What do international students, technology, and employment have in common?
ApplyBoard
Empowering students around the world to study abroad and access the best education.
“Connected: International Students, Technology & Employment”, a symposium and roundtable discussion hosted by ApplyBoard and partner institution SAIT happened in Calgary on March 9th. Over 50 participants gathered in person in Calgary, Alberta, with an additional 25 joining virtually. Institutional representatives, including Presidents, Registrars, Deans and Recruitment and Admissions Managers, as well as industry and government representatives gathered to share experiences with ApplyBoard and ApplyProof technologies, and perspectives on work-integrated learning, international student retention, and post-graduation success.
ApplyProof Partner Reports and Updates
Representatives from most of the nearly 50 ApplyProof partners from across Canada participated. These institutions are ahead of the curve on ensuring the integrity of their international admissions documents, and their students’ security.?
MacEwan University’s Dave Kimmel, Team Lead IT Application Services, and Erin Wight, Director of MacEwan International complimented the security measures that ApplyProof adds to their admissions documents and the improvement that it made on their manual processes. SAIT’s Deanne Colbourne, Project Manager, and Sinead Brady, Business Analyst, worked with ApplyProof to implement an API integration for SAIT to improve the international applicant experience and ensure stakeholders are able to verify the credibility of their applicants. Both institutions reported that the implementation process was made more efficient as ApplyProof’s engineering team handled much of the work involved in API integration.
ApplyBoard Technology Reports
ApplyBoard’s suite of products for schools are geared toward making the international enrollment funnel more effective and strategic. Mount Royal University needed more insight into enrollment trends to better understand where to make deeper efforts in the admissions cycle. Shea Ellingham, Director, Admissions & Recruitment, and Yukiko Dendy, International Strategies Consultant, shared that they did a deep dive with the ApplySolutions insights dashboard and were able to make strategic decisions based on clear data.?
Algoma University has accomplished rapid growth in the last 5 years and chose to implement ApplyBoard’s suite of products to ensure efficiencies in their processes and their enrollment strategies. Brent Krmpotich, Director, Student Recruitment & Strategic Enrolment, reported on Algoma’s API implementation of several ApplyBoard solutions. He indicated that institutions with a growing international student population must do an inventory of their processes, their strategy, and consider how technology can positively impact the international student experience from day one. In his words,?“We decided that it was important for us to leverage ApplyBoard’s resources, technology and people to help us manage rapid international enrolment growth.”
领英推荐
Roundtable with Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development
Labour shortages across Canada are here to stay for the medium term, and global talent is vital across all sectors. Attracting and retaining global talent is top-of-mind for Canadian institutions and government agencies. Barbara Haidn, Senior Advisor, Policy and Partnership at the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development facilitated the roundtable around strategies to attract international student talent that meets market needs, supporting their retention post-graduation and how government policies might be able to support post-secondary institutions’ efforts.
Representatives presented on aspects of their institution’s?and company’s response to work-integrated learning and supporting the retention of international students post-graduation.
Representatives from SAIT & MacEwan discussed the impacts on retention that work-integrated learning has: the sooner that international students can build industry connections and add skills and experiences to their resumes, the better prepared they will be for the workforce. NAIT took the lead on indicating a particular policy gap with IRCC’s rules regarding apprenticeships. The current rules impede international students from securing employment in skilled trades, and likewise inhibits the possibility of meeting key labour market needs with highly educated and skilled international students.?
From the perspective of Canada’s leading Artificial Intelligence company, AltaML, Nicole Janssen shared that in order to maintain Canada’s global edge in AI, we need to be able to recruit, train and retain top talent from around the world. AltaML’s AI Lab internship program, which is mostly composed of international students, enables them to build industry connections, and contribute to the expert workforce.
“There should be more talk between government, institutions and service providers around international education. Government should revisit the international strategy and ask institutions to revisit their academic strategies to align with international recruitment. It seems from the meeting that as institutions we’re all thinking in the same way and wondering about the same problems around international education/recruitment.”
Event feedback from anonymous participant.
ApplyBoard and the ApplyProof team are happy to have been able to convene the symposium and roundtable. Our seat at the nexus of institutions, government, industry, and international students is unique and we look forward to providing such opportunities for dialogue in the future.