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International students with low academic English proficiency face challenges with reading their course materials and writing assignments. Their challenges are exacerbated during remote learning, as they remain in their home countries, immersed in their home languages, which may be quite distant from academic English. To investigate the effects of culturally responsive pedagogy for international students online, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from a learner-driven, instructor-facilitated (LeD-InF) support program at a large university in southern Ontario. This fully online delivery of the Reading and Writing Excellence (RWE) program was re-envisioned from a long-running co-curricular program that addressed students' academic English reading, writing, and critical thinking needs. Among eight groups (with the total enrolment of 154) in the Fall 2020 academic term cycle and nine groups (with the total enrolment of 226) in the Winter 2021 academic term cycle of the online RWE program, the intervention groups that were additionally supported with culturally responsive pedagogy had the highest volume of writing output and engagement metrics among all groups. The text data (of student voices and experiences) also reinforces the efficacy of culturally responsive pedagogy in facilitating student experience, constructing identities, promoting learner agency, increasing satisfaction, improving students' perceptions of learning, and realizing transformative inclusivity.

Socializing students to Academic Integrity (AI) in the face of great cultural, linguistic and socioeconomic diversity in the student population in higher education calls for innovative strategies that are aligned with equity, diversity and inclusion principles. Through a mixed method of quantitative analysis of learner engagement data from the Learning Management System (LMS) and analysis of anonymous evaluation survey, along with thematic analysis of students' open-ended responses in the evaluation survey, the authors explored how students responded to AI Socialization during a 4-week non-credit, online co-curricular program called 'Reading and Writing Excellence' (RWE). Nine groups of undergraduate students (N=182) from 34 disciplines in different global locations during the COVID-19 pandemic were introduced to a curated set of AI online resources. Through a learner-driven, instructor-facilitated approach the AI Socialization also engaged students in language development and empowered them to communicate about their disciplinary course topics through written journal entries, receiving instructor feedback that increased their cultural and linguistic capital for further academic writing. This approach led to a high volume of written output (on average 6064 words per student written over a 4-week period). Nonparametric ANOVA was used to establish that low-proficiency students were able to produce as much written output as their more proficient peers. Survey results for various aspects important to academic integrity show students' self-perception of readiness for academic writing: paraphrasing and summarizing (92%); organization of ideas (92%); critical thinking (93%); logic/argument (92%). Insights gained about educative engagement, language development and learner empowerment that can help students from diverse backgrounds to avoid Academic Integrity Violations (AIVs) and gain transformative access and success in higher education are incorporated into a set of recommendations that are applicable to a wide range of teaching contexts.