4.3. The Reasons for International Students’ Experiences of Taking the Language and Media
4.3.2. Perceived Artificial Orientation and Inefficiency of the International Relations Office
Besides the mentioned issue of insufficient knowledge before their Honours programme, some of the participants (such as Participant 6) explained that the inefficiency of the international relations office contributed to their inability to productively acclimatise with their new setting.
This tallies with Gullekson and Vancouver’s (2010) statement that cultural differences and adaptation to the new culture and environment are capable of making international students perform well in their studies as well as settle in faster. Participant 6 responded in the affirmative when they were asked if they did not deem it necessary to visit the international relations office for some sort of help or consolation, after which some negative emotions were expressed by these students:
PARTICIPANT 6: International office is just there to collect international fees and medical health insurance fees ... they should put someone who understands international students there…
This indicates that some of the participants may not have had the much-needed assistance from the international relations office when they needed help. This is because certain tasks like overseeing international students and orientating them to the requirements of their new environment could have expectedly been assigned to the international relations office; but according to the participants, they found no solace from the office.
Inadequate interactions with the international relations office could have probably made it difficult for the international students’ experiences or views to be heard or even worked on.
These kinds of unheard experiences may thus make it difficult for ‘producers’ to make provision of appropriate amenities (Schmitt, 2003) because people’s needs and issues are not being communicated as they want, and there are no listening ears to solve their issues. This also may have contributed to the participants’ (like Participant 2) claims that they were “in a foreign land where you don’t feel so welcome.”
Nonetheless, getting international students integrated into their host institution helps to overcome the feeling of being the visitor (Cathcart et al., 2006). This is likely to impact largely on their experiences of the education attained. This supports Wang’s (2009) assertion that getting
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involved with the operations and affairs of international students is vital in knowing what is required of international students in their host institutions. As international students, some of the participants (like Participant 2) felt thrown into a strange space as a result of what one of them termed an ‘artificial’ orientation which did not help them to acclimatise especially in terms of technology use.
PARTICIPANT 2: Someone flies from Nigeria, arrives here, starts the Honours programme, you know, after that orientation, which is so artificial because a lot of people are lumped together, questions are answered as quickly as possible, there isn’t… people need time to acclimatise, to get used to the way things are done. Some people in Nigeria are not used to using the computer for everything, typing things. Every assignment they have to type. They come ... and you expect them to jump in and start doing that and you expect them to submit their first work ... power point... and these are things that maybe the person is not used to, so it should be better if there are people who are assigned to international students to specifically help them to start. I mean, because at the end of the day, it’s all about helping this person to understand what he or she has come to do and do it very well.
This indicates how overtly needy (especially academically) international students can be as a result of their previous lack of exposure to certain kinds of technology and how they are expected to get acclimatised as soon as they step into their new environment. This finding also portrays international students as being disadvantaged and capable of frustrations if not initiated well into the host university. The participants articulated that they expected an orientation which would take into consideration the issues of diversity, their home institutions, as well as what their host institution would have done. This, according to Christofi and Charles (2007), can be seen as an aspect of culture shock because of the participants’ feelings of uncertainty and foreignness to the new environment. This study’s finding also agrees with East’s (2001) assertion that international students have certain expectation of the kinds of services that they want to receive in their host institutions, and as Jayanti (1988) claims, when these expectations are not met, there are usually negative consequences, reactions, experiences or feelings. This thus implies that the learning community is not always a learning and innovation ground for diverse groups of people from different places. It is also evident in the participants’ responses to issues regarding facilities
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and learning, among others. One of the participants stated that many of them did not have competencies regarding typing facilities, PowerPoint, and oral presentations prior to their study abroad. All these added to their initial struggles and confusion when they first got to the university to start studying, and yet there was no adequately accommodating orientation being done.
PARTICIPANT 2: ... if you don’t understand methodologies and technologies involved and everything, I mean, that can make you to fail. So that now becomes strenuous because that person is trying to read all the notes given to him, that person is trying to do whatever. At the same time he is trying to understand how the computer works, he is trying to understand all he sees ... So that now creates a burden in the student which ... could be the genesis of his or her failure.
In this case, unfamiliarity with the teaching concepts used in the host university may have been a burden on some of these participants because they come from an entirely different place with overtly different concepts. The thoughts of not having enough initial guidance while trying to meet up with registration and assessment deadlines may have thus been problematic for these international students. On this note, Bartram (2008) recommends that adequate initiations into the host institution should be done in time and in such a way that international students’ diversity is identified and infused into the curriculum. Some of the participants (like Participant 5) however, noted that this discrepancy was later corrected by the intervention of the library staff during the library orientation programmes:
PARTICIPANT 5: As I said before, I had difficulty in learning because of teaching styles, language barrier and inability to interact with people. So I just struggled to understand the concepts. Thank God for the available resources like the library and LAN facilities ... maybe I would have dropped out like some of my colleagues then.
Based on this information, it is important to note the usefulness of an international relations office in getting international students settled into their host university in time and before they delve into their studies. This may enable a much easier blending in of these students.
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