Abstract:

The growth of international mobility students brings new challenges to higher education institutions (HEIs), as their pursuit of quality and accessibility of education extends to a much larger student audience. In this study we state that the process of admission is the most important procedure to make higher education more accessible for international students, while it can also benefit the quality of their subsequent studies. However, this process is not developed enough yet to be comfortable for both the applicants and the HEIs. We argue that technology enhanced assessment (TEA) might be a solution to the majority of the challenges in the international students' entrance assessment process. Thus, the aim of the research is to identify the applicability of TEA for the international students' selection and to analyse its advantages and disadvantages.

The study uncovers the challenges in the procedure of entrance assessment of international students stated by a range of HEIs and analyses the possibility and prospects of applying TEA to enhance international mobility. The study demonstrates that TEA as a tool of selection allows to reduce costs significantly both for the HEI and for the applicant, to boost the quality of international candidates and to widen the education accessibility. The study also identifies the types of TEA best applicable for the cases under examination.

Justifying the significance of the research, we have identified and described the following problems in the process of entrance assessment of international students: high individual and organizational expenses, accessibility restrictions, migration problems, quality assessment problems, the problem of equality between the international and the domestic students during the selection. We affirm that a large part of these problems may be resolved with the use of such TEA technologies as data forensics, online remote proctoring, e-authentication. As a conclusion, we define the prospects of TEA for positive changes in the international applicants' selection process.

Keywords:

Technology enhanced assessment, entrance examination, international students, higher education, access to education.