Only one way to be a world-class university? Comparative analysis on the texts and visual images on websites of universities in China and South Korea

Mismatched expectations of internationalisation: Lived experiences of Chinese returnee academics in an international joint university

“…Most participants first considered working in the West as a natural step (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1979), and when they returned to China for practical reasons, XJTLU was constructed as the “least-worst” option as an internationalised institution was thought to suit returnees’ habitus, wherein they were supposed to be like “fish in water” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 127). Participants’ lived experiences sometimes contradicted their expectations, especially when it came to EMI practises, the reasons are twofold: 1) their expectations were based on website contents which intend to attract target audiences (Bae et al, 2021) instead of potential employees; 2) their expectations were based on core - policy and requirements, without taking the extension - “discretionary spaces” (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010, p. 126) into their decision-making process. Their “false anticipation” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 62) inspired them to consider what “internationalisation” means to them and XJTLU, and they negotiated these issues through a “habitus as repertoire” approach.…”

“…(Long) I had a look at the curriculum design and the departmental atmosphere, I thought it is an internationalised setting. (Zheng) However, it is risky to rely on website to forecast experiences, because university websites are primarily used to communicate with their target audience (Bae et al, 2021), instead of potential employees. Similarly, several participants were initially attracted to "100% EMI" teaching policy outlined on the university website.…”

Usability of University Websites as Information Sources: A Review and Synthesis Based on 2021 Publications Indexed in Scopus Database

“…Bae et al [3] examined the websites of four Chinese and South Korean colleges that aspire to be world-class. They looked at how these colleges present themselves on their websites using text and visual representations.…”

“…The University website (UW) has been a focus of studies in the literature because of the importance of the university's identities and images that can be portrayed to the rest of the world on its websites [2]. Given the Internet's pervasiveness in many aspects of life, the UWs are an effective tool for building an institutional image and engaging with internal and external customers [3]. A UW can serve as a portal for information, products, and services offered by the institution.…”

“…UWs had been well investigated for improvement of usability for all users in general [3,5,8,[10][11][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], such as students-lectures [4,13,25], people with disabilities [26], and even during the pandemic time [26][27][28][29]. However, there has been no holistic understanding and general trends based on the above literature on UW.…”