title: The Effects of the Internationalisation of Universities on Domestic Students
Creators: name: Parsons, Rebecca Lindsey
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2008
Subjects: subject: universities
subject: internationalisation
subject: Australia
subject: United States
subject: Griffith University
subject: Kennesaw State University
subject: University College at Buffalo State
subject: Intercultural competence
subject: foreign language proficiency
subject: cross-cultural skills
subject: international behaviours
subject: international students

description: The internationalisation of universities is currently a very common goal for both educators and politicians. However, few universities look beyond increasing participation in the typical activities of internationalisation, (including study abroad, the presence of international students, and internationalisation of the curriculum), to specifying the desired outcomes. Furthermore, no current and complete instrument exists to measure whether students are achieving these outcomes. Through a review of the theoretical an empirical literature, a list of the potential outcomes of internationalisation was composed and refined into three knowledge areas: Foreign Language Proficiency, Knowledge of a Specific Region or Country, and International Knowledge, and three affective areas: International Attitudes and Perceptions, Cross-Cultural Skills, and International Behaviours. Questions in each area were taken from previous instruments or composed by the researcher, then refined and selected by content area experts who judged new questions for sampling and item validity. Pilot testing was conducted on the majority of the scales in order to establish construct and internal consistency reliability. The final instrument consisted of six scales representing the different areas of the desired outcomes of internationalisation. Thirteen hundred and two students (from Griffith University in Australia and Kennesaw State University and University College at Buffalo State in the U.S.) completed these scales and a background information questionnaire. Factor analysis was conducted on the three affective scales, resulting in 10 subscales. The scale of International Attitudes and Perceptions consisted of three subscales: Global Interdependence and Cooperation, Cultural Pluralism, and Cultural and National Self-Awareness. The scale of Cross-Cultural Skills consisted of three subscales: Intercultural Communication and Teamwork, Intercultural Friendship, and Behavioural Flexibility. The scale of International Behaviours consisted of four subscales: Academic Involvement, Intercultural Curiosity and Involvement, Charitable Involvement, and Political Involvement. MANOVAs were used to assess the relationship between background and internationalisation variables, and the scale and subscale scores. The results confirmed that the primary components of an internationalised education (study abroad, contact with international students, and an internationalised curriculum) and frequent attendance at international events, were significantly correlated with higher scores on almost all of the scales and subscales. Other international variables were also significantly correlated, but with fewer scales. In addition, a number of background variables were found to be significantly correlated with one or more scale scores: age, gender, being born or having parents born outside the country, speaking a second language at home, level of parental education, GPA, course of study, religion, frequency of attendance at religious services, political beliefs, exposure to international news media, and source of television news. This study supports the hypothesis that an internationalised education is effective in bringing about change in students. Students who have had greater participation in the components of internationalisation during their education were shown to have greater foreign language skills, higher levels of general and region- and country-specific international knowledge, more worldminded attitudes, behaviours that reflected those attitudes, and higher levels of cross-cultural skills. These findings offer renewed support and scientific vigour to the claims made by international educators, which should help fuel the effort to bring internationalisation to the forefront of university strategic plans. They also shed greater light on the areas of internationalisation that are correlated with various outcomes so that internationalisation strategies can better target specific outcomes. An additional side benefit of this study is the creation of an instrument that with some changes, can serve as an up-to-date, valid, and reliable instrument to measure a wide-ranging set of outcomes of an internationalised education and to track a university’s progress in achieving these outcomes.