A presentation from the TIS International Conference - Internationalisation of Pedagogy and Curriculum in Higher Education: Exploring New Frontiers June 2011.
Many Student Unions in the UK organise skills development events for undergraduate and postgraduate students. SORTED is a popular programme offered by the Student Union of the University of Bath where many sessions are delivered by student trainers.
At postgraduate level student trainers are increasingly given opportunities to teach from demonstrating in laboratories to lecturing. Student trainers are therefore an important resource in UK universities to support the learning of students. However the training courses/resources available to develop student trainers do not particularly discuss skills to teach internationally diverse student groups and student trainers may not therefore be fully trained to support the inclusion of international students. To address this a pilot project* was conducted at Bath to create a sustainable training course and resources for student trainers with the core value of supporting the learning and participation of international students. The project was embedded into the existing SORTED student trainer development programme. Training and mentoring included plenty of opportunities for all to experiment reflect and challenge a variety of approaches to engage international students. Sessions co-run by the student trainers were filmed and analysed feedback was collected and the process was evaluated to explore whether the teaching practice of the student trainers reflected the expressed core value of the project. In addition a freely available e-guide was co-created with resources produced with the student trainers that presents issues experienced in internationally diverse teaching contexts and how these can be addressed constructively. The results showed that student trainers enabled international students to engage and participate and that they mixed well with UK students to share experiences abilities and knowledge. Training student trainers to value and respond to the needs of international students can contribute to the improvement of the overall experience of international students.
*with funding from The Prime Minister's Initiative for International Education
