Starting university during the pandemic: First-year international students’ complex transitions under online and hybrid-learning conditions

Abstract

International education activities suddenly halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, severely disrupting student mobility and academic learning. Many educational institutions have delivered programs to students through digital devices globally rather than in situ. Such a shift presents a unique opportunity to assess the impact of online and hybrid education for international students. This qualitative study interviewed 30 international students who had arrived on campus and shared their first-year university transition experiences during the pandemic. The analysis shows that spatial and temporal circumstances created two scenarios and thus resulted in different first-year university experiences. Although all students were dissatisfied with online learning, studying at a distance in different time zones was particularly detrimental to international students’ mental and physical health. The (im)mobile environments led to mismatches in expectations, roles, activities, and realities, negatively affecting student learning and adjustment. This study highlights the complex international transition issues and offers implications for sustainable online and hybrid-learning practices in the educational system.

International Master’s Degree Students’ Experiences of Support at a Finnish University

“…Our study was theoretically informed by Schlossberg et al's (1995) African American (e.g., Montgomery, 2017;Museus, 2014), and mainly used with IMDS in Englishspeaking countries (Belle at al., 2022;Montgomery, 2017;Wang, 2023). We believe our study demonstrates that these models may also be applied to studies on international student populations in non-English speaking contexts.…”

“…These models complement each other and together provide a comprehensive exploration of resources and types of support from individual and institutional perspectives. These models have been previously used in research on international students (e.g., Ballo et al, 2019;Belle et al, 2022;Montgomery, 2017;Wang, 2023), and are particular to the characteristics of an international student population, such as the IMDS in this study.…”

“…Research on experiences of support to IMDS is limited and mainly focused only on the understanding of their needs and challenges (Bartram, 2009;Tran et al, 2022). Moreover, most studies on support for IMDS are conducted within native English-speaking contexts (e.g., Bartram, 2009;Chai et al, 2020;Wang, 2023). Using a phenomenographic approach, this study explores how IMDS' experience support at a Finnish university.…”

International and domestic university students’ mental health over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany: Comparison between 2020, 2021, and 2022

“…A qualitative study conducted in China indicated hopelessness, uncertainty, worry, lack of interest and focus, lack of support, financial difficulties, social pressure, sleep disorders, and increased smoking among international students [28]. Therefore, visa and financial issues, language skills, acculturation problems, poor social support systems, cultural and social adjustment, academic adaptation, homesickness, and lack of knowledge about the healthcare system are some examples of the challenges faced by international students in particular [17,[43][44][45][46].…”