Abstract
As U.S. institutions continue to welcome larger and more diverse populations of international students, campus support offices are also expected to adjust their programming and outreach strategies to engage a wider student audience and provide them with key information and services. This quantitative study examines the communications preferences of degree-seeking international students enrolled in a mid-size U.S. university. It specifically investigates students’ preferred methods of communication, patterns and frequency in sending and receiving messages, and the types of information they prefer to be informed of. The survey also looks across a number of communication media including email, social media, print communications, and face-to-face interactions to better understand how resources may be directed to individual channels. The authors argue that the most impactful engagement model requires an accompanying, analytics-driven communications strategy to support international students during their stay on campus
Highlights
As U.S institutions continue to welcome larger and more diverse populations of international students, campus support offices are expected to adjust their programming and outreach strategies to engage a wider student audience and provide them with key information and services
This article aims to contribute to the literature on the responsibility of specialized support from International Student Services (ISS) offices, whose role it is to collaborate with partner offices as well as understand, reach, and serve international students
International students selected from a list, the communication methods they use to regularly send important information as students at the university
Summary
As U.S institutions continue to welcome larger and more diverse populations of international students, campus support offices are expected to adjust their programming and outreach strategies to engage a wider student audience and provide them with key information and services This quantitative study examines the communications preferences of degreeseeking international students enrolled in a mid-size U.S university. To get a sense of how ISS offices were equipped to support the communication needs of their international student community, we ran a preliminary survey among 42 of the university site’s comparator and partner institutions in the U.S Of those institutions, 36 responded, representing 22 states and international student enrollments ranging from 15 to 17,326. This study serves as an example of one institution’s efforts to align communications strategy with international students’ needs and preferences
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