The transition into academic life for Chinese students coming to Australia
can be difficult as they navigate different cultural, social, and educational
norms. As a group of two academics from Australia and one from China, we
were interested in exploring ways students from China could best be
supported prior to leaving their country in readiness for academic life in
Australia. As an international partnership, we examined transition issues for Chinese students by focussing on building students’ peer learning partnerships, prior to their departure from China to Australia. Chinese
students in China were paired up with students in Australia for a weekly
online session via Skype discussing culture and university-related topics. In
order to direct the conversations, weekly questions were developed for each
session. Students and staff had access to a learning management platform to
share information and exchange ideas. The impact on both Australian and
Chinese students was measured qualitatively through thematic analysis of
student Skype conversations, reflections, and open-ended survey questions,
and quantitatively through multiple choice survey questions. The main
finding for this paper, which focuses on the quantitative data, was that this
pre-departure interaction alerted Chinese students in China to their English
language limitations and motivated them to do further English language
learning prior to and once they had arrived in Australia. The quantitative data also pointed to the kinds of information which students wanted to know prior to coming to Australia which in some cases was different from what
had been anticipated by the researchers.