Knowing and responding to your students’ diverse needs.
Contextual Background
I teach Intro to Graphic Branding and Identity where we explore the cultural relevance of branding within Zeitgeist to an increasingly international cohort. Using western-focused and often old case studies to support teaching points can prop up cultural, academic and linguistic barriers, which can be challenging for our international students, who are predominantly from mainland China.
Evaluation
For this particular session I focused on Meme culture in an effort to be more culturally relevant and capture the Zeitgeist effectively in a participatory manner – an image is worth a thousand words. Qualitative research on international students in UK higher education suggests that memes operate as boundary objects, fostering belonging while still demanding shared cultural understanding between groups (Zhang, Zhao & Merritt, 2025).
I curated a selection of global, diverse memes to illustrate their brief history, intentions and effectiveness. When demonstrating memes as weapons of communication, I shared the rice bunny meme – a coded message for the #Metoo movement in China, exposing sexual harassment on social media, avoiding censorship. It was an eureka moment in the studio – students responded and engaged very well, recognised and related with this meme. For the first time international students were the ones to contextualise this meme to home students who were not familiar with it. This experience sparked discussion, engagement and helped students overcome language and cultural barriers.
Moving forwards
Participatory content: Drawing on the inherently participatory nature of memes, I have taken a more critical and reflective approach to my teaching practice, learning materials, and content design in order to foster greater inclusivity, participation, and knowledge retention. Memes have been intentionally incorporated into teaching materials not simply as humorous elements, but as cultural artefacts that support processes of cultural adaptation, identity formation, and shared meaning-making (Zhang, Zhao & Merritt, 2025).
Meme-making has also been formalised as a structured learning activity, enabling students to actively translate concepts into culturally resonant visual–verbal forms. This approach has evidently enhanced student engagement and encouraged reflective discussion during sessions. As digital culture artefacts, memes can operate as effective pedagogical tools that extend beyond humour, supporting comprehension, memory, and participation among diverse learners (Tidy et al., 2024).
Inclusive language: How can we also make language more inclusive and participatory? Studies in academic language pedagogy show that simply simplifying content is not suffice for inclusion – students also need explicit support to access and use the specialised language of the discipline, including professional terminology and jargon (Schleppegrell & O’Hallaron, 2011). We must therefore encourage students to use industry vernacular and jargon more confidently. In addition to supporting students’ use of industry-specific terminology, I consciously address English-specific expressions and idioms used during teaching sessions. Drawing on my experience as a speaker of English as a second language, I recognise that such expressions can be opaque yet are integral to how meaning, tone, and nuance are conveyed in professional contexts. Rather than removing or over-simplifying this language, my approach is to make it explicit: unpacking meanings, contexts, and connotations so that students are empowered to develop their own linguistic competence (Dafouz & Smit, 2022).
This approach is particularly important within the course, where students are required to produce both visual and verbal identities. The latter demands a sensitivity to tone of voice in writing, as language functions not only as a vehicle for clarity but also as a carrier of character, attitude, and intent. While being universally understood is essential, preserving the texture and flavour of language is equally important in enabling students to communicate with confidence and authenticity within creative and professional settings.
References
Dafouz, E. and Smit, U. (2022) ‘Towards multilingualism in English-medium higher education: a student perspective’, Journal of English-Medium Instruction, 1(1), pp. 29–47. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358036917_Towards_multilingualism_in_English-medium_higher_education_A_student_perspective ([Accessed 18 February 2026].
Mukherjee, A. & Mukherjee, S., 2025. LOL in the Classroom: Internet Memes as Multimodal Tools for Language Teaching. Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change, 10(3), pp.834–845. Available at: https://jcasc.com/index.php/jcasc/article/view/2507 [Accessed 14 February 2026].
Schleppegrell, M.J. and O’Hallaron, C.L. (2011) ‘Teaching academic language in L2 secondary settings’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, pp. 3–18. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/7029C531DABBB960E2C352E46FA6575C/S0267190511000067a.pdf [Accessed: 14 February 2026].
Tidy, H., Bolton-King, R. S., Croxton, R., et al. (2024). Enhancing the student learning experience through memes. Science & Justice, 64(3), 280-288.
Teaching reading comprehension and vocabulary using memes (2025) Frontiers in Education. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2025.1467522/full [Accessed: 18 February 2026]
Zhang, Y., Zhao, S. & Merritt, K. (2025) ‘“Meme‑ing” across cultures: Understanding how non‑EU international students in the UK use internet memes for cultural adaptation and identity’, Behavioral Sciences (Basel), 15(5), p. 693. Available at: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12109331/ [Accessed: 14 February 2026]