Interesting Study Abroad Research

Lest it seem like my entire time in DC was devoted solely to seeing friends and shopping, I will now talk a bit about the actual conference. My boss and I were attending the International Education Programs Services (IEPS) International Education Forum, which is run by the governmental organization that runs Title VI programs and grants. Our department is a designated National Resource Center (NRC) on East Asia, and many of our programs are run on Title VI money, so my boss goes to this conference every year.

She warned me that not much of it might seem very useful to me, since the conference predominantly focuses on NRC outreach services, but this time they had several sessions on study abroad programs and assessment. Since probably at least half of my job involves working with a study abroad program, this turned out to be quite interesting, at least the morning session. The moderator was from CIEE, the group that runs the study abroad program I went on in Chile. He and the other panel members brought up a lot of very interesting points about all the variables that can make study abroad programs very different from one another. For instance, there are direct enrollment programs, in which students are directly enrolled into a local university with native speakers in the same classes. (This is the kind of program I was on in Chile.) Then there are also “island” programs, in which the study abroad students all take classes together in the foreign country, often with an instructor from their home country and with classes in both their native language and the target language. (This is the kind of program I work for now.)

In addition, they mentioned that aside from language instruction, study abroad programs are known for inculcating “intercultural skills” in the students. Intercultural skills are seen as quite desireable by college presidents and large business CEOs, but as far as assessment of how well study abroad programs teach them, they are incredibly ill-defined. The panel speakers were all working on ways to define these skills, which would help greatly in informing non-language university faculty and departments about how studying abroad would benefit their students, too. In the process of defining the skills, they are also learning to assess them and quantify them. There have been some interesting results thus far, the most interesting of which seems to be that male students simply do not learn intercultural skills through the study abroad experience they way female students do. The moderator, who worked on the study with that finding, posits that this may mean that study abroad programs may need to have directors on site who are especially skilled in guiding students through the process of getting the most out of their study abroad experience, as opposed to simply making sure the students are enrolled in classes and get appropriate care when sick.

The whole conference made me realize that there is a lot of work to be done related to the topic of study abroad, beyond my current position of program coordinator or that of student advisor. Possible real career? Maybe!