Understanding social learning relations of international students in a large classroom using social network analysis

Abstract

A common assumption in higher education is that international students find it difficult to develop learning and friendship relations with host students. When students are placed in a student-centred environment, international students from different cultural backgrounds are "forced" to work together with other students, which allows students to learn from different perspectives. However, large lecture rooms may provide fewer opportunities for students to work together in small groups. The purpose of this article is to understand how 191 international students from 34 cultural backgrounds and 16 host students build learning and friendship relations in a large classroom of 207 students. We have used an innovative mixed-method design of Social Network Analysis in a pre-and post-test manner combined with two sets of focus groups.Using multiple regression quadratic assignment procedures, the results indicate that learning ties after 11 weeks were significantly predicted by the friendship and learning ties established at the beginning of the module, (sub)specialisation, and whether students were Chinese or not. Contrary to previous findings, team divisions played only a marginal role in building (new) learning relations. A substantial segregation between Confucian Asian, European international and UK students was present. Follow-up qualitative data highlighted that international students made a conscious effort to build friendship and learning relations primarily outside the formal team, which for some were along co-national lines, while others were pro-actively looking for new perspectives from multi-national students. These results indicate that the instructional design might have a strong influence on how international and host students work and learn together. We believe that this study is the first to provide an in-depth and unique understanding of how international students from different cultural backgrounds build friendship and learning-relationships with other students in-and outside their classroom over time in a large classroom of 200+ students.

The role of cultural dimensions of international and Dutch students on academic and social integration and academic performance in the Netherlands

“…However, by distributing the validated questionnaires in class on paper in eight out of nine universities, we were able to compare academic and social integration in a large sample of first-year Bachelor and Master students, which strengthens our findings in comparison to studies using a single-institute analysis or a comparison among various disciplines of study (Mannan, 2007;Severiens & Wolff, 2008). Alternative methodological approaches, such as following actual international student interactions as done by Montgomery and McDowell (2009), conducting focus groups (Volet & Ang, 1998), or using social network analyses of friendship and learning relations amongst international and host student (Neri & Ville, 2008;Rienties, Heliot, et al, 2013) might provide additional insights how international and host students develop academic and social integration strategies.…”

“…Third, the Social life outside the academic environment has a strong influence on academic integration and academic performance (H13). Having a sufficient number of friends from the same culture as well as host-culture (Montgomery & McDowell, 2009;Neri & Ville, 2008;Rienties, Heliot, et al, 2013;Sherry et al, 2010), sharing accommodation with other students (Neri & Ville, 2008;Ward et al, 1998), being member of a study association, student fraternity or joining a sports club can influence social integration and finally increase academic performance (Ozga & Sukhnandan, 1998;Russell et al, 2010;Severiens & Wolff, 2008). This allows students to establish a social life that is closely attached to the university setting (Tinto, 1998).…”

“…For example, to what extent do abilities in English language (Sherry et al, 2010), development of co-national and mixednational friendships (Rienties, Heliot, et al, 2013), the relative size of the group of co-national students (Kim, 2001;Zhou et al, 2011), the design of the curriculum (Jippes & Majoor, 2008), influence how international students build learning relations with other students and academic staff that helps or hinders them to adapt and adjust their learning style and academic adjustment to the host institute. Research by Ward et al (1998) and our own research (Rienties, Heliot, et al, 2013;Rienties, Hernandez Nanclares, Jindal-Snape, & Alcott, 2013) seems to indicate that the complexities or how (groups of) international students develop strategies to adjust over time are subtle, thereby requiring longitudinal and dynamic analyses.…”

Enhancing (in)formal learning ties in interdisciplinary management courses: a quasi-experimental social network study

“…At the same time, there is increased recognition that the social networks students are embedded in have a substantial impact on their learning processes and academic performance (Baker and Lattuca 2010, Curşeu and Pluut 2011, Baldwin, Bedell, and Johnson 1997, Gasevic, Zouaq, and Janzen 2013, Rienties, Heliot, and Jindal-Snape 2013. A social network consists of a set of nodes (i.e.…”

Using social network analysis to predict online contributions

“…This survey included a list of all students registered in the module and took place in week four. The survey indicated 'I am friends with…' and participants were asked to mark those with whom they were friends, as demonstrated in previous research [17,18]. Altogether, we collected surveys from 94 students, which was a response rate of 79.6%.…”