What is it about?
Study abroad is a high-impact educational practice that is ideally suited for students eager to seek out adventure and a willingness to learn about oneself, by immersion in a different culture. While pre-travel orientations can assist students in program preparations, e.g., travel logistics, cultural acclimatization, and program fit with students' goals, the efficacy of such training can be unclear and the path for improvement uncharted without reflection and/or feedback.
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Why is it important?
This learning-by-doing survey, completed by over 200 students preparing for study abroad, provides information on how to prepare for study abroad as well as data on students’ understanding of host-country logistics, awareness of culture-specific practices, recognition of cultural symbols, and program fit with students’ goals. Such a survey allows for the design of study-abroad orientations for specific student audiences based on gender, discipline and study-abroad requirements.
Perspectives
Implementing a pre-departure assessment as an instructional tool that can stimulate reflection and identify discipline- and gender-specific learning approaches for an improved study-abroad experience.
Professor Paul W Pare
Texas Tech University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evaluating pretravel study-abroad instruction utilizing curricular intervention and customized assessment, Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education, October 2022, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/sar.21008.vas.
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