The YUFE Challenge Team came up with the idea of BUS, the Buddy Up System. What does it mean?
In the autumn semester 2022, students, teachers, and mentors involved in the YUFE Challenge Team were dealing with a big and important question: how to develop integration and a sense of community among and between exchange students, international degree students and domestic students?
The YUFE Challenge Team had two academic mentors Päivi Häkkinen and Minna Kaarakainen, a non-academic mentor Marko Pietilä, an administrative coordinator Mari Argillander, and Kirsi Konttinen and Hadi Farahani as data provides – all of them from the University of Eastern Finland, a YUFE partner university.
Students’ integration into a new location is a challenging process and depends on several factors including the student’s own interest, study load, cultural differences, mobility duration, language requirements and the hosting community’s level of diversity. According to the team’s findings, universities have an important role to resolve this process by emphasising diversity in education (such as mixing international and local students during assignments and projects) and providing incentives to mentors or buddies (including credits or voucher discounts) to enable them to support and engage with new international students which contributes to flourishing academic and social local communities.
“This inspiring project started with an explanation of the YUFE Challenge by UEF mentors and our team members introduction to align their expertise and interest with the challenge tasks. Then, we developed a learning progress model which was continuously monitored in weekly team meetings with support from our mentors and guest speakers. After that, we collected data from different local and international resources including interviewing UEF International Student Coordinator, reading relevant research articles and online resources, and gathering feedback from international students, friends and colleagues who experienced short and long-term mobility,” team members Muhammad Khogali, Doctoral Researcher at the UEF Business School, and Katarzyna Wisniewska, a recent PhD graduate from UEF, describe the process.
Improved system based on personal experiences
The YUFE Challenge Team came up with the idea of BUS, the Buddy Up System. The system is based on the idea of experienced students helping new ones.
“Based on the collected data, it was evident that building a customer journey map will be essential to better understand the overall mobility process and build a desirable, feasible, and viable solution. This led us to explore a buddy system which is used by some universities to support students once they arrive but not much prior to their arrival in the host country. Accordingly, we decided to construct and drive our own improved BUS, the Buddy Up System, which offers pre-arrival assistance using digital communication tools to answer new students’ questions and support their immigration and accommodation needs. BUS also boosts students’ engagement through national celebrations and communication about social events, enabling them to meet new friends for language learning, skills development, or travel purposes in the host destination,” says Muhammad Khogali.
"I think it just happened naturally that we came up with trying to improve something that we have all experienced at some point during our international student journeys. I mean the buddy system we all knew or heard of. All the team members have had some experience studying abroad and have been trying to integrate into their host countries with varying degrees of success and trouble. We just would like to spare students who are just about to embark onto their own exchange and/or immigration adventure the hassle we went through ourselves," Katarzyna Wisniewska says.
Support from admission to graduation
The Buddy Up System would have many benefits: international students can have a smooth and stress-free arrival in their destination with the help of buddies; a buddy helps new students to make friends with the local students; language skills will improve with a local buddy; a buddy gives a helping hand with every-day issues like doctor’s or hair saloon appointments; also, a buddy might become a lifelong friend.
Instead of individual pairs of experienced and new students, the Buddy Up System would be based on organised groups. Also, a system creating a sense of integration is intended for all students in general: exchange students, first year students, international students, and any student interested in meeting new people.
The Buddy Up System would support students throughout their study period – from admission to pre-arrival and arrival, during the study semesters and the final semester – i.e., not only at the beginning.
Three different sectors of the Buddy Up System would include pre-arrival assistance organised by local students; a way of life sector with formal organisation and organised events; as well as meeting new people with informal organisation, language exchange and social media groups.
Activities would be supported by different digital and accessible communication systems. Digital components could include pre-arrival virtual meetings, a support website, and communication via social media.
The team’s proposal received a good review at an evaluation event on 28 February 2023. Furthermore, the proposed solution provides good ideas for the YUFE Friend programme which aims to find social contacts for international students.
