Programme

Within the context of the new globalized landscape of higher education, graduates compete internationally in economies with evolving and emerging skills and competencies. This shifting paradigm creates a concurrent demand for a toolkit of ‘soft’ employability skills or ‘global competencies’, that will allow graduates to navigate the realities of an increasingly interconnected world and global workforce. However, the evidence shows that graduates do not always demonstrate to employers the critical skills that allow them to adapt and function in diverse settings to compete in the global labour market.

In light of the foregoing, the essential question for the global academic community is: « Are we preparing graduates with the essential skills to obtain meaningful employment? »

This session focuses on findings from a major research project, I am Global, developed in 2018 by Centennial College in partnership with Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan), funded by NSERC. This research explored how to improve students’ self-presentation of global competencies when seeking employment. The project builds on Centennial College’s foundation of leadership in internationalization of higher education and a commitment to prioritize new essential and emerging employability skills necessary to successfully compete in an evolving globalized economy, and more broadly, to create future generations of leaders, innovators, and changemakers.

In this session, students, staff, and faculty will be able to engage in active dialogue and increase their understanding of how to best enhance existing curricular and co-curricular offerings in higher education that build capacity for students to further leverage global citizenship and equity learning, which can positively impact employment outcomes for graduates across diverse sectors. This session will also share with participants the gaps in research regarding the impact of global education outcomes on graduates as they job search.

A survey conducted by Diku – Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education in 2016 showed that Norwegian teacher education traditionally has lower scores on international cooperation and student exchange. This is a pattern that is recognized globally.
There are several good professional reasons why as many teacher students as possible should study or do practice abroad. Being exposed to new issues and new teaching practices is very valuable, and today’s teachers are increasingly going into a multicultural classroom and their task is to prepare their students for an ever-closer interwoven world.
In this session, Diku will introduce the « The Norwegian Partnership Programme for International Teacher Education » (NOTED) which was established in 2017, with the overall objective to improve the quality of Norwegian teacher education and schools in Norway, through international collaboration.

In 2019, Nord University and Queens University Kingston were allocated funding for the project « The Canada-Norway Pedagogy Partnership for Innovation and Inclusion in Education (CANOPY) » through the NOTED program. With the funding, the institutions aim at connecting educational research, classroom experience, student mobility, and institutional management, and through this, develop global competencies in pedagogy.

A significant number of Canadian universities and colleges offer programs taught in French. However, there is a wide disparity between French and English-speaking researchers and students in terms of the development opportunities for their academic and research activities, particularly in predominantly English-speaking settings. International education professionals can play a major role in supporting their French-speaking research and student communities, but they need to be sensitive to this situation and aware of the role they can play in it. Acfas and its national and international partners, including the Agence universitaire de la francophonie (AUF), have funded a large-scale study across the provinces to identify specific issues faced by French-speaking researchers and students in Canada, focusing on those living outside the province of Quebec. The objective of this study is to produce a common roadmap to adequately and effectively support evidence-based actions. Thus, the first part of the presentation proposes to report the preliminary results of this study in order to raise awareness among international education professionals about the particular situation experienced by French-speaking researchers, often within their institution.
Raising awareness is particularly important for predominantly English- or French-speaking institutions in Quebec. Indeed, linguistic majorities often have little information about the issues of university minorities. As many are unaware of the situation, they also ignore all the power they have to improve it, become allies and enrich academic collaborations beyond their usual practice. This is especially true for English-speaking people, because they also are in a dominant language position globally, which is why we are proposing a bilingual session specifically. After this session, participants will be able to identify their blind spots, develop a new sensitivity about the Francophone community of their institution or country, and thus to have a more complete approach in meeting the needs of all the groups of their university population. Also, this newly acquired acuity will allow them to imagine a whole new range of possible services in their profession and give them a new ability to imagine the development of inter-institutional collaborations. In the second part of the presentation, solutions to be put in place within the teams responsible for internationalization will be presented, so that they can contribute to the vitality of university education in French, break with the traditional divisions between francophones and anglophones regarding their possibilities, and offer services to francophones that take into account their specific needs. The development of new innovative and creative collaborations between educational institutions in Canada to support francophones is possible! They rest heavily in the responsibility of internationalization professionals. Newly sensitized by the introduction of the session, they will be better able to see how they can develop new French-language mobility arrangements tailored to the needs of French-speaking students and researchers in Canada, who do not always have the opportunity to study in their own language in their province, but could do so during a session, internship or research stay in another Canadian province. These agreements could therefore support the continuum of French-language education in Canada, including the lack of graduate French-language education programs in several Canadian provinces. We will also present possible new mobility agreements, that would allow French-speaking professors to participate in thesis or ethics committees of other institutions. These types of mobility agreements could ease the burden on Francophone teachers, who are struggling to meet the needs of their Francophone students and to get the support they need to apply in French for federal research grants. In the third part of the presentation, the Agence universitaire de la francophonie (AUF) will present the possibilities that the Francophonie offers internationally, both for francophones and for non-French speakers of its member institutions. With more than 990 member institutions across 118 countries around the world, the AUF represents a tremendous opportunity for internationalization. Little known especially among English-majority institutions, the AUF offers programs of international collaboration not exclusive to the French language. Simon Fraser University, the University of Alberta, York University, the University of Ottawa and Dalhousie University are all members of the AUF in Canada and can benefit from these programs.

