Cross-cultural education: learning methodology and behaviour analysis for Asian students in IT field of Australian universities

Abstract

Australian tertiary education of information technology (IT) has attracted a large number of international students, particularly from Asia. Cultural factors have affected the quality of learning of international students and the teaching approaches adopted by Australian lecturers. Therefore, cross-cultural teaching and learning situations have become an important issue in Australian universities. This study intends to improve the understanding of Asian students' cultural backgrounds, their previous learning approaches and their perspectives on Australian culture and educational mode, with the objective of helping international students from different cultural backgrounds to overcome the difficulties of cross-cultural study. This study has completed a questionnaire survey of 1026 students, including 292 Information Technology (28.5%) students from five universities in Australia. Among these IT students, there are 100 (34.25%) local students and 192 (65.75%) international students from 39 other countries. The questionnaire contains 55 questions within six question sections and one information section. This paper presents comparison-based data analysis results of this survey on learning methodology and behaviours of Asian students in IT field of Australian universities. It particularly reveals the main difference for students between the universities in their home countries and in Australia, also the difficulties of these students during their study in Australian university through qualitative analysis on open questions of the survey. This paper also reports the research methodology and main findings in cross-culture teaching and learning generated from this study. This work was fully supported by Australian Learning and Teaching Council (CG7-494).