Jisc’s recent briefing paper published with the Portulans Institute, a non-for-profit research and educational institute in Washington DC, shed new light on the sub-optimal digital experiences faced by international students both before and after arriving in the UK.

Portulans Institute, in partnership with saïd business school, University of Oxford, produces an annual Network Readiness Index (NRI), assessing 134 countries across four dimensions of digital readiness: technology, governance, people and impact. Using the index’s 2023 version, we compared the digital readiness and maturity of four countries of particular interest to UK HE, combined that with feedback from our 2023 anonymous survey of over 2,000 international students and created detailed digital profiles for each country.

Looking at China, India, Nigeria and Pakistan we discovered that a student’s experiences with their home country’s civil digital infrastructure has a profound effect on how ready they are for learning and living with digital technologies in the UK. It is easy to assume students access and use digital technologies in similar ways between countries, but this is wrong. As each country's civil digital infrastructure is distinct, international students can’t be treated as a homogenous group. They need differentiated support to prepare them for learning that is increasingly facilitated by digital technologies.

When we looked at China, we saw a technologically advanced country where the internet is used widely to provide high-quality education from primary school onwards, and people expect highly digitised interactions in many contexts. However, most students from China won’t be familiar with platforms and tools used in the UK and their expectations around security and privacy may not match those of UK students. This can affect how they interact with university resources and systems.

Things are different for students arriving from India. In their mobile-first consumer economy the digital infrastructure is strong, but device and connectivity costs are high. Digital technologies have not been used extensively in schools until recently, and this has implications for the digital skills and confidence of many entering higher education now. Overall, access to digital connectivity in India is variable, with stark differences between rural and urban communities and a marked gender divide.

This is even more of an issue for students from Pakistan, who have also relied heavily on mobile data, but can sometimes experience patchy or non-existent connectivity. Mobile data and handsets are expensive, pricing many people out of the market.

This same difficulty is often experienced by students from Nigeria, where frequent power cuts add complications – of those we surveyed, 67% said they happened daily. E-participation in many areas of life is much lower in Nigeria than in the UK and much of Asia.

When we compare the UK’s civil digital infrastructure with that in India, Nigeria and Pakistan we see that mobile coverage and e-participation rates are often higher in the UK, while handsets and mobile data are often more affordable. Free, robust and reliable Wi-Fi is ubiquitous in UK learning and many other spaces. These differences can have a huge impact on how readily international students adapt to the digital ecology of UK higher education.

Our recommendations speak directly to the realities of the civil digital infrastructure in students’ home countries, including:

• Before they leave home: Consider how international students from different countries have accessed digitally mediated learning and teaching and explain how they can expect to access and use digital for learning (devices, Wi-Fi, mobile data) when they arrive in UK higher education. Consider providing information in a form that’s accessible even if bandwidth is low.
• On arrival: Share with international students what digital platforms, technologies, resources and apps are available to them and how they can access them on and off campus.
• During the course: Consider whether additional digital capabilities support could reduce digital shocks and be curious about what digital resources, prior experiences and communication methods students are familiar with. These insights are a basis for supporting students to engage with technology in new ways.

Find out more about the ongoing research on our researching international students digital experience web page.  The topics in this article are covered in depth in our briefing paper digital country profiles: international students' digital experiences in relation to their home country's civil digital infrastructure.

Listen to our Beyond the Technology ISDX podcast to hear from participating Higher Education institutions how the research has impacted their support for international students. Look out for our January 2025 episode on the international students’ digital experience project.

Elizabeth Newall will appear in the Auditorium at Bett 2025 talking about Digital shocks and border crossings: Enhancing international students’ digital experiences. Register for your ticket here.