A home away from home: building an organic online support community for Chinese students using WeChat
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi24.853Keywords:
organic, student support system, community, WeChatAbstract
Traditional university support structures have generally been predicated on a ‘one size fits all’ approach that stresses a mechanistic, bureaucratic approach. Support is transactional in nature with students accessing it only when needed. Support focuses on both individual tutorial and centralised mechanisms which have proved effective for only some students. This paper proposes an organic student support system that is based around five features: agility in the environment, a tutor-student partnership, informal two-way communication, a student-led community, the inclusion of a knowledge-hub. The student support system in this article is based around Chinese students at a large UK university who felt disenfranchised by the current support mechanisms, so an alternative model was set up using the group-based instant-messaging social media platform, WeChat. The findings of surveys and interviews with Chinese students demonstrated that the featured organic student support system proved extremely successful and is something that could be replicated with other groups of students in the future in UK higher education.
References
Andrade, M. S. (2006) ‘International students in English-speaking universities: adjustment factors’, Journal of Research in International Education, 5(2), pp.131-154. https://doi.org/10.1177/1475240906065589.
BIS (2016) ‘Success as a knowledge economy: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice’, Department for Business Innovation and Skills, May. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/523546/bis-16-265-success-as-a-knowledge-economy-web.pdf (Accessed: 31 July 2022).
Bolton, P. (2020) ‘Higher education student numbers’, House of Commons Library, 13 March. Available at: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/35257/1/CBP-7857.pdf (Accessed: 31 July 2022).
Brewer, M. L., van Kessel, G., Sanderson, B., Naumann, F., Lane, M., Reubenson, M. and Carter, A. (2019) ‘Resilience in higher education students: a scoping review’, Higher Education Research & Development, 38(6), pp.1105-1120. https://doi:org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1626810.
Brooks, R., Waters, J. and Pimlott‐Wilson, H. (2012) ‘International education and the employability of UK students’, British Educational Research Journal, 38(2), pp.281-298. https://doi:10.1080/01411926.2010.544710.
Burns, T. and Stalker, G. M. (1961) The management of innovation. London: Tavistock.
Cahill, J., Bowyer, J. and Murray, S. (2014) ‘An exploration of undergraduate students’ views on the effectiveness of academic and pastoral support’, Educational Research, 56(4), pp.398-411. http://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2014.965568.
Department for Education (1992) Further and Higher Education Act. London: HMSO.
Gerster, D., Dremel, C. and Kelker, P. (2019) ‘How enterprises adopt agile structures: a multiple-case study’, 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Grand Wailea, Maui, HI 8-11 January. http://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2019.596.
Gomes, C., Berry, M., Alzougool, B. and Chang, S. (2014) ‘Home away from home: international students and their identity-based social networks in Australia’, Journal of International Students 4(1), pp.2-15. https://doi.org/10.32674/jis.v4i1.493.
Grebennikov, L. and Skaines, I. (2009) ‘Gender and higher education experience: a case study’, Higher Education Research & Development, 28(1), pp.71-84. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360802444370.
Guest, G., MacQueen, K. and Namey, E. (2011) Applied thematic analysis. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage Publications.
Higher Education Statistics Agency (2020) ‘HE Student Data’, HESA. Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/where-from (Accessed: 28 July 2022).
Hjorth, L. (2011) ‘Still mobile: cross-generational SNS usage in Shanghai’, in Wilken, R. and Goggin, G. (eds.) Mobile technologies and place. New York, NY: Routledge.
Huang, R. and Turner, R. (2018) ‘International experience, universities support and graduate employability: perceptions of Chinese international students studying in UK universities’, Journal of Education and Work, 31(2), pp.175-189. http://doi:org/10.1080/13639080.2018.1436751.
Jaeger, T. F. and Buz, E. (2018) ‘Signal reduction and linguistic encoding’, in Fernández, E. M. and Cairns, H. S. (eds.) The handbook of psycholinguistics. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp.38-81.
Kearney, J., Stanley, G. and Blackberry, G. (2018) ‘Interpreting the first-year experience of a non-traditional student: a case study’, Student Success, 9(3), pp.13-23. http://doi.org/10.5204/ssj.v9i3.463.
Lane, M., Moore, A., Hooper, L., Menzies, V., Cooper, B., Shaw, N. and Rueckert, C. (2019) ‘Dimensions of student success: a framework for defining and evaluating support for learning in higher education’, Higher Education Research & Development, 38(5), pp.954-968. http://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1615418.
