Experience of international students during online learning
Online learning experience can vary from one student to another, while some may like the leisure of taking classes without commuting time, others argue against it as the aspect of socializing dampens. In particular, international students who take remote classes from their own country, the experience can be isolating and frustrating. This can be attributed to not being able to meet and discuss with their peers in person, making their classes less engaging and can be overall more difficult. As such, this testimonial seeks to discuss, analyze and bring awareness to the two factors that negatively affect an international student remote learning experience, asynchronous learning and lack of interactions with domestic students.
When students go abroad to study, they are interested in learning about the host country's culture. This knowledge equips them with the understanding about the different jargons and ways of socializing that are unique to where they study. In a research conducted by Gulnara Sadykova on how online learning affects international students, she reported that international students should form a close relationship with peers from the U.S to “compensate for the lack of culture-specific knowledge and skills” (Sadykova, 42). This signifies that forming a connection with a domestic student can be very beneficial because international students can better learn how to express their thoughts. However, when students study remotely from their country, making friends through online classes can be stressful due to the awkwardness of remote interactions. Students cannot simply converse and get feedback from their peer’s body language as easily as they could have if they would have met in person. As such, this lack of domestic interactions due to talking through screens subsequently make an international student integration to the host country’s educational system more stressful.
Moreover, since students are distributed around the world, there would be a lot of timezones to take into consideration when devising instructions. In the majority of cases, instructors would opt for asynchronous instruction to allow students to watch lectures on their own time. However, the delayed communication between peers can often can be puzzling because they are “unable to convert the nuances of human interaction and, therefore, student felt it was difficult for them to figure out the intention of other students during group work due to their differences in working style and culture” (Liu et al, 183). This evidence portrayed that remote learning can create this hurdle of miscommunications between students, leading the group works and discussion sections to be more confusing. Without understanding the culture and intentions of their peers, students often have to make assumptions relevant to their comprehension of the task. More often than not, this can create friction between teammates if everyone on the team does not follow a coherent plan. Therefore, the author of the research, Xiaojing Liu, recommends that while lectures can stay remote, groups should plan to have live interactions to ensure everyone on the team understood their task. Consequently, this factor of asynchronous learning does have its disadvantages in dampening the nuances of human interaction that leads to a negative online learning experience for international students.
Through exploring the two factors that can discourage international students from choosing to have their education from the comfort of their home, instructors should be trained to ensure that the classes are inclusive to international students and take into consideration their difficu
lties studying a foreign language. Furthermore, while only asynchronous learning and lack of interactions with domestic peers are the two factors that are discussed in the article, it is worth to note that there are still many more factors that could pose a disadvantage for international students when studying remotely.
When students go abroad to study, they are interested in learning about the host country's culture. This knowledge equips them with the understanding about the different jargons and ways of socializing that are unique to where they study. In a research conducted by Gulnara Sadykova on how online learning affects international students, she reported that international students should form a close relationship with peers from the U.S to “compensate for the lack of culture-specific knowledge and skills” (Sadykova, 42). This signifies that forming a connection with a domestic student can be very beneficial because international students can better learn how to express their thoughts. However, when students study remotely from their country, making friends through online classes can be stressful due to the awkwardness of remote interactions. Students cannot simply converse and get feedback from their peer’s body language as easily as they could have if they would have met in person. As such, this lack of domestic interactions due to talking through screens subsequently make an international student integration to the host country’s educational system more stressful.
Moreover, since students are distributed around the world, there would be a lot of timezones to take into consideration when devising instructions. In the majority of cases, instructors would opt for asynchronous instruction to allow students to watch lectures on their own time. However, the delayed communication between peers can often can be puzzling because they are “unable to convert the nuances of human interaction and, therefore, student felt it was difficult for them to figure out the intention of other students during group work due to their differences in working style and culture” (Liu et al, 183). This evidence portrayed that remote learning can create this hurdle of miscommunications between students, leading the group works and discussion sections to be more confusing. Without understanding the culture and intentions of their peers, students often have to make assumptions relevant to their comprehension of the task. More often than not, this can create friction between teammates if everyone on the team does not follow a coherent plan. Therefore, the author of the research, Xiaojing Liu, recommends that while lectures can stay remote, groups should plan to have live interactions to ensure everyone on the team understood their task. Consequently, this factor of asynchronous learning does have its disadvantages in dampening the nuances of human interaction that leads to a negative online learning experience for international students.
Through exploring the two factors that can discourage international students from choosing to have their education from the comfort of their home, instructors should be trained to ensure that the classes are inclusive to international students and take into consideration their difficu
lties studying a foreign language. Furthermore, while only asynchronous learning and lack of interactions with domestic peers are the two factors that are discussed in the article, it is worth to note that there are still many more factors that could pose a disadvantage for international students when studying remotely.
Work Citation
Sadykova, G. (2014). Mediating Knowledge through Peer-to-Peer Interaction in a Multicultural Online Learning Environment: A Case Study of International Students in the US. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 15(3), 24–49. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v15i3.1629
Liu, Xiaojing. Cultural Differences in Online Learning ... - JSTOR HOME. International Forum of Educational Technology & Society, https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/jeductechsoci.13.3.177.pdf.
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