Improving International Students’ Experience

Chris R. Glass is an assistant professor of higher education at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Glass is a lead researcher on the Global Perspective Inventory (GPI), a widely used assessment instrument that examines the relationship between educational experiences and global learning outcomes. Glass is the recipient of the 2016 Innovative Research in International Education Award from NAFSA’s Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship Knowledge Community.

You are a coauthor of International Student Engagement: Strategies for Creating Inclusive, Connected and Purposeful Campus Environments. How can higher education institutions better engage international students on campus?

High-impact practices (e.g., first-year seminars, learning communities, service learning, undergraduate research, and capstone experiences) are ideal opportunities to better engage international students on campus. They are ideal because they are built into the curriculum and required, whereas most international and intercultural programs are elective. The key is to recognize what makes a high-impact practice “high-impact.” High-impact practices involve a significant investment of time and effort by students over an extended period of time, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning, and interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters. There is a strong research base that demonstrates that international students who participate in experiences with these characteristics are more likely to form social relationships with peers from other cultures, more likely to report a greater a sense of belonging, and more likely to interact with faculty outside-of-class.

How can higher education institutions improve international students’ experiences on their campuses?

I have just one suggestion, actually: Embrace