Focus on relationships and strengths: Engaging international learners online

The shift to online courses during the global COVID-19 pandemic highlighted that teaching and learning online is an evolving practice for both students and educators. Notably, for international students, challenges with learning online can be more pronounced, as they are also adapting to cultures of their host country and expectations from their post-secondary institutions, while attempting to forge connections with their domestic peers. This paper describes several notable pedagogical interventions implemented by the author in her Canadian-based, online, asynchronous courses that have a high number of international students. These include repurposing office hours, reporting on student feedback, and incorporating Indigenous Ways of Knowing in the course content. Course evaluations and student testimonials are featured to demonstrate the effectiveness of these interventions in enhancing faculty-student relationships, student engagement, and individual and collective learning. Practical strategies that encourage international students to integrate life experiences into the curriculum are offered to help educators consider how they, in their own disciplines and teaching contexts, can stimulate curiosity and leverage students’ prior knowledge