How to obtain valuable feedback from international students

Through bi-weekly posts, MA staff participating in the USO-project on internationalization will share concrete teaching tools and activities through which we aim to enhance ‘tailor-made’ internationalization.

This week: the international classroom: lessons from MA Clinical and Health psychology.

Psychology students have a bad reputation when it comes down to course and curriculum evaluations and giving feedback on teaching staff. I cannot back it up with facts and alternative facts, but I have the feeling clinical psychology students are among the worst. With master exit evaluations we are lucky to get 50 percent response. No need to explain that that is somewhat frustrating. The entire staff works hard, most of them put heart and soul in their teaching and then half of the students do not even bother to give feedback.

Feedback quattro stagioni

With the start of our international master this year, we decided to do it differently, at least where the international students were concerned. First of all, we wanted to know how they were doing, and we wanted to prevent students from abroad feeling lost and lonely at our department and at the Uithof. So we welcomed all students with pizza in the garden of Langeveld Building right at the start of the academic year, specifically inviting the ones from abroad for it. There we announced to arrange regular feedback sessions with the internationals. When the first period finished we had the first of such meetings, repeating that after the second, and announced another two sessions covering the second semester, on other words, feedback in four waves. These sessions have been set up with some specific features: we meet early in the evening, we start with pizza and we do not have a set agenda.

After two of such meetings it is too early to conclude that it is a success. But it definitely is successful thus far. Almost all our international students (a little less than 30) were present at both meetings, eating their pizza margherita, enjoying each other’s and our company and having the feeling their wellbeing, study progress and opinions mattered. The exchanges were critical, sharp even, constructive and solution-oriented. The students openly and honestly vented their worries, happiness and satisfaction with their stay in the Netherlands. We talked about housing, difficulties with acquiring internships, Dutch food, homesickness, the quality of the courses, suggestions for changing and rearranging them, weird Dutch customs and food preferences. And it cuts both ways, since it gave us the opportunity to explain why some of the things are done the way they are done. That can make a difference too.

All in all we got and will probably get a wealth of concrete material that we can use to improve the curriculum, the courses and the department, both on a fundamental and on a practical level. And we collected valuable information on how to make the internationals feel more at home.

The funny thing now is, that our Dutch students are complaining that we do not organize such meetings for them! If internationalization can accomplish that, the world is our oyster!

Henk Schut