Internationalisation: its implications for curriculum design and course development in UK higher education

Abstract

As the numbers of international students attending UK universities increases, so the need grows to address the internationalisation agenda in a variety of ways. Much of what has been written in this area has been focused at the level of institutional and national policy and strategy. We argue here that this focus has tended to obscure the issue at the teaching and learning level, which is where students and teachers actually experience internationalisation, and because of its central importance, teaching and learning must be addressed explicitly alongside policy and strategic perspectives; otherwise there is a danger of a gap forming between policy and implementation. We describe several ways in which an aspect of internationalisation, i.e. supporting students’ learning, is addressed through curriculum design which takes into account the international student population of many courses.

Keywords:

• internationalisation
• curriculum design
• embedding skills
• policy and implementation

Notes

1. Indeed, Cousin, Deepwell, Land, & Ponti (2004) refer to the same issues in the dissemination of e‐learning practices in European higher education institutions.