Addressing international students on Australian and Chinese university webpages: A comparative study

Zhang, Zuocheng; Tan, Sabine; Wignell, Peter; O’Halloran, Kay

doi:10.1016/j.dcm.2020.100403

Cited by 17 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The data for this study comes from a wider corpus of studies on university webpages for international students (e.g. Zhang and Tu, 2019; Zhang et al, 2020). In this study we focus on the ‘ Why Choose ’ webpages of one British university, the University of Liverpool 1 (UOL), and two Australian universities, Curtin University 2 (Curtin) and the University of New England 3 (UNE).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing higher education and neoliberal marketing discourses on Why Choose webpages for international students on Australian and British university websites

Zhang

Tan

O’Halloran

2022

Discourse & Communication

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International education is impacted by multiple discourses, in particular the discourse of university as an educational institution responsible for producing and curating knowledge for the public good, pursuing truth and transforming student life, and the neoliberal marketing discourse which portrays the university as a business organization providing a service for international students as customers/consumers. Following a multimodal discourse analytic perspective, this study examines ‘ Why Choose’ webpages of one British and two Australian universities to identify how the apparently conflicting higher education and neoliberal marketing discourses are managed in the interdiscursive space using language, images and videos. The results reveal that ‘ Why Choose’ webpages are hybrid texts where the discourse of higher education is upheld in relation to the neoliberal marketing discourse through multimodal strategies of accentuation, infusion and progression. The study argues for the necessity of undertaking a multimodal discourse approach to understand how various positions are negotiated interdiscursively in online media.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing higher education and neoliberal marketing discourses on Why Choose webpages for international students on Australian and British university websites

Zhang

Tan

O’Halloran

2022

Discourse & Communication

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“…Students’ brochures and prospectuses are distributed to promulgate the universities, and newspaper advertisements are posted to attract high-profile faculty members to join the institutional enterprise ( Fairclough, 1993 ; Xiong, 2012 ). In this Internet age, social media and institutional official websites are also useful platforms for self-promotional purposes ( Feng, 2019 ; Zhang and Tu, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Study Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discursive Marketisation Through Positive Evaluation: A Diachronic Analysis of About Us Texts of Top-Tier Chinese Universities Over the Past Two Decades

Xie

Lei

2021

Front. Psychol.

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This study explored the marketisation process of top-tier Chinese universities by scrutinising their self-promotional strategies over the past two decades. Drawing on Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework, we identified all attitudinal markers in the About Us texts posted by 35 top-tier Chinese universities on their official websites at two time-points: the turn of the century and the year of 2021. The 35 universities were drawn from China’s “Double First Class” Initiative that prioritises the development of a select group of elite universities in China. Close textual analyses focussing on the attitudinal markers with reference to their contexts were conducted to identify the themes evaluated in the About Us texts; Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were run to quantitatively compare the relative frequencies of the attitudinal markers between the two phases, which was then supplemented by diachronic qualitative comparisons on the fine-grained linguistic features surrounding the markers. The study identified seven major themes positively appraised by the universities at both time-points. It also revealed diachronic differences in the use of attitudinal markers, reflecting a mediated change of promotional strategies over the past 20 years or so in the Chinese higher education context. These findings point to the influence of market, government, and tradition on Chinese top-tier universities’ promoting strategies and the role of social cognition in shaping student choice. They also suggest the emergence of a higher education system with Chinese characteristics that features a reconciliation of market and government forces.

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“…В 2020 г. ожидаемо увеличилось число публикаций, посвященных ускоряющейся цифровизации, переходу образовательных процессов в дистанционный режим во время карантинных ограничений. Исследованию подвергались вопросы трансформации смысла обучения в цифровую эпоху (H. Hardika и соавторы [43]), взаимодействия студентов разных стран через веб-страницы (Z. Zuocheng, W. Tu) [44], экстренного перехода к онлайн-обучению и его последствий под воздействием COVID-19 (P. Novikov [45]). Однако в большинстве своем эти работы носят узкопрофильный характер и связаны в основном с различными образовательными аспектами и технологиями и редко выходят на уровень взаимодействия образовательных общ-ностей и социума.…”

Section: обзор литературыunclassified

Dynamics of educational activity of students under the influence of digitalisation

2021

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Introduction. The relevance of the study is due to the aggravation of the complex of student problems caused by the sharp acceleration of digitalisation and the destruction of the established complex of social interactions under the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, both within the student community, and between the student body and other educational communities. The fixation of qualitative changes in educational activity in non-standard conditions, along with the development of a theoretical basis for the digital educational community of students, is necessary for making qualified managerial decisions.The aim of the present research was to identify the factors and dynamics of students as a digital educational community in the context of self-isolation and online learning.Methodology and research methods. This study is based on the use of specific approaches to industry-specific sociological knowledge (youth and education): community, system, structural-functional, institutional, temporal, thesaurus, network, panoramic (pedagogical science). The current research employs the results of a mass survey conducted among students (N = 1825, 19 universities of the Sverdlovsk region) according to the authors’ method. A mixed survey was carried out through a representative quota-target sample using traditional and electronic forms, implemented on the CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interview) platform. Data processing was implemented using the VORTEX application package. Data verification was carried out using materials from the secondary data analysis of the VII stage of the regional student survey in 2016.Results. In the course of the study, the general forming characteristics of traditional, virtual and digital educational communities of students were clarified. The transition from traditional to digital community has been fixed. The key terms of the educational community of students in the digital age were defined. The indicators of educational activity were identified and investigated: effect of self-isolation regime on educational activity, features of online education, dynamics of the educational time budget, self-assessment of knowledge gained online, etc. The factors that determine educational activity were examined: motivation, sources of information, material and technical support, and organisational and technological consulting. On the basis of empirical materials, qualitative changes in the importance of digital information and digital material and technological support for successful studying were revealed. Insufficient digital competence of students is shown. Positive and negative aspects of online education were revealed, including under the influence of physical and psychological changes associated with the regime of complete self-isolation. The main reason for the desire of students to continue their education in a traditional or mixed form is substantiated – a decrease in the quality of education due to the exacerbation of the contradiction between the classical university and “everyday digital” educational culture.Scientific novelty lies in the development of the concept of the digital educational community of students, concretisation of its general-forming characteristics, clarification of the terminological range of the digital community and the educational activity of students; obtaining and systematising new empirical information about the state of students in the Sverdlovsk region as a major scientific and educational region of the country.Practical significance. The materials obtained provide grounds for clarifying the process and results of digitalisation of the educational space, assessing the state of the student community in extraordinary conditions of self-isolation and learning experience in a full online learning mode. Developed tools can be applied for further monitoring student learning. The obtained quantitative data can be used for the advancement of teaching and learning in digital and mixed formats, as well as for scientific substantiation of management decisions.

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Addressing international students on Australian and Chinese university webpages: A comparative study

Cited by 17 publications

References 24 publications

Managing higher education and neoliberal marketing discourses on Why Choose webpages for international students on Australian and British university websites

Managing higher education and neoliberal marketing discourses on Why Choose webpages for international students on Australian and British university websites

Discursive Marketisation Through Positive Evaluation: A Diachronic Analysis of About Us Texts of Top-Tier Chinese Universities Over the Past Two Decades

Dynamics of educational activity of students under the influence of digitalisation

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