Background: Student learning outcomes (SLOs) are typically written
and decided upon by faculty in institutions at a high level and do not change
rapidly or often. In contrast, the pace of globalisation, cultural knowledge,
trade agreements, regional political stabilities, technology and population
growth change constantly and, sometimes, at breathtaking speeds.
Purpose: At Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, an annual
short-term, research abroad non-credit program was created in 2012 as a core
component of the undergraduate research initiative that achieves learning
outcomes in a meaningful way. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/Methodology/Approach: In order to describe and analyse the
short-term research abroad activity, an instrumental case study design was
created. The instrumental case study was chosen as a means of allowing the
facilitators/authors to communicate how they attempted to ensure that the
program was educative. In order to determine if the program was, in fact,
educational and that it met its goal of being an effective research experience,
the authors utilised two additional research methods. The first was a document
analysis of the participant’s research artefacts. Each participant was required
to communicate their findings by writing a paper that was submitted for
publication to an applicable research journal.
Findings: The study found that an experiential education as a
pedagogical framework coupled with a short-term research abroad activity can
lead to a substantive educative experience, where the authors described and
analyzed attempts to ensure that the short-term research abroad program was
educative, it also describes the educational assessment findings which describe
what was found when the authors tested whether they, in fact, met this goal.
Research limitations/Implications: During the design phase of the
short-term research abroad program, the authors turned to experiential
education as a principle for how they would ensure that the program was
grounded in an acceptable educational theory. Experiential education is a
widely accepted educational practice used in experiences such as co-ops and
internships, study abroad, undergraduate research and service learning.
Practical Implications: To frame the short-term cultural research
abroad program as something from which students could learn, the authors
utilised the National Society of Experiential Education’s (2013) list of eight
principles of good practice. In order to safeguard that an activity is
educative, an assessment or an evaluation of a demonstrative artefact is
essential. In assessing the final artefact against a rubric or some other
non-biased or less biased criteria, an educator can ensure that the student has
gained new knowledge in the form of student learning outcomes (SLOs). In
addition, the educator can use the results of this assessment to modify many
different aspects of the experience, ranging from the timing, the modality, the
pre-work, and even the learning outcomes themselves.
Social Implications: As the need for global citizenship and a
globally developed workforce increases, the need for variants of the
traditional semester abroad study will increase. While this study did set out
to research the attainment of a meaningful study abroad experience based on
duration, it did confirm that students did successfully attain SLOs in a
structured, non-credit, short-term study abroad experience. Given the financial
and curriculum inflexibility of some students, Universities and faculty could
achieve attainment of research-based, program-agnostic SLOs by offering
short-term study abroad alternatives to the traditional semester or year-long
experiences. With graduates looking to enter the job market where businesses
are more globalised and executives’ recognition of a need for more
international experience, carefully constructed short-term study abroad
programs are meaningful avenues to build those credentials.
Originality/Value: Such offerings can be constructed as customised
experiences to achieve highly integrated skills across all degree programs.
Author(s)
Details
Kelly
George
Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA.
Aaron
Clevenger
Department of International Programs, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA.
Please see the book here:- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/lleru/v6/2180
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