Quick Chat: The New, Diverse International Student Body

Many post-secondary institutions across Canada have ramped up their efforts to attract international students, both undergraduate and graduate, to come to their campuses for their education.  And many have taken up that invitation, with the numbers of international students on the rise. 

Here at the University of Calgary, for example, almost 8% of undergrads are now international, and 26.5% of graduate students have that background—putting the two groups together, more than 11% of the entire student body on campus is now considered international.

For many of these students, one of the first stops they make is the Werklund School of Education’s International Foundations Program (IFP).  IFP offers a range of programs to help international students—or any student who struggles with the English language capabilities--be successful in university settings.

For Subrata Bhowmik and Marica Kim, two of IFP’s instructors who work closely with the students, a new challenge has cropped up: how to deal with the growing diversity of the student body.  Differences in age, education level, cultural background, and the sheer range of locations from which IFP students come to Calgary have had an effect on the classroom dynamic. 
Bhowmik and Kim have developed a check list of sorts they believe will help these increasingly diverse leaners succeed.

In this Quick Chat, they outline how the strategies they’ve discovered are helping to make engage, include and successfully instruct all students coming into IFP programs.

Audio:

• Quick Chat (12:14)