Peer Learning in International Higher Education: the Experience of International Students

Peer Learning in International Higher Education: The Experience of International Students in TCD

Presented by:

Associate Professor Dr Aida Idris

Visiting Senior Research Fellow

Cultures, Academic Values and Education Research Centre (CAVE)

School of Education, Trinity College Dublin.

Department of Business Policy and Strategy

Faculty of Business and Accountancy, Universiti Malaya.

To the Cultural and Ethnic Minorities Committee

Trinity College Dublin.

Tuesday, 27 June 2017.

Research Background

• Starting from the assumption that the role of peers is critical in learning, our study aimed to investigate the topic of peer learning in the context of international higher education, focusing on the experience of international students in TCD.
• Three types of peer learning were investigated: peer tutoring, cooperative learning, and collaborative learning (Parr & Townsend, 2002)
• Analysis was based on quantitative measure and comparison of usage rate, current practices, outcomes, challenges, and coping strategies among European, North American and Asian students.
• Respondents were also encouraged to provide qualitative suggestions for improvement.

Key Findings

• Overall, international students in TCD enjoy their peer learning experience here. The experience has helped to expand their role and horizon as international students, contributed to their ability to adapt to the foreign environment, and improved their academic performance.
• In general there appear to beno major difficulties in peer learning, either in language, communication and social aspects or from the perspective of infrastructure and technology.
• However, there is an imbalance in the types of peer learning used, whereby peer tutoringis noticeably less utilisedthan cooperative and collaborative learning. This has adverse implications for students coming from hierarchicalsocieties.
• Certain groups of international students are more dependent than others on formal sources of input and assistance to create an inclusive environment which can improve their peer learning experience. Whereas North American students may have the skills to build the social relationships important for learning, Asians and Europeans need greater systematic inputs and interventions from the university.
• Without adequate intervention, Asian and European students struggle to participate in peer learning activities, which may have resulted in lower learning outcomes. In this regard, peer tutoring can offer a way forward since it is founded upon a more private and personalised teacher-learner relationship than cooperative and collaborative learning.
• Our findings support an earlier study by O’Reilly et al. (2013), which suggested that communication and socialisation issues, as well as incongruent learning objectives, between local and foreign students are some of the key challenges in Irish international higher education.
• Areas of improvement recommended by respondents:
• better structuring of programmes and courses
• teacher intervention and supervision
• more inclusive socio-cultural events
• properly-designed learning spaces
• greater engagement with international student representatives and their home agencies
• Particularly for students from Asia and other developing regions, home country participation is essential to fill in existing knowledge gaps among local students about socio-economic developments and opportunities in various parts of the world. This can help to reduce the likelihood of prejudice andfriction between international and local students (Keane, 2009), leading to greater readiness for diversity and inclusion.
• On a broader scale, active interactions between host universities and international students, as well as their home agencies, can make up a part of the CIE course proposed by O’Sullivan (2008).

Other personal observations

• Islamophobia in Europe has increased considerably(compared to 20-30 years ago)due to current political environment – negativeimplications for Muslim students and visitors

• Explicit and implicit incidents of prejudice

• Monoculturalism- a challenge for international collaborations?

• Barriers due to STYLE of communication, rather than language

• Early education is CRITICAL!

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