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1. Introduction
“Orientation is a process, not an event” (Kift, 2010).
Institutions increasingly recognise that effective orientation is a process that begins with onboarding activities before arrival, and extends throughout the first term and year.
The Kift model for an integrated, whole-of-institution approach has redefined how institutions plan and implement this transition process. It is also reshaping education policy, with its key pillars appearing in the holistic framework of the Education Code of Practice 2021.
The key strategies of this model are:
- Intentionally creating a sense of belonging
- ‘Just in time’ and ‘Just for me’ proactive and staged support, focusing on what’s most relevant at that point in time
- Embedding transition into the curriculum (formal and informal), which is the core of student experience, and
- Sustainable teaching and professional staff partnerships.
These strategies are especially relevant for international students, who adapt to new host community cultures and institutional cultures at the same time. The sections that follow explore the four pillars of this model. Bethel and Ward’s work (2020) confirms that the most important factor for international student transitions in NZ is connectedness with communities. Both schools and tertiary institutions are increasingly reframing transition learning and opportunities to connect with local students across the period of pre-commencement and first weeks.
Transitions continue throughout programmes and during each term. Many students will start their studies online before arriving onshore, meaning smaller and ongoing cohorts of onshore arrivals. This shift in intakes presents the opportunity to reshape orientation processes and nurture the communities and connectedness that lead to students’ success.
Hybrid learning options and changes in visa regulations are also shifting the international student learning experience. Many international students choose New Zealand institutions with the intention to continue their studies here or find work opportunities, but they lack clear pathways to do so. Tailored planning and advice during study can have a big impact on international students’ understanding of their future options and success.
This topic breaks down key phases of international student transition. Practice examples illustrate how institutions are moving away from piecemeal activities towards holistic, intercultural, and embedded transition practices.
Firstly, let’s examine student transitions into their studies with your institution.
2. Transitions In: Onboarding, preparing, and connecting
‘Onboarding’ is a critical phase for connecting with students and setting expectations – that is, from the moment a student accepts the offer to study at your institution until their courses start. The onboarding process for international students can be fragmented, complex or rushed before the start of classes. This leads to staff and student confusion about who is responsible for what, causing international students to rely on their friends and/or their agent for advice. However, academic and professional staff across your institution can coordinate your activities during this phase.
Applying Kift’s Transitions model (2015), support interventions during this time can and should:
- Develop peer networks and friendships
- Create links with academic staff
- Have an academic purpose
- Provide key information
- Shape realistic expectations
- Develop students’ confidence
- Demonstrate future relevance, and
- Nurture belonging.
How might you implement these goals in practice? Pre-departure online peer support is one example of developing belonging and peer networks while also providing a valued source of information and academic advice:
PRACTICE EXAMPLE
International students in Mann’s (2020) collaborative student services improvement project identified the need for unified and earlier advice about courses, accommodation, and other aspects of learning and student life, most especially from their peers. Revising an existing peer programme, 17 later-year students were trained to deliver online peer advice sessions for international students throughout the pre-departure period. Sessions were planned to suit time zone differences and held with one to four new students at a time. Over 500 students used the service, and survey feedback reported that students valued the service and felt better prepared for their new country and university.
These sessions are one of a few key ways that institutions maximise the opportunities of the onboarding phase. Creating connections, setting expectations, and preparing accommodation are the most important processes for students during this time.
Onboarding activities to create connection and set expectations
- Provide online peer support sessions, as outlined above
- Open institution and course-specific websites a few weeks before courses begin:
- Following the ‘just in time’ principle, only post the key information students need during this transition (e.g. course selection, extended orientation activities, course outlines, etc.). Other information can be released across the first weeks, as outlined in Extended orientation below.
- Create a short survey or forum where students can share their top concerns and priorities. Tailored responses and/or wider communications create connections and demonstrate that your institution is responsive to students.
- Provide introduction videos, chat forums and/or online introduction sessions with staff:
- Introduce teaching staff, the programme, and the types of learning that will be expected (e.g. group work, critical thinking, etc.)
- Introduce support staff, the types of support they provide, set expectations about how questions and requests are managed, and the time required to respond
Early accommodation advice and support for onshore students
The most common challenge for onshore students is arranging their accommodation. Finding appropriate and affordable accommodation is one of the biggest factors in international students’ wellbeing and allows them to focus their energies on transitioning into their studies.
Encourage students to connect with accommodation advice and support early:
- Refer students to the NauMai NZ resource
- Provide virtual tours of halls of residence, homestays, and other options
- See Providing tailored accommodation support for international students topic for more information.
