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International Students?

"They just sit there and do not say anything."

How often have we heard, or even engaged in, such conversations about our International students? International students have a distinct presence on our campus: the cluster of young women from Hong Kong who always sit together; lads from Indonesia chatting in front of the Library; the solitary Swedish student in your class each semester. Yet, they also have a reputation for being reluctant to speak up in class. Furthermore, observations, surveys, and interviews indicate that International students and local students do not mix readily either in class or outside, socially (documented on our campus by Romm, Patterson, & Hill, 1994; Pe Pua, 1995). This lack of mixing, and associated feelings of not fitting in the local culture, undoubtedly confound your efforts to get "them" to speak up in class.

This article briefly outlines lesson plans and strategies that our experience shows stimulate class discussion by International students. These plans and strategies were developed, documented, and evaluated with the support of a University Teaching Development Grant in 1996. Most of these approaches have been used for years in subjects lectured by Fox in Education and Romm and Rifkin in Commerce. Hellmundt has catalogued these approaches and evaluated the effectiveness of transferring one such approach from one faculty to another. Her current doctoral work is a theoretical and ethnographic examination of the experiences in the university classroom in Australia of International students.

As noted above, our experience told us that these plans and strategies "work." Hellmundt’s interviews of students support these impressions. Furthermore, our project included a before-and-after survey of roughly 500 students across five subjects. The survey, developed by Romm, asked local students to report how likely they were to engage in study or social activities with their International counterparts. Similarly, International students were asked how they felt about interacting with their local counterparts (students identified for themselves whether they were "local" or "International"). Survey results were calculated to measure shifts over one semester (Autumn 1996) of each student toward greater "affinity" or greater "alienation" toward their counterparts. That is, did Fox’s Canadian postgrads in Education feel more affinity -- in terms of forming study groups or having dinner together -- toward her Australian students or did they feel more alienation?

Survey results for a control group, a group for which our lesson plans and strategies were not employee, indicate increased alienation on the part of locals for Internationals and vice versa. Survey results for the classes of Romm, Fox, and Rifkin are mixed but encouraging. The mixed results may reflect demographics and disciplinary culture as well as pedagogy.

Romm’s classes showed a boost in affinity reported by local students but greater alienation by International students, a shift for the International students similar in magnitude to the results of the control group. Fox’s class showed a boost in affinity by locals and, for the Internationals, a smaller increase in alienation than in the control group. Rifkin’s class evinced no shift in affinity/alienation by locals, meaning that the drift toward alienation characteristic of the control group was not present but neither was the shift toward more affinity seen in Romm’s and Fox’s groups. Rifkin’s International students showed the only boost in affinity of any of the test groups. In sum, Romm’s strategies worked best at making the local students feel more friendly. Rifkin’s strategies worked best at making the International students feel more friendly. Fox, who co-lectured with several other instructors who may or may not have used her strategies, obtained mixed results.

Plausible conclusions are that:

(a) These approaches do make a difference;

(c) The same approaches executed by different lecturers/tutors may have

different impacts.

What the lecturer does seems to affect International-local student interaction -- with each other and in terms of speaking up in class -- in ways that we do not fully understand, hence, the importance of Hellmundt’s current study. However, we do have a sense of what boosts participation by International students. These strategies correspond to what would help any student to (1) gain a voice in the classroom and (2) learn to appreciate "difference" along a whole range of dimensions -- perspectives and values, gender, age, sexual orientation, ability/disability, etc.

Nearly all of the following lesson plans and strategies were -- and are still -- employed in Rifkin’s undergrad business communication class, which showed the most positive impact on International students in the survey results reported above. But will some or all of these approaches work for you? Employing even just a few of these approaches does seem to have an impact, according to our survey results plus other, anecdotal reports. Where do they work? These methods have been used (to our knowledge) at the University of Wollongong in Education, Management, Business Systems, and Marketing. There is also promise for their use in teaching physics and chemistry, where some of the methods were developed (Tobias & Rifkin, 1992).

Here is a list of ways to stimulate class discussion that appear to make it easier for International students to gain a voice. You may recognise these interaction strategies as what an effective lecturer or tutor should do anyway. Hellmundt’s analysis of the literature echoes this sentiment. Strategies used to enhance critical thinking are precisely the ones that stimulate input by International students. They are strategies that highlight the use of "difference" for learning purposes.

