Over the last decade the number of students studying abroad has increased 150% to more than a quarter of a million. The programs in which these students participate are no longer seen as simply a campus extension of academic exercise, but as an overall educational experience that develops holistic life skills in the participants. Through their…

Foreign language proficiency and learning are crucial parts of many study abroad programs; especially those whose host culture language is different than that of the native language of students electing to study in them. Indeed, how a program organizes itself regarding pre-departure language proficiency requirements, on site language learning, and…

Study abroad is generally recognized as a transformational experience for university students to help prepare them to be what many in higher education are now calling "global citizens." Responding to the need to prepare citizens for the interconnected global world of the 21st century, K-12 educators recently established new standards and…

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…

Research shows that study abroad experience affects professional qualifications. It is evident that employers value the skills and knowledge potentially gained from study abroad and that these competencies are transferable on the job. Nearly all known research lacks a longitudinal component. Of the few studies that focus on long-term outcomes,…

Study abroad (SA) is one of the flagship offerings among United States higher education institutions. Approximately 220,000 students studied abroad in the 2005/2006 academic year, 52.8% of whom studied on programs that lasted eight weeks or less. The effect of these short-term programs on second language development has been little investigated,…

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…

Study abroad is an expensive, resource intensive activity for both students and their home institution. With an estimated 200,000 American students studying abroad in 2006, and an annual growth rate of eight percent, program administrators and international scholars are increasingly being asked to document the learning outcomes associated with…

Study abroad is a holistic educational experience that affords participants opportunities to develop new academic interests, participate in academic internships, establish friendships with host country nationals, explore a new culture, expand their worldview and sense of self, as well as improve their target language skills. This article aims to…

The Kelley School of Business (KSB) at Indiana University (IU) recognized early the benefit of an international experience for its students. (KSB defines an international experience as consisting of at least 6 weeks outside the U.S., and including an academic component.) To assess the impact of business students' international experience during…

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…

International educators in general, and study abroad advisors in particular, have recognized for many years that United States college students returning from studying abroad show positive changes. According to their impressionistic perceptions, international educators often identify improvements in terms of concern about international affairs,…

The presence of international students in universities has several benefits for the economies of students' countries of origin, the host country's economy, and international and domestic students themselves. Although increasing the number of international students may be a desirable objective, figures analyzed by the Canadian Bureau of…

Globalization is here to stay and companies across the world are realizing the importance of having employees with a global mindset. As companies cut costs, many provide little or no on-the-job training to hone employees' cross-border skills. It is thus the task of colleges and universities to prepare students to function and excel in the new and…

Higher education in general and study abroad programming in particular are hardly strangers to stringent demands for accountability. What is new to higher education and to study abroad is the demand for accountability in terms of measurable student learning outcomes. This article is a first report from a system-wide initiative to document learning…