 Thanks very much for joining today. My name is Dustin Hosseini. I'm going to be your chair. I'm volunteering. I work at Glasgow University, where I work in the Learning Innovation Support Unit in library, and I study a doctorate in education for time. So this, that's why I'm here chairing this event because diversity inclusion are important to me. Our first talk is equity diversity inclusion, understanding international students digital shock by Sarah Knight, Tabitha Newman, Mike Gulliver, and Elizabeth Newell, the person on the list. So everyone give a round of applause. Just quickly, each one's about 20 minutes, and then we'll do 10 minutes of Q&A after each one. Thank you. Let me get my timer started. Okay, it's lovely to be here. I'm speaking on behalf of a number of colleagues to introduce you to our work at JISC on international students digital experience. And I'm delighted today to be joined by Diana Katana, who is a PhD student at King's College London she's been in the UK higher education system since her first degree undergraduate studies. And on the slide she's here today as an Akiza international student ambassador and you'll be hearing from Diana in a short while. So what I want to do to begin with is just to talk you through the rationale behind why we're undertaking this research into international students digital experience. Firstly, I mean I really don't need to tell a room full of old delegates that COVID accelerated the use of digital technologies and teaching and learning. But it is worth us just taking a moment to reflect that digital technologies are now embedded throughout the student life cycle, and that starts prior to a course beginning with application and runs through to graduation. Secondly, international students constitute a significant proportion of our overall student population in the UK. The latest thesis statistics tell us that 680,000 students are with us in the UK in higher education. So that population can be seen as 17% of full time undergraduate students and 67% of taught post grads, also on a full time basis. Moreover at Gisc, we heard from our members that the pandemic shine a light in particular on the digital experiences of international students, and that the issues were seen not just with access to technology, but also in terms of the expectations being placed on its use within teaching and learning. So what we want to do at Gisc is build on quite a number of years now of research into student digital experience, not least with the last seven years of running the insight surveys. But whilst international students are part of the digital experience insight survey data set, their unique experiences prior to arrival on their courses in the UK, as well as throughout their programs of study have not been been captured by that by that series of surveys. And what we found actually is that this is an area that is quite under researched and so we wanted to address that. And in addressing this gap. As you'll see from the slide there we've spoken to a number of sector bodies across the UK. And we've also spoken to higher education providers in order to start to develop some intelligence in this area. So we've embarked upon a multi phase research project. First, the first phase of which resulted in a report that was published in April of this year. If you want to scan the QR code or take a note of the URL there, you will get through to, I think it's an 80 page report isn't it Sarah. This basically summarizes the, the literature review, and also gives an account of what sector bodies who are supporting international students as well as sector body supporting learning technologies are are experiencing or observing in terms of international engagement with digital. And phase two has now concluded phase two has given us an opportunity to talk directly to international students at a number of institutions across the UK. And I'll be saying a little bit more about that in due course, we will be publishing results of that data a bit later on in the autumn. Thought it'd be useful at this point just to say a little bit about who the international students or where our international students are coming from. So a little bit about student recruitment. The 680,000 students I mentioned just a moment ago come to us from over 200 different countries and territories. The graph that you see on the screen here is from, again is from HESA, and it indicates some of the sharp increases and decreases we've seen over the last couple of years I'm just going to move to this, to this overhead. The blue line at the top there indicates that the China Chinese students are kind of leveling off in terms of recruitment at the moment. What we can see is a sharp increase in students coming from India as denoted by the orange line. The gray line refers to other Asian countries, and within that we're talking about Pakistan predominantly. And then this pale blue line refers to Nigeria. And not surprisingly you've probably worked out for yourself that the yellow line sadly is the drop off that we've seen in EU students. So it would be really helpful for us on the research project as well as hopefully for yourselves is if you wouldn't mind scanning this QR code and either as I'm continuing to talk or perhaps a bit later on. Share with us what your observations have been at your institutions in terms of international student use of digital and interactions as learning more generally. I'm going to go for a moment for you to scan. There we go. So, I just wanted to summarize the recommendations that came out of the first report because I think this hopefully points you towards our key findings. In the first instance we're recommending to institutions, the information and guidance is given to international students well before they arrive in the UK. Not just in terms of what technology to bring but again helping with those expectations around how it's going to be used in teaching and learning. Secondly, also on the subject of pre arrival support, we are suggesting that institutions use their digital technologies to help build communities. This is one of the first recommendations that