Personal tutorials are an essential feature of student support in British universities, and therefore they are duplicated on British overseas campuses. It appears that Chinese students are reluctant to seek help when they experience personal difficulties that affect their engagement with learning and their academic performance. Limited literature…

Community-oriented education has witnessed an increasing interest in online service-learning opportunities. Digital Learning Companion is an online service-learning project supported by Taiwan's Ministry of Education to give students experiential learning opportunities and practice social responsibility. As part of the initiative, 189 local and…

When using Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) on university modules, international students unfamiliar with such platforms face navigational as well as linguistic barriers. Short, intensive language courses may not spend time on VLE orientation and rationale, with the result that students do not receive clear guidance on exactly how to move…

Academics often treat students' discipline-specific literacy as unproblematic. In doing so they may underestimate the difficulties for university students as they move between subjects of study that may involve different disciplines, language genres and academic practices. This paper describes an initiative aimed at supporting students in reading…

A study of 170 foreign university students in the Netherlands shows that while their success rate was similar to native students', it took them more time to complete examinations, and language proficiency and home-country selection procedures were major factors in achievement. Implications for foreign student policy are explored, and a mentor…