Li, Z. (2013) ‘A critical account of employability construction through the eyes of Chinese postgraduate students in the UK’, Journal of Education and Work, 26(5), pp.473-493. http://doi.org/10.1080/13639080.2012.710740.
Lindsay, A., Downs, D. and Dunn, K. (2003) ‘Business processes—attempts to find a definition’, Information and Software Technology, 45(15), pp.1015-1019. http://doi:10.1016/S0950-5849(03)00129-0.
Liu, D. Y. T., Bartimote-Aufflick, K., Pardo, A. and Bridgeman, A. J. (2017) ‘Data-driven personalization of student learning support in higher education’ in Peña-Ayala, A. (ed.) Learning analytics: fundaments, applications, and trends. studies in systems, decision and control. Cham: Springer, pp.143-169.
Lusk, C. and Fearful, A. (2015) ‘Supporting students in higher education: results and recommendations following a paradigm shift within a Scottish Ancient’, Studies in Higher Education, 40(6), pp.1107-1127. http://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.881338.
McWhorter, J. (2014) The language hoax: why the world looks the same in any language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Menzies, J. L., Baron R. and Zutshi, A. (2015) ‘Transitional experiences of international postgraduate students utilising a peer mentor programme’, Educational Research, 57(4), pp.403-419. http://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2015.1091202.
Nichols, M. (2010) ‘Student perceptions of support services and the influence of targeted interventions on retention in distance education’, Distance Education, 31(1), pp.93-113. http://doi.org/10.1080/01587911003725048.
Peach, D. (2005) ‘Ensuring student success: the role of support services in improving the quality of the student learning experience’, Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development, 2(3), pp.1-15. Available at: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/44161/ (Accessed: 31 July 2022).
Prensky, M. (2010) Teaching digital natives: partnering for real learning. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
Prowse, A., Ruiz Vargas, V. and Powell, S. (2021) ‘Design considerations for personalised supported learning: implications for higher education’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 45(4), pp.497-510. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2020.1789915.
Roberts, P. and Dunworth, K. (2012) ‘Staff and student perceptions of support services for international students in higher education: a case study’, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 34(5), pp. 517-528. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2012.716000.
Ryan, S. D., Magro, M. J. and Sharp, J. H. (2011) ‘Exploring educational and cultural adaptation through social networking sites’, Journal of Information Technology Education: Innovation in Practice,10(1), pp.1-16. https://doi.org/10.28945/1346.
Scudamore, R. (2013) ‘Engaging home and international students: a guide for new lecturers’, The Higher Education Academy. Available at: https://cdn.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/content-block/UsefulDownloads_Download/1EAB6D741A214F79A30464C60E296A28/Scudamore%20(2013)%20Engaging%20home%20and%20international%20students.pdf (Accessed: 28 July 2022).
Simmons, L. D. (2013) ‘Factors of persistence for African American men in a student support organisation’, The Journal of Negro Education, 82(1), pp.62-74.
https://doi.org/10.7709/jnegroeducation.82.1.0062.
University of Sheffield (2017) ‘Exploring the use of ‘WeChat’ as a social media tool to engage Chinese students’, UKCISA. Available at: https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/Research--Policy/Resource-bank/resources/105/Using-WeChat-to-engage-Chinese-students (Accessed: 28 July 2022).
Walsh, C., Larsen, C. and Parry, D. (2009) ‘Academic tutors at the frontline of student support in a cohort of students succeeding in higher education’, Educational Studies, 35(4), pp.405-424. https://doi.org/10.1080/03055690902876438.
Wei, Y., Samiee, S. and Lee, R. P. (2014) ‘The influence of organic organizational cultures, market responsiveness, and product strategy on firm performance in an emerging market’, Journal of the Academy of Marking Science, 42, pp.49-70. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-013-0337-6.
Wolstencroft, P., Calver, K and Hudson, F. (2019) ‘“You’re not like a real professor”: Informalising and personalising support in UK higher education’, Advance HE Teaching and Learning conference. Newcastle 2-4 July.
Zhou, R., Hentschel, J. and Kumar, N. (2017) ‘Goodbye text, hello emoji: mobile communication on WeChat in China’, in Mark, G. and Fussell, S. (eds.) CHI’17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: Association for Computing Machinery, pp.748-759. https://doi.org/:10.1145/3025453.3025800.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).