Onshore students typically arrive in-country very close to the date courses start, so better preparation for their accommodation pre-arrival goes a long way to smoothing adjustment.
Whatever their pathway into your institution, pre-entry support enables international students to begin a more connected and confident transition into your institution.
3. Transitions through the first term and year
Whether students physically travel to your institution or study online, an extended orientation programme builds on pre-entry activities and transitions students into their studies and learning communities.
The extended orientation process
Orientation activities can provide valued opportunities for international students to connect with others. Whanaungatanga, that is building connections and relationships, should be the focus of your institution’s orientation activities. Institutions often plan activities for the incoming international cohort alone – this helps them share their common experience, but can isolate them from meeting local peers or programme-specific staff (Chou-Lee, 2020). Consider how local students and programmes can be integrated into activities to build connections with international students.
Making relationships the focus frees up time and capacity that is often taken up by an overload of one-way presentations to deliver information. Students will not be able to retain all of this information in one go, and much of it will not seem relevant to their concerns before they have attended any classes. By extending the institutional and academic learning from pre-arrival through the first weeks, students can be guided through their ‘institutional culture shock’ – the academic and learning adaptation that they will undergo in their new learning environment throughout the first weeks.
PRACTICE EXAMPLE
Introduction to [Your institution] online course
Several institutions now provide a structured online course for new students, to clarify academic expectations, highlight available services and support, and build familiarity with staff across the institution. Content delivery is staged across several weeks, with new interactive modules and webinars released each week. Each week’s content plans for the study concerns students are likely to have at that point in time, for example, highlighting support with assignments a couple of weeks before first assignments will be due. This multi-week delivery also provides a unified space for students to interact and raise questions and concerns as they develop.
In our current hybrid learning environments, these online courses provide anytime, anywhere connection. Nevertheless, in-person programmes remain valuable for connecting domestic and international students studying in the same spaces:
PRACTICE EXAMPLE
One college has an established Friendship Club that pairs each international student with a local student buddy. The local buddies are integrated into international students’ extended orientation activities, including:
- Becoming friends online pre-arrival
- Meeting and greeting their buddies at the airport and giving small gifts
- Helping out with orientation activities
- Introducing their buddies at school assembly
- Reading and writing peer support, and
- Celebrating birthdays and cultural holidays throughout the year.
International students also begin their studies with a wide range of English language skills. Even at high levels of proficiency, they may be unfamiliar with academic and subject-specific language. This additional learning and adjustment is not unique to ‘international’ students alone, as other students such as new migrants may also be learning English as an additional language. In the practice example below, one institution coordinated its first-term language transition activities across the institution:
PRACTICE EXAMPLE
The Embedding Academic Language Framework Project (Goldsmith, 2021) created a whole-of-institution approach to embed language support. Under this Framework, all new students (domestic and international) are required to complete English language screening in their first two weeks, which grades students at Basic, Intermediate and Good levels. Students with a Basic grade are required to attend nine weeks of language development tutorials (in-person or online) that run alongside their courses and use content specific to the subjects they are studying.
The language learning specialists who delivered the tutorials identified three key elements to students’ successful academic English development:
- Build on what is already in place (build on existing tasks and subjects for assessment)
- Partner with teaching staff and students to implement programme, and
- Develop students’ language skills through subject and discipline specific material.
The practice example above draws from Kift’s model to deliver support that is embedded in students’ programmes, in partnership between teaching and professional staff, and staged across the first term.
Kift’s model stresses the importance of embedding transition activities directly into the classroom, the core space where student’s learning and interaction will take place. Embedding intercultural learning and transition within classes during the first weeks enables all new students to transition into their learning.
Intercultural classrooms and institutions
“In all of their diversity, with their multiple identities and changing patterns of engagement, the curriculum is what all students have in common. It is within our institutional control and is the one assured engagement we have with them all”
(Kift, 2015, p. 68).
Kift’s Transition model recognises student’s learning as the core of their experience. While extracurricular activities often enrich students’ learning, they may not be sustainable or convincingly relevant to local students who would benefit from intercultural learning. Integrating intercultural curriculum and group work into courses from the first weeks enriches all students’ learning and creates better belonging and connections for international and minority students.
The Internationalisation at Home project (Commons, 2011) brought together student learning advisors and teaching staff to develop reflective and interactive intercultural learning for all students in the programme. This included intercultural training for tutors so they could create safe learning environments for all students. The programme also incorporated intercultural awareness and skills into the first weeks of courses. Below, one project leader describes how these practices create a sense of belonging and cultural awareness for all students from the first weeks:
“If we tie this [intercultural learning] to the course content and assessment students will see this as relevant… We’d like to get them to really plan and then do the active learning as a first tutorial, so that there is participation, and engagement by all students is expected and respected.
