Tensions and Rewards: Behind the Scenes in a Cross-Cultural Student–Staff Partnership

Abstract

In the domain of “internationalization of the curriculum,” this article introduces the rarely incorporated dimension of “engaging students as partners” (SaP) to address and explore challenges of increasingly diverse universities. The aim of this qualitative research was to explore engaging international students as partners in a modest and targeted internationalization innovation, which was specifically designed to address the needs of Chinese international students at a prominent Australian university business school. The innovation involved embedding WeChat, a prevalent Chinese social media platform, in a postgraduate learning module to form a cross-cultural bridge to better connect academics and learning support staff at the Business School with their Chinese international student cohorts. Staff and partnered Chinese international students in this small-scale cross-cultural partnership have coauthored this article, which reports on the identified tensions and rewards behind the scenes in this partnership. Findings mostly align with existing SaP literature; however, some unique benefits also emerged from having an explicit cross-cultural focus for the partnership.