The Innovations in Internationalisation at Home Forum took place on June 10 in London, welcoming university staff and private partnership providers to share best practices for IaH and discuss ways to build a more cohesive strategy across UK universities.
The IaH handbook, published in 2023 by UUKi, defines the concept as “the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum of all students within the domestic learning environment.”
“No two [IaH] tapestries are the same, which is the beauty of it but also the challenge of measuring it because there are certain commonalties. But there’s a very rich tapestry of informal activities that take unique form at different universities and locations,” said Anthony Manning, Dean for global and lifelong learning at the University of Kent.
The value of IaH has often been overlooked by university staff, and has fallen prey to the “Cinderella concept”, Manning told delegates.
We need something more concrete and measurable to prove the positive correlation between IaH, intercultural competence and employability
Polly Collingridge, Cultural Intelligence Centre UK
Rather than being viewed as the “poor cousin” of study abroad, attendees agreed that IaH has become increasingly important to introduce a greater diversity of perspectives and intercultural competencies to students’ experiences.
A combination of Covid, Brexit and the increased cost of living has caused the steady decline of the number of UK students with a study abroad experience from just below 6% in 2016/17 to less than 1% in 2020/21, according to HESA data.
Currently, roughly 2% of students in the UK have benefited from overseas educational opportunities, said Manning, though the sector is waiting on the publication of HESA’s 2022/23 data, which has been delayed until August 2024.
An IHEC report published last year warned of the decline in international diversity within universities and the hollowing out of “international” capacity and capability.
At the same time, international themes in university curriculums – which is used as an indicator of IaH – have been slowly rising, though this metric is in its experimental phase, according to Education Insight founder Janet Ilieva.
During the forum, attendees shared IaH strategies that have benefited from innovations in collaborative online international learning (COIL) and virtual exchange.
These included medical students from different countries sharing the best practices for treating and communicating with patients, and language programs increasing a sense of belonging for BME students.
“If COIL could be funded in some way similar to Turing, then we might be able to get more engagement with that activity in a more inclusive and accessible way,” said Manning.
The formal element of universities’ IaH strategies usually consist of credit-bearing courses, which are accompanied by ‘informal’ extra-curricular activities and ‘hidden’ intercultural elements of campus culture.
The mixed settings and indirect effects of IaH such as intercultural skills and global awareness can take time to emerge and are harder to measure than study abroad where credit hours and transcripts provide tangible evidence.
The need for more quantitative data across the sector has been identified by several recent reports from IHEC and UKCISA, highlighting how dwindling finances and growing political scrutiny are increasingly demanding more evidence-based feedback on the importance of higher education.
Furthermore, more work needs to be done to make domestic students feel like they’re part of the global community, who often struggle to see the relevance of IaH, said delegates.
The rising cost of living has led to greater demand from international and domestic students for greater career support from universities.
“We need something more concrete and measurable to prove the positive correlation between internationalisation at home, intercultural competence and employability,” said Polly Collingridge, senior consultant at Cultural Intelligence Centre UK.
Delegates discussed different options for certifications to provide evidence of IaH on student transcripts, agreeing on the need for an institutional systemic approach to incentivise and recognise IaH efforts across the sector.
