By signing the ‘Code of conduct International Student in Higher Education,’ educational institutions took on the commitment to adequately provide international students with information about the curriculum and services offered, among other things. The so-called National Commission (LC) conducts annual surveys in order to determine how successful institutions are at this information provision, and subsequently publishes a report with its findings (see Periodic Survey into the provision of information 2021). Higher education institutions are selected semi-randomly each year for that purpose, which means that an institution will never be subjected to an evaluation two years in a row.

This year, TU/e, the VU and Inholland were among the six institutions selected for an assessment of their information provision. Maarten van den Dungen of the Communication Expertise Center says that the LC didn’t necessarily carry out a comparative study, but that it evaluated each website based on several criteria. “That is why a comparison with best practices is included only at the very end,” Van den Dungen says. TU/e attained a high best practice score in three of four categories.

Corona communication

The survey’s outcome is very valuable to the CEC, Van den Dungen says, “especially when it comes to corona communication. Many of the design choices we made regarding corona communication were confirmed as being valuable and wise.” For example, the report particularly praises TU/e’s clear corona roadmap.

“In addition, we made decisions during the website’s redesign process, starting in 2018, with the aim of communicating clearly and transparently to students and prospective students,” Van den Dungen says. “These too have been confirmed by this survey. Everyone within TU/e has an opinion of our website because it is an important means of communication to all of us, that is why it’s nice to also receive some external validation now and then.”

Improvements

Van den Dungen says that some improvements have already been carried out at this point, based on the findings in the LC report. “There was a lack of clarity regarding the accreditation status of programs on the university’s recruitment pages, for example. Visitors to the site were referred to the Accreditation Organization of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO), but a program’s current accreditation status wasn’t explicitly mentioned. That led to an immediate improvement. The report also offers suggestions and identifies other institutions’ strong points, as a result of which we’ve entered into an internal discussion on possible improvements in the slightly longer term.”

The fact that the research commission focuses primarily on information provision to international students doesn’t cause a problem when it comes to Dutch (prospective) students, Van den Dungen believes. “That’s because our English-language site is also used by a large number of Dutch native speakers. And since our university’s language policy continues to focus on the adoption of English as the working language, this survey also tells us more and more about how our website works for all our students.”