A small private university in Canada has a pathway initiative offering international students the opportunity to start their degrees in their home countries at facilitated academic resource (FAR) Centres. In this learning format, students engage with the course content asynchronously, and once a week, a cohort of learners meet virtually with a facilitator. Some international students at these FAR Centres struggled to meet the university’s academic requirements due to their below-average English proficiency, thus impacting their academic performance. Key findings include facilitators acting as mediators and advocates, communicating learners’ challenges to instructors and providing creative solutions to resolve them. FAR Centre’s international students face challenges such as adapting to the Canadian educational system, achieving high academic expectations in a non-native language, and experiencing a distant instructor-student relationship due to asynchronous learning. Such a facilitation method allowed facilitators and learners to develop an emotional connection grounded in trust, positively affecting the students’ motivation, engagement, and performance. In doing so, facilitators nurtured a culturally inclusive learning environment, increasing students’ sense of belonging and encouraging learners to share their perspectives without the fear of being judged by one another or the facilitator.
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