Continuity and Change of Internationalisation during the Pandemic

Based on 17 qualitative interviews with staff and international students conducted at Danish higher education institutions during the autumn 2020, this paper asks how the international classroom was shaped and explores the nature of the international student experience during the pandemic. Faced with the insecurity and restrictions on mobility caused by the pandemic, Danish higher education made a rapid shift to online and/or blended learning. This meant that the taken for granted learning and socialising spaces at campus suddenly were moved to online spaces involving a particular combination of proximity and distance, being at two places at once. For many international students, the aspect of relating to new people and places is a substantial purpose of studying abroad. The students voiced their frustration and distress with the new situation. For some, it was because they had disrupted their stay in Denmark and returned to their home country, others were frustrated by the cancelled activities at and beyond campus. While the interviewees, in particular the students, talk about change, we argue that the pandemic was also a period of continuity and that some of the online practices will continue through internationalisation at a distance in the future. By listening to both the students’ and staffs’ experiences of internationalisation during the pandemic, we are offered a comprehensive perspective that contributes empirical finding with an attempt to understand how new forms of internationalisation at a distance may affect the wider outcomes of internationalisation in the future.