we've seen amongst international students before they arrive on course, as this has been shown to really help with induction and to smooth course integration. The third recommendation moves us into the realm of institutional strategy. What we're really calling institutions to be thinking about is the integration of the international strategies with others at that top level. So whether that is digital strategy, EDI strategy, all those around teaching and learning. What we have seen within the literature is that international students experience something that's referred to as digital shock. And it's combined with learning shock and cultural shock that this can negatively impact students for weeks if not months when they arrive and start with us at our UK institutions. And so it would be of benefit for staff across the institution to develop an understanding of the transitional issues for students. What moving on from that, what we've also seen is that teaching and learning can look very, very different in other countries to how it is, how it is that we provide teaching and learning within the UK. And so again, it would be really helpful to really start to look at our own teaching and learning through the lens of international students coming to us. The diagram on the screen here really is a really nice illustration of how equitable provision and equality of provision are really two quite different things. And so in order to provide smooth digital border crossings for students we are recommending the institutions provide equitable rather than equal provision. And with 680,000 students coming to us from overseas from over 200 different countries and territories that we really do need to stop thinking about international students as one homogenous group. So very briefly, I just want to say a little bit about our phase two research. First both across institutional survey we've worked with 14 partner institutions to deliver that survey. And we've also made site visits to 10 different university locations across the UK in order to speak with 150 individual international students. We've gathered with the survey over 2000 responses, and the questions within the survey relate to prior experience of digital technology before coming to the UK. Personal use of devices and software, and then looking at use of digital technologies within teaching and learning on course. And what the graphic shows so a little bit of a data reveal here ahead of publication is that over 50% of international students have reported having had power cuts have impacted their ability to engage with with with with online technologies. So here we see that four out of five survey respondents are taught post graduates, and that the majority are from Africa and Asia. And then at the bottom there again just wanted to give you a little bit of data ahead of publication. What we see here is that a quarter of international students surveyed are now, sorry, have reported that Wi-Fi in their home countries was worse, or they didn't have Wi-Fi at all in their home countries before coming to the UK. So in terms of activity, we wanted to encourage students to not just report their digital experiences in terms of the digital that they use, but also to share something of how they feel about using digital technologies as well. In terms of the students who attended this maps very closely to where we're seeing the greatest growth in international student recruitment at the moment in terms of Asia and Africa. And what I think is particularly significant to our findings is that the majority of the students we saw not only were PGTs, but they were mature students who were already professionals and had career histories. So finally, before I introduced Diana, I just wanted to share a little bit of insight with you from some of the discussions we had in the students who had been brought together to the focus groups to talk about their digital experiences. Absolutely wanted to use the opportunity to share some of the wider issues that they were facing being a student in the UK. Namely, in terms of being able to find accommodation, accessing health care, using transport, being a mature student and finding a sense of belonging as a student as well. So I now like to introduce Diana who has been with us at one of our focus groups you help co facilitate one of our focus groups. So Diana just wondered whether you might like to share some of your experiences and observations with the group here. And the first question really is to ask, in terms of your own personal experience. Can you say something about what digital shock you experience coming to the UK. Of course. Okay, it's working. Hello everyone. So I first came into the UK in 2016 to do my undergraduate and biochemistry at UCL and just to set a bit of scene I was terribly homesick. I didn't want to have to deal with anyone talk to anyone I just was in my own bubble. In the first lecture, I need to go to a big lecture theater with 300 people. I haven't seen a class bigger than 30 at that point in time 300 people I entered my parents told me beforehand, when we went to university. We always always had to have pen and paper to take notes don't be disrespectful don't, you know waste the time of the lecture. I go ready with my pen and paper and I enter and I see max everywhere, laptops max everything. All of a sudden, I just feel like I don't belong here. It's, I feel very poor, like I feel like I don't have the technologies that I needed to attend these lectures, everything was on slides nothing was on books like I was used to during my schooling years back home in Romania. So already I didn't have any people to connect with, I would only hang out really with people that were in the same position as me. So people who didn't have laptops coming to the lecture theaters and taking notes by paper and trying to figure out how to work out the drill because I was using moodle at the time, and how to set up this outlook email that at that point in time felt so impossible, but now I use it so often that I just love thinking that that felt like such a big sort of thing to cross but that's the reality of it