Edinburgh Napier University

  Higher education institutions continue to see an increasing number of international students who bring with them diverse forms of assessment ‘literacies’ acquired from previous sociocultural and educational contexts. This presentation explores the experiences 15 international postgraduate students with a view to making recommendations that go beyond the deficit perspective –a view that tends to portray international students as having difficulties with academic writing, language proficiency and critical thinking and academic integrity.

Rich Pictures, a visual method, was employed to collect data that trigger “thoughts, emotions and feelings which were implicit and hard to convey” and “make understanding more tangible”. Findings indicate: a strong link between culture and ‘digital capital’; and the students’ need for emotional support in addition to the written feedback. Implications of these findings for ENU will be discussed.