If students feel confident in the first year, they will continue to work together. If we get the fundamentals right then, international and domestic students will be more engaged and more willing to take part. We’re looking to create a place where all tutorials are a place where all students participate. That we’ve created a better sense of community.”
REFLECTION EXERCISE
How well do you think your institution delivers intercultural learning for students? Take a look at this exercise to explore staff capabilities and curriculum:
To further develop strategies for intercultural learning in the classroom, see Working with the teaching profession to support international student needs and Fostering International Student Inclusion.
Creating a sense of belonging and making expectations clear in the first weeks and year will set the foundation for a successful student experience. Draw on these principles and strategies throughout students’ time at your institution, during ongoing transitions explored in the next section.
4. Progression: Study transitions and decisions
International students study under a range of circumstances, and their progression through their studies can take many different forms, especially if they are in condensed programmes scheduled differently from standard terms.
Consider what transitions your students will go through during their studies. Students may:
- Study offshore for their first year and arrive onshore during the second year
- Move from pathway programmes to degrees
- Choose specialisations, e.g. NCEA levels and university major/focus area/thesis topic
- Change their major or focus of study, and
- Begin practicums, internships, or seek other employment.
Outline the specifics of these transitions for your international students to understand what ‘just in time’ support they will need. Below are three areas where both students and institutions need better knowledge and capacity to navigate towards goals during study.
From offshore to onshore study
Students are increasingly beginning their studies offshore, yet this practice is not new. Peelo and Luxon (2007) investigated a transitions unit specifically designed for media and communications students who began their studies in China before migrating to their UK institution.
The unit was embedded into their programme, recognising how important it is for international students to ‘decode’ unspoken academic norms and that language and study skill classes are usually an extra and additional burden.
The unit on English Speaking Culture and Media used course content to teach academic English and study norms. Students were also prompted to analyse societies, culture, and communications using their own recent experiences of migrating to the UK and engaging with the communications they received as part of that process. Evaluations showed that the course effectively ‘bridged’ students into their UK institution and provided a learning space where students could “breathe freely and express themselves without anxiety” (Peelo & Luxon, 2007, p. 10).
Gaining work experience
For onshore students, working in New Zealand provides essential income as well as valued cultural and work experience. Yet a large gap in expectations between New Zealand employers and international students can make it challenging to land a job.
Employers also look for migrants with previous work experience in New Zealand, so the first role is an important hurdle. Part-time jobs or internships can build experience and demonstrate the ‘soft skills’ employers want (e.g. energy, flexible attitude, interpersonal skills).
Nau Mai NZ’s section on Working provides critical information for students to understand their work rights and restrictions, as well as advice and resources to boost their employability.
Employer perceptions and stereotypes about international students also need shifting to recognise students’ skills and value to workplaces. Take a look at this Working with International Students Guide from Massey University and the Central Economic Development Agency for ideas and resources to encourage employers to connect with your students.
Planning in secondary school for future study
Many international secondary students are not aware of their options to potentially continue their studies in Aotearoa, New Zealand or aware of the NCEA requirements that will need to be undertaken during their studies to maximise those options. This guide is designed for school staff to support international students in secondary schools to understand and plan for the pathways available to them. It was crafted for the Canterbury region, but contains useful strategies and tips for school staff nationwide.
5. Next steps: Further study, work, and transitions
While much effort and resources rightfully go towards international students’ transitions into your institution, their transitions beyond their time at your institution are just as important for their success. Your institution’s ability to support student’s navigation of those pathways contributes to a successful and fulfilling completion of their programme.
Returning home
Students will experience many emotions as they conclude their time in Aotearoa, New Zealand. It is important to provide opportunities for these students to:
- Take stock and celebrate their achievements
- Reflect on what they have learned
- Farewell important people in their lives
- Prepare for ‘reverse culture shock’ they may experience back home, and
- Maintain their connection to your institution as alumni.
Make sure students and staff plan carefully for the period of time when their visa will expire and their studies are concluding. The dates for a student visa and their activities in Aotearoa, New Zealand are intended to align, yet critical adjustments may need to be made. Does the timing of graduation activities or other celebrations align with their visa conditions? Will postgraduate students who need to undertake a thesis defence have adequate time for that process? Make sure staff at your institution are aware of students’ visa conditions, and whether or not they require or qualify for short visa extensions. Any application will need to be made in plenty of time for it to be processed by Immigration NZ.
Continuing studies
Little is known about international students’ transitions from New Zealand secondary schools to universities. This gap in planning and awareness is a significant missed opportunity for pathways and connections between institutions.
