About project

Project Aim

This project aims to build stronger connections among postgraduate students of the University of Queensland, to increase the sense of inclusive for international students and improve their English on the one hand, and on the other hand promote mutuality and culture diversity among international students and between international and local students. 

Project rationale

 

This project emerges from my own experiences, observations which are also of other international students’ concerns that there is lack of interactions between international students and local students as well as among international students from different countries and culture backgrounds. As an international postgradute from the social science program, I have noticed the distinct social groups in many of my classes as well as around campus where students from the same country or culture background tend to sit and talk together. I also heard of stories of my friends from different study programs of the same situation. The problem of students coming from non-English speaking countries resulting from lack of interaction is little progress in improving their English and their difficulties in integrating into new environment, while some local students desire to connect but do not know how to reach out. In global context, it is more critical to build mutual understanding across multiculture, especially for those who pursuing a career reaching beyond their country boundary. Though both international and local students "love" to explore about each other, there seems to be "a fear of others, a culture” that may prevent people from acknowledging the positive potential of engaging with the “unknown” (Westoby and Owen, 2009, p7). More interacting may replace the fear with the love.

There are supporting services provide great opportunities for networking and socializing, however, they are not well known among UQ students as they should, partly due to their means of approach to students. Moreover, it is the difference between the formal and informal interactions. People often like to seek supports and advice from closed relationships their friends, family before or at the same time with searching for official help from experts. It appears that some of those services by its operations and/or services provided exclude domestic students or just successful at attracting to international students or to a modest number of domestic students.

To change the situation from poor communicating, less sympathizing to better mutual understanding, more sympathizing, from fear to love, from exclusion to inclusion, from stressful studying to joyful and effective studying and living, it is obviously necessary to improve interconnections among UQ students. Building interconnections creates chance to learn about other cultures and to work with different people is also a way to promote culture diversity. The project therefore seeks to build strategies for creating a collective action of people who want to act towards and pursue purposes of better communication, studying and mutuality by building a network of friendship where there are trust, love and opportunities for active interactions and assisting existing systems and supporting services in their providing good services to networking students.

Stakeholders and systems within which the project articulated:

Stakeholders: Course coordinators, old and new postgraduate students from different cultures and different courses/programs; student associations of different countries, UQ Union, UQ mates, volunteer networks, job networks; UQ clubs and societies.

This project will target more to involve students’ associations and UQmates. Student associations play important roles in assisting students to set up initial contacts with students from their country of origin for information to settle down and keep them connected and supported when they need. UQ mates is a program designed specifically to encourage interaction between domestic and international students. It has four main elements offering organized activities for students to improve English, meet new mates through outdoor activities, sports and volunteering.

System mapping:

In relation to education system, the most emergent linkage of relationships between domestic students and international students is shaped primarily through study activities and time studying with their classmates like group study and participating in lecture discussion.  Other linkages of social and entertainment systems rather than study based on shared interest of connecting to other mates to gain more knowledge of other culture and mutuality, stay healthy and have fun are still weak.

Project strategy for collective action 

To achieve the project’s aim I will employ participatory approach, with assistance of a blog and electronic discussion boards as means, together with formal and informal meetings method, to consult UQ students from freshmen to seniors of various culture groups, also UQ services and students’ associations, and to involve them in developing a shared agenda. Collaborative approach in implementing the shared agenda will be also utilized.

The project applies networking approach and social capital theory drawn from Westoby and Owen’s (2009) work on the sociality and geometry of networking and Gilchrist’s (2004) concept of a well-connected community. The goal is to weave a purposeful network and resilient community of UQ students who share the same interests in mutual and culture understanding and language improvement. The idea of the purposeful network is to nurture inter-subjectivity, hospitality networking through participatory processes of mobilizing ideas from members of the network by dialoguing (Westoby and Owen, 2009). Such purposeful networking ensures the possibility of cooperation and creation of individuals where members encourage being active and opening so that the paradigm moves from observation to action (Westoby and Owen, 2009). Gilchrist, 2004 affirms that networking can be used to develop a well-connected community because networks create opportunities for interaction which create conditions for evolution of new and adaptive form of organization. As per social capital, social relations, and/or networks of friends in particular is helpful in nurturing the network, first in building and then expanding the network and in return, the network will build up personal relations of individuals.

To build resilient communities and robust structuring community, it is suggested by Westoby and Owen (2009) that should build more nodes and fewer hubs. In this project, each postgraduate student as a node plays an equal role to any other in the network to suggest and organize events on the basis of voluntary, wish and/or needs of themselves. The role of the facilitators is to facilitate communications and cooperation where it does not occur naturally and building bridges for different groups of people while pays more attention to less confident groups to affirm their identities (Gilchrist, 2004). 

To build a well-functioning community vibrant with many different groups and for diversity to flourish, it need to build a neutral space where accessible and accommodating different people. The project would need to ensure no one excluded by those activities created to support connections. Activities and space, processes have to be open, continually renewed, promote diversity (culture diversity has to become interest of members, playful where conversation is the main activity (Gilchrist, 2004, Westoby and Owen, 2009). The groups will be expected to be flexible with the number of members and time for organizing activities, space of activities, meetings, both online and offline.

When the network is set up with a number of members, it is important to think of how to motivate members to participate actively rather than just observe and wait for others to start.  Size of the network noted to affect the operation of the network. It is right in practice that, smaller sites enable people to participate more and deep in most of the networked relationships than larger sites, which may cause people the feeling of lost, overwhelming, and disconnected (Westoby and Owen, 2009). In the case of the project, the network could grow bigger when it involves more students from different programs and so they can develop into structure of smaller groups of interests to deepen their dialogues.

Besides, the project will employ collaborative approach to involve and link existing services which are providing great opportunities for students to networking and socializing together. This is to assist those services to accommodate better the needs of students and so improve interactions for postgraduates as well.

Risk Identification

In undertaking this work I will need to be mindful of limited time of all students during the semester, because the project targeted community are postgraduate students, many of whom work full time or study full time work part time and the time frame of a master program often shorter than undergraduate program in halves. Therefore, the discussion flow on a topic may be not continuous and there may be no participation at all when students get busy with assignments. I need to be active member in this case to evoke the flow again.