Melbourne Graduate School of Education Centre for the Study of Higher Education

Internationalising the student experience in Australian tertiary education:
Developing criteria and indicators

Sophie Arkoudis, Chi Baik, Simon Marginson and Elizabeth Cassidy
Prepared for Australian Education International
Date: 2012

Australian higher education is grappling with the issue of enhancing interaction between domestic and international students to enhance the student experience and the teaching/learning opportunities available through such interaction. While universities have attempted to address this issue in a number of ways, survey results appear to indicate that many international students anticipate levels of interaction with Australian domestic students that are not realised and other research suggests that both groups often remain largely segmented inside and outside classrooms. Similar issues, though less well documented, have arisen in VET.

To date, efforts to improve the interaction between international and domestic students have been mostly isolated from teaching and learning and mostly focused on activities outside the classroom. A key premise of this project is that positive aspects of student experience and teaching/learning opportunities that are available in an international education context offer a combined benefit to both domestic and international students.