Supporting International Students: What Professors Should Know

09/08/20

The Office of International Programs recently hosted an interactive workshop titled “Are You Ready for the Fall Semester?: The Real Guide for International Students.” A panel of international students guided everyone in a reflective discussion of international students’ experiences of remote learning during the Spring and Summer semesters. The closing question for this discussion was: “As an international student, what do you want your professors to know and keep in mind as they are getting ready to teach online?”  Among their suggestions were the following:

•  Please remember that some students are many time zones away from you. I may be tired and have trouble being lively and chatty; please be patient with me.
• Make sure your international students know how to change the time zone setting in Sakai so that they are getting your communications in their own time zone and don’t miss critical deadlines.
• Consider flexibility around timed exams, which can present particular challenge across time zones.
• In the Spring, we often experienced power and Internet outages. Let your international students know what you’d like them to do if that happens and they cannot join the class. Provide large chunks of material online if possible and remind them to download everything when they have access so that they can continue to work on class materials even when the Internet is down.
• Please understand that our orders of hard-copy course materials may take significant time to be delivered.
• It can take a while to set the Duo Authentication process. Please understand that we might use other (non-IC) e-mails while we are working out the issues.
• For many of us it is not culturally appropriate to have our faces on the screen. Please consider letting us have the choice whether or not to have the Zoom camera on.
• Please record and share the main lectures, so that we can watch them later (if we cannot connect when the class is happening) or so we can re-watch if we need to go through the material multiple times. Also make sure that we can turn on the subtitles (don’t disable them); sometimes that’s helpful for those of us who are not native English speakers.
• Regarding recording of class conversations, many of us have to be extra careful because of our government’s surveillance. We are much more likely to engage and share in the discussion if we do not have to fear that what we say may come back to harm us. Please offer the option to use an alias or disable the camera during sensitive conversations.
• Consider connectivity options. Do not officially encourage students to use VPN in China.
• Keep in mind the website limitations students may face in countries for which certain websites are unavailable.

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