Each strategy was devised, and should be executed, with a view to: (a) provide an experiential, student-centred slant to activities that enables building from the familiar, what students already know, to examine class concepts as well as to make international comparisons; and (b) provide varied forms of student organisation and classroom roles, to develop students’ abilities to work individually and as a team, learning how to delegate and share responsibilities. Some strategies were developed by us, others were adapted or borrowed, and others have been built upon by colleagues.

The material that you currently present can be adapted to enhance intercultural interaction and boost the confidence of International students. The following lesson plans, though used in Management and Education, are designed to adapt to other disciplines and varied subject matter. Try to overlay an approach on your plans to cover specific material. For example, oral reports on laboratory work can be framed within an imaginary, scientific conference with delegates from different cultures (an approach that a colleague at another university reported at the HERDSA ‘97 conference).

Employing the lesson plan outlines given below may cause you to feel that you are lightening up on class content in order to focus on intercultural communication processes. However, there is an argument that teaching students the process of learning within a discipline is more important than hastening to cover an array of content -- "covering less means revealing more" (quoted in Tobias, They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different, Research Corporation, 1990). This strategy of increasing the focus on learning processes is discussed and documented in Rifkin, Norton, and Dodd’s article in the previous issue of Overview (1997). Whether you believe in this philosophy or not, it may be worth experimenting with it to test your assumptions about who in your classroom needs to be the major source of insight about class content -- yourself or students’ classmates.

Here are outlines of three lesson plans plus variations on these lesson plans and outcomes that you might expect. Following these plans are descriptions of a couple of related activities. These activities are more subtle variations on what you may do normally, but they have proven nevertheless quite revealing to students about intercultural communication.

Rationale and Intended Outcomes:

Materials & Time Needed:

Few materials, just pens and paper, are needed to plan the ‘event’.

Materials needed to hold the event depend on certain decisions. Students need to decide: who the event (party, industrial action, convention) is for and who should be invited; how the invitations and publicity should be written and distributed; what sort of food/drink/catering would be appropriate; what sort of presentation, entertainment, or public address format is needed; what sort of clothing would be appropriate; would gifts or awards be appropriate and, if so, who would give them to whom, how, and how much would be appropriate to spend; what sort of venue to organise; how the venue should be decorated/set up; when stages of the event should be and for how long; what they want to achieve, i.e. how will they know if it has been a success or otherwise.

Students will need to discuss the rationale and the cultural implications for the decisions they have made. They will also need to organise and delegate responsibilities.

The time allocated to this activity may be varied according to one's particular program. As little as twenty minutes or as much as a series of one-hour meetings could be used, with meeting times either inside or outside the class time.

This activity can work whether or not the event is actually held.

Example & Outcomes:

In the Faculty of Education, two ‘experimental’ tutorial groups of the total of seven groups in the Curriculum subject for Graduate Diploma in Education students were given a ‘party’ activity. Each of the two groups comprised around 24 students, approximately half of whom were Canadian, and another four or five in each group who identified themselves as Australian with a language/cultural background other than English speaking. The activity was suggested as an example of a classroom activity for schools to encourage intercultural communication and group work. A period of 55 minutes was allotted to the activity planning.

Instructions to students --

Students quickly sorted themselves into groups and decided on the type of party, its purpose and organisation. The groups’ parties included an Icelandic celebration of the beginning of a new season, a Canadian 21st birthday party, a British-Australian celebration of a grandmother's 70th birthday, a Croatian-Australian wedding party, and a French-Canadian 25th wedding anniversary.

Much interest and amusement was generated at the types of food ordered, the kinds of gifts expected, the differences between a "family" and a "friends’" party, the expectations of alcohol consumption (or not), and the differences in expected behaviours and outcomes between parties organised for younger people and those organised for older people. Speakers had to check back with the "expert" and their group that their report was an accurate record of the group’s plan.

