.i-graduate.org or contact: [email protected]. Save the Date: 2nd – 3rd December 2015 The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education Conference at Regents University, London This year’s conference will be on the theme of evaluating transnational higher education (TNE). TNE can take many forms such as branch campuses, joint degrees and online learning. TNE can span across universities, colleges, companies, foundations and governments. Motivations are similarly diverse and can include access, revenue and capacity building. This conference is an opportunity to assess what we know about the scale and variety of the TNE phenomenon and how TNE impacts on students, and the institutions and countries involved. For more information and to register your interest, please email [email protected] Best Practice Exchange 2016 The date for the Best Practice Exchange in 2016 will be confirmed shortly. Contact [email protected] if you would like to receive details when they are available.