The International Students Learning Investigation (ISLI) project

Presenters:

Hugh Busher, Gareth Lewis, Chris Comber, Paula Cummings

Summary: 

Becoming a student in an unfamiliar university often involves people changing their approaches to learning and sometimes their discipline/major from their first degree. All students face issues around accommodation, financial and work routines to manage alongside their learning and social aspects of life but need to retain and develop positive self identities as successful learners in order to achieve successful academic outcomes. However, International Postgraduate Student Taught (IPGT) students have to work with people with different cultural perceptions from their own, in unfamiliar social / academic contexts, on courses with unfamiliar structures, rubrics, and cultures about learning.

This project focused on how students construct and enact their understandings of what it means to be a successful IPGT student and how tutors and administrators can learn from and facilitate that.

It investigated:

• the experiences of some IPGT students studying on taught Masters postgraduate courses in the University of Leicester,
• how their learning experiences are affected by their histories, cultures and identities and the working and social environments in which they find themselves,
• how their perspectives can inform the development of pedagogical and administrative practice on IPGT courses.