During the wrap-up debriefing and discussion, the main conclusion was that generational differences (and also regional differences within one country, or even traditional differences within families) were greater than cultural (language, ethnicity and nationality) differences. The students then concluded that a generation gap was in fact a cultural difference. Complementary outcomes were that students worked together across cultures to plan a mutually enjoyable occasion; learned from each other about similarities and differences; learned to organise themselves and work collaboratively with "experts" and each other; and learned ways in which to organise a classroom of students into teams with members of each team playing different roles.

In Business Communication, a version of this activity is used near the end of the term to help students to synthesise material. Students divide into groups in order to design one of the following events -- a bank robbery in Ulan Bator, a vaccine program to prevent gum chewing among students in Niger, blowing up the bridge across the Bosporus secretly but so nobody gets hurt, building a library in Fort Dawson, Canada, and sending greetings to beings from another planet. This range of events to design indicates that it might also work to propose design of activities related to specific professions and disciplines but set in other cultures. This activity seems to generate a lot student enthusiasm and creativity although students do need to be reminded of the intercultural elements and the importance of employing class concepts.

Rationale and intended outcomes:

Furthermore, by comparing their results, students can see differences and similarities among cultures in regard to aspects very familiar to students, such as the old socks that my class seeks. In addition, reporting to one another how they found their socks reveals to Australian students skills in communicating strategically that their International counterparts possess. My students query one another about this activity in an exercise where they practice on each other skills of interviewing, surveying, and focus group facilitation.

Materials & Time Needed:

Students can complete this assignment in a week. The unusual item being sought must be available locally, but not too readily, from retail merchants, second-hand shops, or home storage. Debriefing in class can take fifteen minutes to an hour. You will need a box in which to collect the bulky homework and potentially clips suited to attaching the homework report to the item.

Example & Outcomes:

Our experience in business communication is based on having asked students to find a five-year-old sock and write a memo describing the process and the networks used. They were also asked to attach the sock, washed and in a plastic bag, to the memo.

Students received this activity with a mixture of disbelief, confusion, excitement, and bemusement. Many were quite surprised at how much and how well they used their networking skills to find the sock. There was much comparison of networking skills, particularly among the International students, who used a variety of communication strategies to find the sock (some explained that they did not have old clothes at hand). Local students also reported a range of communication skills used and were surprised at how easily they did manage to find a sock. Considerable discussion was generated among the participants in the tutorials, comparing results. The excitement helps to "shame" bludgers, who brought in an easily found sock from their own drawer, even when instructed not to. The more formal part of the exercise, i.e. writing a memo seemed to be secondary, although most of them were successful in finding the correct presentation.

A reminder for markers: tell students to put their sock in a plastic covering. The smell, even with very clean socks, can be overpowering.

The unusual nature of the assignment can stimulate informal discussion among students, which can foster engagement in the class. Also, discussion with people outside the class to find the item can generate "buy-in." That is, these outsiders may gain interest in the class that can generate follow-up questions in later weeks that reinforces student engagement in the class. The beginnings of such ‘bonds’ with the community can help to raise the confidence of International students. New friends are made.

Rationale and intended outcomes:

Materials & Time Needed:

The homework assignment can be completed in a few days. Debriefing the results can take from twenty to fifty-five minutes of class time. No special resources are needed other than pen and paper.

Example & Outcomes:

Students were asked to find someone from a culture, other than their own, where English is not the first language. They were to ask for slang for "hello", "goodbye", "food", and a swear word. Adding the swear word could be the key to making this activity work. Students were also required to ask that person for comments about communicating with Australians, in particular, what the person interviewed likes, what could be better, and what still seems strange for the person in communicating with Australians.

For debriefing, students are asked to write their words on the blackboard in the relevant columns -- language, hello, goodbye, food, swear word.

From the degree of laughter in the room, there was a sense of recognition and of validation of each language and culture being represented. Some students reported difficulties in being given a swear word as the person asked did not want the word used in an inappropriate setting. Others had been made aware of the different cultural implications in the use of the swear words, particularly when accompanied by different gestures.

Students’ findings about how Australians are seen to communicate were remarkably similar. Many reported that their respondent found that Australians spoke too fast and used too much slang, but they were seen as friendly, outgoing, and frank. Several wrote that they found it strange that some Australians walk around with no shoes, that they say 'hello' to anyone, including people they do not know, and the general casualness of the place, which was viewed as warm, relaxed, and friendly.

