While urban settlements have been an integral part of human life for millennia, cities today are arguably at the heart of survival on, and of, this planet. More than half of the world's population now lives in cities, and urban centers present some of the greatest social and environmental challenges of their time. Though students may study in or…

Creating first hand experiences of urban cultures that focus on reflection and leave profound impressions on students while providing the framing for future cycles of experiential learning is a complex and difficult dynamic to navigate. The way urban manifestations of a different culture are directly experienced varies depending on the…

Western Europe has been constructed in the field of education abroad as a "traditional" location: in some sense or another that label is used to suggest that it has a kind of static or dormant significance. In reality, Western Europe is an enormously rich location for study abroad precisely because it is a fluid learning environment that contains…

In international education the conventional wisdom, supported by research, is that more contact with a host culture yields better results for study abroad students. Such exposure to a foreign culture is seen as the "raison d'etre" for study abroad: the mechanism provoking students to challenge their ethnocentric notions and move toward a more…

Study abroad has become, at least rhetorically, a core element in U.S. post-secondary education. For those who practice study abroad and have dedicated themselves to leading students, managing programs, or theorizing the role of study abroad in its relationship to the academy generally, the meaning of their work is powerfully shaped by rhetorical…

Universal Design provides a framework to effectively increase the number of students studying abroad by creating and expanding supportive environments designed to meet a wide range of student needs. While the concept of Universal Design originated with the needs of students with disabilities, its value and application extend to a much wider…

Judging from the recent surge in research on outcomes assessment, many study abroad offices rely on quantitative surveys and measures to collect student outcomes data. This paper presents a multidimensional, qualitative approach to data collection. This approach makes qualitative data easy to collect and encourages students to reflect and…

Over the past fifteen years, at least a dozen articles have appeared in the management and marketing literature describing and supporting international study tours as valuable educational experiences. These articles, however, have focused primarily on the design and implementation of such tours, with minimal emphasis given to outcome assessments…

Constructivist learning theory holds that "learning consists less in recording information than in interpreting it. To interpret what is received and is attended to, the learner must personally construct meaning for it." Unfortunately, opportunities for interpreting conceptual information are often lacking in classroom environments--particularly…

Growth in US education abroad has been consistently strong for the past decade, surpassing 9 percent annually. Within the field of education abroad, this growth is both exciting and alarming. Education abroad helps students change learning structures, learn new paradigms and become more complex individuals. If a student's structures are not ready…

Academic officers at U.S. colleges and universities face a number of important decisions regarding how credits and grades earned overseas as part of a study abroad program should be incorporated into students' home academic records. The purpose of this article is to take a closer look at the way grades are handled at home institutions and the way…