Across BC and Canada as a whole, institutions are adapting to a rapidly shifting landscape when it comes to the internationalization of higher education. Some argue that this moment provides an opportunity to meaningfully address imperatives and longstanding issues that require comprehensive responses by educators and administrators alike. Many institutions in BC have sought to understand both the underlying reasons for and how to appropriately respond to low student ratings related to diversity experiences in the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE). To deepen our understanding of this issue, our research team has brought those results into conversation with student-generated narrative data focused on lived experiences of inclusion and intercultural learning.

We will share the emerging themes of a large-scale mixed methods study undertaken in 2023-24, which explored student stories (n=389) and survey responses (n=3,257). Additional demographic data allowed for analysis of variance between student groups (domestic, international, Indigenous; field of study). We will present an overview of qualitative themes related to Engagement, Impact, and Barriers and a preliminary analysis of the influence of student demographics on their experiences of diversity, inclusion, and intercultural learning. Integrating quantitative, qualitative and demographic analysis of survey responses reveals numerous considerations for educators and administrators to reflect on curriculum, pedagogy, policy, and practice that may counter power dynamics and polarizing ideologies going forward. It also provides a model for enriching existing data in ways that can meaningfully inform strategic planning and institutional responsiveness to shifting global, national, and local contexts.