Variations on this activity could include adding words of affection to the list of words to find or words related to a specific class topic and their definitions in that other culture.

A variation of the activity above can be used within a classroom. Early in the semester, MBA students studying business ethics and law have been asked to write on the board key terms, such as ‘ethics’, ‘law’, ‘bribe’, and ‘morals’, in their own languages. After a pause of thirty seconds, students will begin to come to the board. Within ten minutes, words in ten languages will fill the board. Chinese and Japanese symbols can be compared, Arabic script examined. The specific meanings of the terms in each language are discussed, a kind of capsule etymology. Having students write on the board early in the semester, even in the first class, is intended to give them a sense of ownership of classroom space, of access to discussion media. This activity has proven to be quite an ice-breaker, particularly for International students but also for non-Anglo, Australian students.

Another, related exercise is to give students homework instructions in three parts with each part in a different language. Students gain an understanding that the interpretation of meaning can be lost or miscommunicated in translation, particularly when something is translated twice (from English into another language and then back into English). They can also gain an insight and appreciation of working and learning in a foreign language, where one needs to rely on translations by oneself or others.

For this exercise, we have had selected students in private translate the homework instructions into three different languages. The instructions are formatted so that each of the three steps -- each one in a different language -- can be separated. This formatting enables the instructions to be randomly distributed by tossing them into the air. Students scramble to pick up one or two of the steps and network with each other to get the remaining steps. They try to determine what languages are present on the sheets and what languages their classmates might speak. The International students become resources and the Australian students learn foreign words. Distributing these slips of paper takes about five minutes of chaos. Doing it at the end of the class gives students time after class to find a translator among their classmates.

Many students in one lecture group had considerable difficulty in translating and following the instructions. Some seemed not to realise that they were to collect three parts to the homework. Others thought they only had to fax the instructions (faxing a story to the instructor was the assignment) and not complete the work. Some translations were off the mark due to word choice in the student’s translation and due to format being misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Students in a different lecture group, however, succeeded in following the instructions with little difficulty, although many of them complained about the cost of sending a fax. Others simply used their initiative and found the cheapest place from which to send it. With this group, there was an air of excitement when they began to ask for people to translate for them. The translators, too, seemed to enjoy being a resource for others in the class.

This activity seems well suited for use as a variation on a weekly homework assignment, which is just how it has been employed. Debriefing in class can explore assumptions about translation (such as subtitles on TV) and about the nature of written instructions in general.

There you have it, a set of interaction strategies, lesson plans, and related activities designed to enhance intercultural interaction. Employing these activities and strategies and developing your own in the same spirit does seem to make a difference, according to our survey and interview results. Local and International students do not mix readily, and when you let them stay apart, initial survey results indicate that a sense of mutual alienation increases. Limited efforts to get them to mix seem to have limited impact. In addition, there is evidence that an intercultural ethos in a lecturer’s style and strategy is as important as the particular activities in which students engage. That is, these activities done by a lecturer without the ‘right’ ethos may not have the impact that they do when done by one who understands and has internalised the spirit of reflection and reflexivity required to deal with ‘difference’. However, there is still much to be learned about what enables students of different cultures to mix readily.

Please consider trying the approaches outlined above and relay to us your questions and experiences. We are also interested in hearing about your own methods of enhancing participation by International students. We are incorporating this material into modules for use in a variety of disciplines to enhance students’ professional communication skills (see the blurb on the Communication Skills Modules project in this issue of Overview). We need to know what information beyond what you read above will make such material the most useful.

References

Pe Pua, R., 1995, Being an Asian on Campus: A Look into Cross-Cultural Experiences of Overseas Students, Centre for Multicultural Studies, University of Wollongong.

Romm, C., Patterson, P., and Hill, C., 1994, "Overseas Students in Australia ...", Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, Vol.5, No.2.

Tobias, S. and Rifkin, W., 1992, "Experience Counts: Science for the Adult Learner," Liberal Education, Vol.78, No.4, pp.32-37.

Tobias, S., 1990, They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different: Stalking the Second Tier, Research Corporation: Tuscon, Arizona.