when you have so many things going on in the background, every sort of extra thing that you need to adapt to feels very hard. Thank you for sharing that with us. And what do you think might have mitigated that digital shock for you. I think I would have liked to heads up, to be honest, like, not necessarily in the sense that all you need to bring a laptop because I do realize that's not feasible for everyone but to tell me, you know, if you don't have a laptop we have the library services that I have a one day loan or something, or at least tell me we are going to use moodle or this virtual learning environment. This is how it works, let's create a page where I could have sort of accessed and see how a quiz word how you download the lectures, something sort of get used to it not necessarily see already the lectures beforehand. Just like a taster session if you wanted. Thank you. Moving on from that, given that you've been in you've co facilitated one of our focus groups just wondered whether you could share with everyone. What differences and challenges. Have you observed international students reporting in relation to their learning experiences in UK higher education. Definitely, I would say they sort of gravitated around two big teams. One of them was referencing. Many students that come from the public schooling system from their countries they don't know how to reference properly. They don't know how it works or why is it even necessary. The issue here is that academics are very sort of clear about how bad it is if you plagiarize. This just increases the anxiety around sort of referencing and some depending on the culture some students can advocate and ask more questions but some of them prefer to find ways to find these answers about referencing they wouldn't necessarily go to the lecture or tutor or whatever because they think they'll be remembered badly for not knowing this sort of basic level things. And in from this sort of point of view you already have a barrier which is quite difficult to traverse, and they keep asking in amongst their peers to see how can I actually reference this. And as you know you know you can hear from some friends but they don't necessarily know the best answers, and you already sort of miss out on some students sort of education over here. Another big sort of point was that the marking schemes here in the UK. So, here, 17% first means a very good mark, whereas in other countries it has to be over 90%. Some parents like to be like helicopters and ask about marks ask about the hierarchy in the classes, and when students come and say well I don't know what where I placed but I have 70% or maybe like you failed what did you do like parents can get visibly upset about these sort of things. And also on the sort of point of marking schemes, they can be a bit vague or too generic for students the feedback comes like it's too, you need it to be more critical use more academic language but what does that mean? There's no, some international students just don't have the feedback literacy, they can't read this or understand what you actually mean by this, they want more concrete examples of two. I wrote this, okay it's wrong but how was it meant to be rewritten to be correct according to your scheme or they also report preferring more detailed marking schemes because they can't read the minds of the lecturers marking the essence. Thank you, Diana, you've talked about both learning and digital shocks for international students, how do you see them impacting one another? I think they're both sort of layers from the same problem, pretty much integration of students in the UK higher education system. If you think about UK education, it is digital, whether we like it or not, we can call it a digital education. So obviously the digital shock will impact the learning experience of students. And if you want me to give you a really menial example, is think about assessments that are essay based on Moodle. Students can't type fast enough, their answers. Some students are used to writing exams by hand. So this is a very sort of menial example of what can happen as where digital shock and the sort of learning shocks come together. But it applies to all sorts of layers. And as I mentioned previously, it just adds to the problems that international students have to cross. If you really want to draw the line, you can look at it in this way. British students might be better adapted to this learning environment. International students have to do extra work, extra steps. And having to work extra to just be on par can be frustrating and just takes away from the time you can socialize, learn, enjoy the place because many students come here for the place for the country to enjoy to learn the culture to talk to everyone. And this sort of gap, them having to cross it just takes away from their time. So, yeah. Thank you. So just to finish off before opening to questions. We will be reporting on our phase two research later in the autumn. So you will get to hear from the over 2000 international students who gave their voice through the survey and 150 students who we met as we were facilitating focus group activity. Once we have published that data and and the discussion of the findings we will then be looking to issue a series of briefing papers, probably in the early months of 2024. If you would like to be kept informed of our progress with the research, then again, please feel free to take a photograph of this QR code. Or you should be find it and Sarah is going to yes flash a card up in front of you there. And there is some postcards that also have the same link on as well, and we'll add you to our mailing list. I will share with you that the digital experience insights students survey has the report from that survey has been published it went live yesterday. So again by following the link on the screen here if you want to get a sense for what the main headlines are this year from, I think it was about 37,000 students who contributed to the data set, then again feel free to take a copy of this code. And then finally one final ask from ourselves. If what we've shared with you