This Guide for School Staff in the Christchurch region addresses this gap, providing strategies that apply for schools across Aotearoa, New Zealand.
It is reasonable to assume that secondary international students in Aotearoa, New Zealand would thrive at New Zealand universities. However, the first study of its kind in New Zealand found these students were more likely to struggle than those who completed secondary school overseas (Ruegg, 2020). While the reasons for this are not clear, Ruegg also found that in-house foundation studies or previous tertiary experience helped international students succeed. Preparation for university and the learning skills it requires can ensure that international students’ transition into further study is not left to chance.
Seeking work
Many students are keen to work in New Zealand after their studies but may struggle to find opportunities if they haven’t had any New Zealand work experience. Of those students who do work in New Zealand after graduating, 81% had been in paid employment during their final year.
Some innovative programmes are seeking bridge this gap so that New Zealand doesn’t lose the expertise and intercultural savvy that international graduates possess:
- Work Connect offers a free 4-6 week employability programme for international graduate students (Level 7 and above)
- Region-specific programmes like Employer Connect in Wellington host facilitated events for international students and employers to interact and network
- Some institutions enable recent alumni to share their professional learnings through social events such as Lunch with alumni.
Creating intentional connections is especially important in light of recent regulation changes to international students’ post-study work rights.
Be sure to stay up-to-date on the most recent regulations and settings through Immigration NZ’s Assist students resource.
6. Summary
This topic outlined the transition process and framework that supports international students to succeed at your institution. A staged process embedded within core study activities enables international students to develop their awareness of expectations and support systems while growing their connections to host staff and peers.
It reviewed strategies for encouraging belonging and connection in classrooms – the key ingredient to success for all students from diverse backgrounds. The study timelines for international students can vary widely, from a term at secondary school to pathways programmes or postgraduate degrees, and increasingly with a mix of remote and onshore learning. With appropriate tailored advice, students will be able to make choices about NCEA levels, majors, or work opportunities that enable their time at your institution to have meaningful and ongoing impact.
References
Bethel, A., Ward, C., & Fetvadjiev, V. H. (2020). Cross-Cultural Transition and Psychological Adaptation of International Students: The Mediating Role of Host National Connectedness. Open access: https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.539950
Chou-Lee, M. (2020). Through the lens of acculturation: International students separated by design. https://doi.org/10.1386/tjtm_00019_1
Commons, K., Mabin, V., & Xiaodan, G. (2011). Internationalisation at home: Building cross-cultural understanding among local and international students through enhanced teaching and learning practices in the Faculty of Commerce, Victoria University of Wellington. Retrieved from https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/learning-teaching/support/approach/teaching-international-students/documents/ISANA_Commons_Mabin_Gao1.pdf
Education New Zealand (ENZ). (2019). Employer perceptions of hiring international graduates. Retrieved from: https://intellilab.enz.govt.nz/document/583-tra-enz-employer-value-book-pdf
Goldsmith, R., & Hunter, K. (2021). Inclusive whole of institution language support: The embedding academic language framework at UTS. Open access: https://unistars.org/papers/STARS2021/11A.pdf
Irish Council for International Students (ICOS). (2015). Diverse voices: Listening to international students. Retrieved from: https://www.internationalstudents.ie/training-and-events/icos-training-services/diverse-voices
Kift, S. (2015). A decade of transition pedagogy: A quantum leap in conceptualising the first year experience. HERDSA Review of Higher Education, 2, 51–86. Open access: https://www.herdsa.org.au/herdsa-review-higher-education-vol-2/51-86
Kift, S., Nelson, K. J., & Clarke, J. A. (2010). Transition pedagogy: A third generation approach to FYE: A case study of policy and practice for the higher education sector. The International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, 1(1), 1–20. Open access: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45643862_Transition_pedagogy_A_third_generation_approach_to_FYE_-_A_case_study_of_policy_and_practice_for_the_higher_education_sector
Mann, C. (2020). Advising by design: Co-creating advising services with students for their success. Frontiers in Education. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00099
Peelo, M. & Luxon, T. (2007). Designing embedded courses to support international students' cultural and academic adjustment in the UK. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 31(1), 65–76. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098770601167930
Ruegg, et al. (2020). Effects of pathways into university on the academic success of international undergraduate students. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1804336
University of Auckland (2018). Navigating Chinese students’ culture shock. Retrieved from https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2018/11/28/navigating-chinese-students-culture-shock.html
Universities New Zealand. (2021) What happens to international students who remain in New Zealand after getting a degree? Retrieved from https://www.universitiesnz.ac.nz/latest-news-and-publications/what-happens-international-students-who-remain-new-zealand-after
