Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

International Students and Social Networks

I recently presented a poster presentation at the HEA conference in Manchester on an abridged version of my MA dissertation. This had grown out of looking at my own students and wondering what on earth goes on when they arrive in the UK.

International students are an interesting group when looking at how humans develop social networks. They arrive in a new country, often without having a mastery of the local language, knowing noone and they are distanced from their established forms of social support. Since social support is important in the academic and emotional wellbeing of students, surely it would be interesting to see how students develop networks when they arrive in the UK.

So I surveyed some of my own students .. I asked them who they went to for different types of support, and which medium they used. The results showed (my poster is attached below in A1 size) that:

  • The students in the sample were an isolated group - with on average only 9.03 connections
  • Cross cultural connections were rare - students tended to establish connections with people from their own culture
  • Students tended to maintain relationships from home rather than develop new connections in-country.

Click here to download:
HEAposter.ppt (534 KB)
(download)
This was only a small survey, but I hope to scale it up so I can get some more definitive hyptheses. I think it's important to look at the way students develop networks, since this can inform how we plan student support. Although there are huge differences in the experiences of indiviual students, it is still good to look for patterns.