SASUF Sustainability Forum 2024

The presenters include academics from South Africa and Sweden with diverse
experiences in internationalization. Mbali Mkize is the Senior Director of Marketing
and Communications at Mongosuthu University of Technology and together with
her colleague Sishi Zama they have researched in the area of Higher Education
studies, with an interest in international student mobility (ISM). Hilde Ibsen and
Penelope Engel-Hills are the Swedish and South African PIs and both have
experience of internationalization through research and being supervisors of
international students while on placements abroad. For the team their interest in
internationalization is because ISM is a gateway for universities across the globe to
diversify their student body, enhance multiculturalism and intercultural
communication, increase third stream income, and contribute economically and
socially to the communities around the universities. Many towns and cities have
been transformed to become more cosmopolitan because of the presence of
international students.
Within a university, internationalisation adds value to transformation in many ways
as the international students bring new skills such as on entrepreneurship and they
enhance the social constructivist agenda to facilitate learning and teaching.
Unfortunately, in 2020, the Covid-19 global pandemic, disrupted ISM across the
globe and this resulted in universities shifting their education to online. Scores of
international students in South Africa and Sweden had to return to their home
countries. International student numbers dropped at universtities across the globe.
In South Africa international students reduced from 5.93% to 3.09% of the total
student populations at the end of 2020. Students were faced with many challenges
such as having to rapidly transition from being an international student in a foreign
country to being a student in their country of origin. Some were faced with
challenges such as poor access to digital resources, different time zones for class
attendance, to name but a few. For those that remained, they were also faced with
challenges ranging from visa issues, financial hardship and even mental illness.
For African students in foreign countries many also they faced unemployment,
racism and xenophobia.
Because of these challenges, there is now a greater urgency for universities to
future-proof their internationalisation agenda as part of social transformation and to
guard the well-being of students who emabark on international programmes. International Student Mobility (ISM) has become an aspiration of the majority of students
across the globe. Despite its meteoric rise in the years before 2020, it was disrupted
beyond expectations during Covid-19 when universities had to shut down or move online
to flatten the pandemic curve. The disruption of ISM came with certain threats to
universities such as a decline in international student numbers, reduced income from
international students and various forms of academic difficulties and social exclusion
challenges for international students who were unable or chose not to travel home.
Universities need to reclaim International Student Mobility (ISM). Considering that ISM
adds to knowledge building and transformation, this workshop will present possible for
strategies and explore options for adaptations to allow for exposing not just a few
students to internationalisation but to ensure that every university student benefits
through internationalisation in some way.
The possible strategies are:
a. Internationalisation at Home
b. Collaborative Online International Learning
c. Future-proofing ISM through policy development
d. Building an agile internationalisation agenda
e. Building digital-savvy student body through policy and praxis

Internationalisation at Home (IaH)
Born in Malmö Universitry in 1998, IaH has become a global phenomenon on how
universities can augment an internationalisation agenda by implementing
internationalisation across entire campuses without investing heavily on financial
resources. The workshop will allow discussion on best practice and experiences of IaH as a
way of how universities could keep the internationalisation agenda going even when
there are global disruptions. Best practices will include an impact of IaH during Covid-19
and how this should become a part of an internationalisation framework at universities.

Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)
COIL programmes proved during Covid-19 that they could stand the firm even when there was a major global disruption. The workshop will show how COIL programmes resulted in
the sustainability of internationalisation at universities and how these could be further
expanded and adapted to suit the post-Covid-19 environment.

Future-proofing ISM through policy development
The workshop will look at the best practices adopted by universities to ensure that when
there are disruptions, the universities have systems and policies pertinent to issues that
created tensions for international students such as:
a. Integrated policy on immigration
b. Guiding framework on social inclusion for international students when there are
threats to ISM. Such a framework should include how universities could tackle
short-to-medium term relief on tuition fees, healthcare, and housing. Some
universities have started looking at additional levies for eventualities of this
nature.
c. Constant monitoring and evaluation of support services offered to international
students with a Net Promoter Score conducted at each exit point by international
students followed by an implementation plan. Had these existed, some of the
challenges faced at the time of Covid-19 would of the dire circumstances for
international students would have been avoided.
The emphasis will be on building an agile internationalisation agenda that draws from
some of the lessons learned during Covid-19.

Session 1: 30 minutes
Introduction to ISM of the future and how we can enhance IaH, COIL, Online learning to support
ongoing internatioanlisation.
Session 2: 30 minutes
Reflections on student experiences to provide insights on optimizing the future of ISM for all our
students
Session 3: Implementation plan for the future (1 hour)
Discussion and development of key ideas for and elements of an implementation plan for ISM
going forward.

Keywords: International Student Mobility, Internationalisation at Home, Collaborative Online International Learning, Synchonous and Asynchronous Learning, Digital inclusion