How internationalised is your curriculum? university graduate students speak out.

Abstract

Internationalisation of the curriculum has created changes to the traditional curriculum but little attention in research has been paid to the student perspective on these changes, and how they experience them. This paper aims to fill the gap by reporting on the findings of graduate students’ perceptions of the internationalisation of the curriculum at Makerere University in Uganda. This study adopted a sequential explanatory survey study in which we collected both quantitative and qualitative data from a sample of 180 graduate students. The findings showed that the majority of the respondents agreed that their curricula had an international dimension. This was commonly seen by graduate students in terms of international academic staff, international students, travel abroad programmes for students, courses with an international focus, comparative studies and focus on ICTs. The participants voiced concerns about logistical constraints and the universality of knowledge. These findings reinforced the earlier research that proposed that the above aspects are critical in the IoC and can act as benchmarks to guide further work in the direction of the university’s internationalisation agenda. No earlier works had similar results, at least in the context of the Global South where this study was conducted. Further studies need to involve other actors in higher education to explore more fully the notion of IoC to explain better the basis of students’ perceptions and experiences of IoC reported in this study. Keywords: Higher education; Internationalisation of the curriculum; Graduate students