Further Resources
Further Resources
Improving students’ wellbeing in the teaching and learning environment, a project at Warwick funded by the Warwick Innovation Fund, found that students identified the lack of integration between different cultural and international communities ...as an obstacle to their wellbeing in the teaching and learning environment and outside it. A result of the project was the Wellbeing Pedagogies Library which includes a section on Intercultural and International Integration. Explore 8 pedagogical practices which can be used to facilitate cultural and international integration, including guidance on group work, social integration exercises and intercultural training.
Names are key to our identities and to building connections and open dialogue but all too often their importance is overlooked. This library of resources shares research about ...the importance of names in building inclusive communities and the negative impacts of routine mispronunciation and name avoidance on feelings of belonging and visibility. There are also technical tools to help everyone get names right, such as links to enable the creation of audio name badges in email signatures, and many teaching activities which help encourage respectful name behaviours.
Teach HQ (Monash University intranet)
Teach HQ is an initiative of Learning and Teaching providing a central source for your learning and teaching resources. This platform includes ...inspiring initiatives, practical guidance, and various resources curated for helping Monash staff to refresh their teaching practices.
Pedagogies of internationalisation (AdvanceHE, UK)
This resource bank is designed for all staff in higher education who teach international students and is intended as a space for reflecting ...on and sharing teaching practices. Led by researchers based in the University of Manchester, UK, this website is organised according to different sections. The Toolkit section provides a comprehensive overview of technologies for varied engagement.
This is now a thriving online community which offers friendship, solidarity and cultural exchange for all students who join. Managed by the World at Warwick team (Poonam Pedley) ..., regular live ‘‘tea and chat’ sessions are offered which involve a member of staff hosting a chat session, in addition to a myriad of asynchronous channels for connection-making on topics such as hobbies and languages. Members of the GCC are encouraged to create their own channels and lead their own activities. As per pre-pandemic times, the GCC has resumed its in-person gatherings. The aim of the GCC gatherings is to offer non-native English language speakers a friendly space to meet and practice their social English language as we are aware that lack of linguistic confidence is a significant inhibitor for students, affecting all dimensions of their student experience. Sessions will focus on a theme such as marking a cultural celebration, or on activities such as arts and craft.
https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/dbb0b95d-fc26-4b1c-bd6d-5ae2f5e8b946
Vevox - Data (showing some of the polling results from the interactive polling element of this workshop)
Introduction to ‘British culture’ and managing culture stress - this is a fun, interactive workshop aimed at newly arrived international students ..., which uses online quizzes and student panels to cover topics such as UK attitudes to time, politeness, rule of law etc and offers a safe space for students to pose their own questions, the weirder the better. It also talks about the signs and symptoms of culture stress. The aim of the session is to fill in some of the hidden gaps of adjusting to a new culture, which are often only discovered by making mistakes.
https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/d35d537f-8eba-4991-a58f-c44166ba2a22
(This is a recording of a version of the intercultural training (workshop one - intercultural awareness) prepared specifically for WBS students and delivered online)
The Warwick Intercultural Training Programme has been running since 2014. It was primarily designed by academics in the Centre of Applied Linguistics at the request of the International Office ...to offer some structured reflection to students before and after their period of study abroad/exchange and in doing so, to increase the likelihood of the students using their time abroad to develop their intercultural competencies and to be able to articulate the benefits of their intercultural experience in an employability context. At a very basic level, this programme aims to challenge stereotypical thinking and feeling towards difference.
In recent years, the programme was redeveloped to appeal to all students, both those preparing for study abroad, as well as inbound international students and ‘non-mobile’ domestic students. The rationale for developing the programme in this way was to offer all students the tools and space to reflect on their own cognitive/emotional processing of cultural differences and culturally different others to facilitate more effective intercultural communication and integration. The programme forms part of strategic institutional efforts to internationalise the student learning experience.
The programme is formed of two experiential workshops - intercultural awareness and intercultural competence and an online module, which applies intercultural communication theory to student case studies and offers some tools for effective reflection of intercultural critical incidents. Over the pandemic, the experiential workshops were effectively moved online - Collaborate Blackboard was used. Before the pandemic, over 2000 students were enrolling on the programme and the ambition was for all Warwick students to have access to the programme by 2025 (resources permitting).
Over the last three years, a number of academic departments have asked the World at Warwick team, which leads the Student Intercultural Training Programme, to deliver the programme to their students, sometimes during their induction or as an optional ‘professional skills’ module. Most students now engage with the programme via their academic timetable rather than via the open programme, in which students book themselves on to the training.
Restorative practices help create inclusive spaces where everyone's voice is heard, and community bonds are encouraged to form and strengthen. ...This library of resources offers more explanation of the benefits of teaching restoratively and suggestions for community-building activities that can be used in the classroom and other spaces.
This article seeks to explain what is integration in relation to international students ...and explores the many players required to be involved in enhancing integration across the institution.