During these three parts of the presentation, a PowerPoint will show the information in the language other than the one being spoken, to make sure that everybody in the audience can understand. The speakers will alternate between English and French. The last part of the session will be composed of interactive exchanges with the audience. These exchanges will explore new ideas for actions to address the challenges faced by francophones in minority situations, with the contribution of the English-speaking community. This is an unprecedented proposal since the regular way of reflection keeps the French and English language spheres in silos. These exchanges will therefore move away from the usual blind spots that enclose the ways of thinking and to broaden the avenues of possible solutions for collaboration between professionals of international education. They will enrich the current thinking to support francophones in minority situations by bringing out new proposals from professionals who are in theory unaware of the role they can play as head of international education. This contribution from linguistic majorities will certainly lead to new perspectives in responding to the challenges facing French-speaking university communities. For these interactive exchanges, we will at first divide the participants in two groups, one in French and one in English, and then get together to share all ideas in both languages. Ultimately, this session will help ensure that Canada’s mobility experts are creative leaders and collaborators, more sensitive to their academic communities, able to understand new issues, and explore new and useful opportunities for a better and greater future for the internationalization of Canadian institutions. They will also be more sensitive to the opportunities for exchange in the country and to the role that they can play in such projects.

Increasingly, international leaders are looking to technology as a core strategy to manage risk; drive cost-effective, measurable recruitment strategies; meet enrollment goals; avoid over-reliance on key markets, and best support students’ health and well-being once they arrive on campus. Data-rich, tech-driven strategies can lead the way in managing quality and supporting a diverse and complex student body.

The journey to connect with students starts 18-24 months before the international student arrives on campus and comes full circle upon graduation, with an emphasis on holistic student experiences and measurable outcomes. Together, ICEF and IDP Connect will introduce the prospective student landscape, addressing real-time data on student perceptions, latest market intelligence, and best practices in technology-driven recruitment.
Once students are on campus, it is critical to support their success, health, and well-being in order to manage the holistic student experience. In a time of increased mental health concerns among university and college-aged youth, there is widespread recognition that new and innovative ways to provide support are required. The panel will discuss how the effective implementation of tech and data-driven recruitment initiatives and Student Support Programs have promoted and enhanced diversity, bolstered student support, and minimized student and institutional risk.

Wilfrid Laurier University will share examples of tech-driven recruitment and support initiatives that provide data-rich insights, and 24/7 wrap-around access to culturally and linguistically relevant clinical mental health support services. Combining technology, data, and clinical support with 24/7 culturally and linguistically matched support has revolutionized recruitment and student support in the time of internationalization on campus.

Among the many disruptions caused by COVID last spring, was the disruption to institutions’ ability to engage directly with our students. No longer able to hold face-to-face gatherings, activities or information sessions, we have all had to find new ways to help support our students and keep them connected and engaged, from pre-arrival, through orientation to engagement activities during the semester.

While some institutions already had well-established online programs, others have had to build them from scratch, with support and suggestions from colleagues, to exploring best practices, and surveying our students for ideas on what would work best for them.

