Coventry University understands that the acquisition of English language capability is a strategic gateway to study access and an essential foundation for student success. Whilst we have dedicated English for Academic Purposes staff in China, to support specific programmes delivered in-country, we have not provided in-country pre-sessional English to facilitate study in the UK since 2014 – and were aware it was an increasing barrier to enabling our international vision – the onset of Covid also meant that the large English testing operation we ran through our offices in China was unable to provide students with the option to certify their levels of ability in order to begin their student journey.
Oxford International presented us with proposals to address both of these deficiencies – promising rapid, flexible, high-quality development of tailored solutions – to be created in partnership with our academic and professional services staff on the ground in China. Oxford International has proved to be a proactive and dynamic partner to work with; engaging with individuals at all levels and across all relevant functions and in multiple time zones in order to ensure true collaboration in terms of delivery – so institutional leaders in the Uk and China, course developers, and administrators were all onboarded and bought in from the beginning and continued to support despite the many challenges that higher education staff are currently facing.
As the academic lead, I can say it was an absolute pleasure to work with such a professional and committed group of people – they believe in student-centred and educationally led solutions. The online mode was operationalised as a tool to support our focus on high-quality programmes and relevant outcomes – not held up as a panacea that would magically solve all problems. We have as a result developed in record time a robust, relevant, and rigorous online English language test that is carefully calibrated against the very successful widely employed Coventry University English Test – giving internal stakeholders confidence about the competencies of the students.
Professor John Fowler
Coventry University
Assistant Professor in EAP & Transnational Education
Course Director| CU Sino-UK Programme
Project Lead|In-country PSE