any of the points that Diana has raised, or some of the findings that I've shared with you resonate with you, it'd be particularly helpful for us to hear what you might be taking back into your practice for further discussion or action. So if you wouldn't mind adding something to this tablet. That would be great. Thank you to stay in touch with us. So thank you very much for listening. And very happy to take questions in the final few minutes before we hand over to Anna. Okay, so the way we do questions is because of the way the room is set up. I'll call on you and I'll repeat it for the audience who's listening, because I'm not going to run across the room. It's too early in the day. Any questions. Yes. So, okay, audience members asking if they've found any institutions who are addressing the gap really well. So we've got a working. Oh, sorry, thank you. We have a working group established with some of the institutions who've taken part in the research you've been our partner institutions. And they've been sharing with us some of what they're planning on doing with the data. So in terms of the journey that they're on, we're just starting to hear how the data is going to be impacting their practice. So that's the link that I shared with you. We've started to just mail list and through that we are notifying those on the list of blog posts. So what we're planning on doing is profiling the institutions who've got some really good practice to share in this space so keep in touch with us and you'll get to hear some of that. Thank you. Dustin's given me the job of repeating your question. So the question was around digital exclusion and that we've talked about that within this context of looking at international students, but there's a lot of digital exclusion digital poverty within home student experience as well. And so I'll be comparing the two. So that's where we think that when we look at, we're doing going to be doing a piece of work with our external researcher Tabitha Newman, who's going to be looking at digital experience insights data through comparative lens with international students and and international home students. This, this, this current data set, something that I feel quite strongly about having very recently been at an institution. So I only joined just in February, and I was very heavily involved in access and participation plans at the institution I've come from. What I really really like to see is the EDI agendas within institutions be more reflective the whole student population. Obviously those access and participation plans because of the office for students requirements are focused wholly on home students. So I think we really need to address this imbalance in the focus on EDI, in order to ensure that we are looking at the full, full population and hopefully some of the works that we're going to be doing in terms of looking at the data that we've got. So insights to be comparing home and international so thank you for the question. Yeah. That was great. We're talking about living right now on this is how it's going to work. Okay, so the question was around what sort of heads up that I mentioned previously would be useful since. Thank you for everyone. Your rival. Thank you. So, in my experience, I would have preferred a pre arrival. I would have liked to have some resources set up for me to access throughout the academic year even if it is in the form of a YouTube video, just to be able to go and refer to it and how to let's say, navigate the, if I really want to find a scientific journal article somewhere, if I can have a YouTube video on how to, I can access it through the library services, or how can I use Moodle, or how can I set up the outlook email like these were some things that were really very for me and I had a hard time figuring out on my own. So I do realize that I was very sort of panicky and I wanted to have this information beforehand. I think it's best if it is provided to some extent in the form of either, I don't know, a link to like a Google Drive or something that can be accessed by anyone afterwards, and you know, if people are panicky like me they can access it beforehand. If not during arrival we can enroll on week you can refer to it and say, go there, we have already collated some resources for you to make it easier. Okay, thank you very much Diana and Elizabeth and I have a question. You guys were looking at students. I teach lectures how to create online and blended courses. And I've seen that there is a digital imbalance there's exclusion there's digital poverty on the part of the staff. So, what are your next steps as far as staff or what suggestions would you have that respect. Was it something you wanted to say Diana. It was impressed. So, we are planning a phase three you'll seen from the introduction this is a multi phase research project and phase three will take us back into talking to staff. So we anticipate then having running focus group activity running interviews with staff will help us to gain the intelligence that I think you're pointing towards that will come out in due to course yeah. All I have to add is that this is something that sometimes students don't think about like we don't we come here and we sort of expect to get help or be helped. And we don't realize sometimes the sort of gaps that happen behind closed doors, even on the part of academics so I think even if these were made known to the students maybe they would be more sort of empathetic and understanding in general, because it's easy to have a this lecture they didn't do this they didn't reply to my email or whatnot, it might be because they don't have access to sort of resources so yeah. And I should just add finally, and I'm sure they hate the space is of course that through just we have the digital capability service and fantastic discovery tool that enable staff and students to assess their digital capabilities. And from an institutional planning perspective or for a developmental perspective to get the institutional data at the back end of that system to see where the strengths and areas for development are is really a very helpful way to go.