Welcoming international students to York Katy Mann Learning Enhancement Team University of York Wayne Britcliffe E-Learning Development Team University of York

Context  20% of York UG/ PG student body are international students from over 100 countries  York inducts 1500 new international students each October  International students are clustered in certain dept’s: Management, Education, Psychology, Economics –York offers a 3 day orientation consisting of talks from support services

Drivers for the VLE site  Dept’s requested support in strengthening their academic skill support for international students  International student barometer( survey) identified welcome as weak  International students known to have additional issues in transition, namely information overload, double culture shock academic and pastoral, staggered arrival times, one international co-ordinator.  Need to engage with popular social technologies

Existing VLE sites supporting pre-arrival (Int ss)  Southampton University has a large set of resources  UCL, Sunderland and a few others have learning objects held in the VLE for incoming students  York has had a Biology specific ‘Welcome’ site for 2 years (Set Chong)

Unique features of York’s Welcome site for Int ss  Blog is student run via ambassador scheme  Students co-deliver workshops with support staff following up from welcome through first term  Explicit coverage of academic culture (socratic tradition/ transparency)  Video of key support staff and lecturers  Materials are particular to York-not generic  Co-developed/ run by students  Academic integrity and referencing emphasis  Safe-assign drop boxes for ss in safe space

Content of the site

Example of blog entry

Example of video content

Tracking site usage

Evaluation  Focus groups  Survey  Evaluation sheets  Usage stats  1:1 interviews  Debrief with students/ambassadors

Site hit rates  571 unique users 4800 hits 63% Post Grads 37% Under Grads

Academic Integrity  91 accessed academic integrity area  30 formatively submitted work through Safe Assignment

When did they access materials?

What was most popular? Content Area HitsHitsPercentage Welcome % University life % Academic vocabulary % Seminars % Skills % Independent learning % Academic Integrity % Help % Quiz % Video %

VLE ‘how to’ guides  17 students accessed how to use –students very savvy on VLE

Next  Full evaluation with dept’s / reps  Discipline specific adaptations  Further video / skills content added  Technology results from ‘integrity week’  VLE / ASO training for dept’s on transition possibilities  Echo 360 lectures  Camtasia modules  Guest log-ins if anyone wants

Questions