Teaching Culturally and Linguistically-Diverse International Students: Connections Between Promising Teaching Practices and Student Satisfaction

Introduction And Background

Partially due to the increasing enrolment of international students, colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada are becoming more culturally and linguistically diverse. According to the Canadian Bureau of International Education (CBIE) and the Institute of International Education (IIE), more than 1.6 million international students chose to study at Canadian and American post-secondary educational institutions in 2020 (CBIE, 2021; IIE, 2021).

Despite this trend, international students may face many problems when they arrive in their new host city. Culture shock, socialization, language barriers, changes in eating practices, and accommodations are all challenges they will need to confront. From the academic perspective, they will not only deal with new teaching methods and a new language used by their instructors, but they will also have to alter their learning strategies and preferences to a new learning environment (Lin & Yi, 1997; Rao, 2017; Smith et al., 2019). Unfortunately, though, few instructors have received training for teaching international students (Paige & Goode, 2009; Tran, 2020), which results in a less than optimal environment for intercultural learning.

Since 2020 and the outbreak of COVID-19, most students have experienced a change in the way instruction is delivered to them. It is estimated that approximately 90% of learning was online during the COVID-19 timespan (Radcliff et al., 2020). In fact, a rise has been seen in the popularity of North American online education in recent years, even before the pandemic. It seems that online learning is increasingly being favoured by a growing range of students of various ages and diverse backgrounds, including international students (Best Colleges, 2019). However, several gaps have been found in online teaching, including challenges faced by first-time online students, the impact of various course-loads, and learning effectiveness for additional-language students.

As a result, to achieve higher-student satisfaction and perceptions of learning, instructors must analyze their roles, and implement new teaching strategies to facilitate international students’ learning experiences. With the aim of enhancing their academic performances, both offline and online, it is imperative for educators to apply more promising teaching practices that include measurable results, and report successful outcomes for students with diverse language and cultural backgrounds. This chapter provides insights from three distinct studies regarding the promising teaching practices. The first research study identified teaching practices that have high levels of student satisfaction and student perceptions of learning. A second study was conducted to explore the different teaching and learning preferences of international students, with emphasis on the differences between STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and non-STEM students’ preferences. A third study was carried out to evaluate international online students’ degrees of satisfaction regarding their instructors’ teaching strategies and individual instructor characteristics. The research participants were unique to each study.

This chapter will explore three research questions:

• 1.

  What promising teaching practices have high levels of international student satisfaction and perceptions of learning?

• 2.

  What are the perceptional differences between international students enrolled in STEM and non-STEM academic programs, regarding the promising teaching practices for teaching international students?

• 3.

  How satisfied are international students with the online-teaching strategies they experienced, and what are their perceptions of learning with these strategies?