The internationalization of higher education has been a growing trend globally in the past two decades. One of the common internationalization goals for institutions is to produce ‘global-ready’ graduates who possess intercultural competence through global engagement so that they can navigate and succeed in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. Many colleges and universities in Canada and around the world have developed certificates or other credentialing programs to achieve this internationalization goal. The session will focus on global certificate and credential programs and will specifically examine Western University’s Global and Intercultural Engagement Honour, Thompson Rivers University’s Global Competency Certificate, and Wilfrid Laurier University’s co-curricular Intercultural Certificate. The programs presented address inclusive internationalization by offering a pathway for students to develop intercultural and global competencies, who may not typically have access to outbound mobility programs. This is particularly important given today’s global context and challenges facing travel-based programs.

Participants will learn about the challenges and successes of developing, administering, assessing, and redesigning global and intercultural credential programs. By the end of the session, participants will be able to recognize some of the key terminology and concepts of global learning, identify some ways to develop, administer, promote and assess similar programs, and apply knowledge gained to help inform the development or redesign of their own global credential program.

The increasing number of international students in post-secondary institutions is of tremendous benefit to all stakeholders. The benefits of internationalization have been recorded (e.g. Guo & Guo, 2017); however, increasing diversity in educational institutions without the necessary complementary academic and social support services in place can negatively impact the ability of all students, particularly international students, to succeed and thrive academically. Such practices would also be not in line with the institution’s commitment to ethical internationalization.
Several initiatives have been implemented in various universities to help create a positive and affrming learning and social environment to support the acculturation and academic success of international students.

While it is acknowledged that international students have unique challenges (e.g. Heng, 2018), similarities have also been observed between the academic experiences of international and domestic students (e.g. Glass & Westmont, 2014). With limited resources available to universities, there is a need to maximize the number of benefits obtained from academic and social support services available to both international and domestic students.

Si le modèle des cégeps est unique à plusieurs égards, la conduite de son internationalisation l’est tout autant. Cette dernière se réalise directement selon les valeurs et priorités propres à chacun des établissements, mais compte aussi sur la concertation volontaire en continu des 48 cégeps et sur le soutien de toute une équipe rassemblée au sein de la Fédération des cégeps. Ce triptyque (établissement, rassemblement et association) permet une approche systémique de l’internationalisation afin de faire des ponts entre les multiples facettes de l’internationalisation.

Le contenu de cette séance prendra assise sur les principaux résultats de la 5e édition du Portrait des activités internationales des cégeps, étude effectuée à chaque cinq ans auprès des 48 cégeps francophones et anglophones du Québec. Une telle enquête est novatrice et peu commune pour un réseau fédéré. Elle permet de porter un regard comparatif et critique sur l’évolution de l’internationalisation de l’éducation au sein du réseau collégial public québécois dans sa globalité.

Nous mettrons en lumière le fait que les cégeps s’inscrivent résolument dans les tendances de l’internationalisation observées, tant au Canada qu’à l’échelle mondiale, tout en ayant des enjeux et des réalités qui leur sont propres. Nous traiterons des quatre sphères suivantes de l’internationalisation : la transformation de la nature des projets de mobilité étudiante et enseignante, la hausse importante du nombre d’étudiants internationaux, la diversification des partenariats à l’étranger et le développement de parcours internationalisés ainsi que le renforcement des projets de coopération ou d’exportation du savoir-faire.

In 2020, Canada is launching an outbound student mobility program as part of Canada’s new international education strategy. This is a significant investment for Canada, and for Canadian universities and colleges. Drawing on perspectives from Colleges and Institutes Canada (who are leading part of the implementation for the new outbound mobility program), the Academic Internship Council, and Expertise in Labour Mobility in Europe, presenters in this session will focus on what the ROI of this new investment could be for colleges and universities and their students in terms of employability skill development. Session presenters will discuss and engage with the session participants on challenges, opportunities, and innovations for measuring the impact of international learning, to ensure that we are designing virtual and in-person study abroad programs that are developing professional skills that will enhance employability.

Join your colleagues from around the country to network, share best practices and advance the discussion on topics specific to international student advising.