Interventions
We’ll be hearing a lot at the November Conference in Seville about the importance of intervening in student learning abroad. The titles of many of the workshops and sessions underline just how much study abroad professionals have come to understand that their efforts can and do influence student learning—before, during, and after the weeks or months their students spend abroad. Three of the session titles call attention to strategies for “Maximizing” student learning. The word “learning” itself figures prominently in a number of titles, with strong verbs highlighting the active nature of various forms of intervention: “Catalyzing Student Reflection,” “Creating New Opportunities,” “Training for Active Learning.” Analysis is presented as an active strategy: learning is “Accelerated” through the “Facilitated Analysis of Cultural Spaces.” Intervention in student learning weaves throughout the Conference program: Interactive skills can be “Developed,” goals can be “Identified,” success can be “Measured,” and publishing with students can “Build Learning Self-Awareness.”
Against this chorus of support for actively involving ourselves in student learning, it’s useful to recall that a fair number of us haven’t always been interventionists. In fact, a lot of us used to be isolationists where student learning was concerned. Remember, not so long ago, when it was more or less assumed that students abroad learned just fine when left to their own devices? If they managed to learn on their home campuses, why wouldn’t they continue to learn when they were in another country—especially if they were academically strong, i.e. getting good grades at home? As a former card-carrying member of what used to be affectionately known as “The Direct Enrollment Mafia,” I once delivered a paper at a NAFSA conference arguing that the optimum way for students to learn abroad was through direct enrollment at a host university—period. I argued the corollary position that no home campus faculty member or study abroad advisor ought to accompany, or for that matter, even spend much time on-site with students since his or her presence would hinder student cultural integration. I remember a particularly telling phrase from that presentation: a home campus faculty member on-site would simply interfere, acting as “a sort of opaque filter that got between a student and his or her direct, unmediated experience of the host culture.”
Experience has brought me to what I think is a more nuanced view. We’ve all known students who have learned through direct enrollment at universities abroad. These are the students with the requisite second language proficiency, the ones who creatively seek out opportunities to engage with the local culture and adapt well to the challenges of living and learning in another culture. They’re the admirably self-sufficient learners who seem to perform well in any environment. I have to say, though, that I’ve seen fewer of these U.S. students abroad than I have those others who show little curiosity about the new and different, and a lack of interest in cultural engagement. Unreflective and unaware, these are the students who don’t cope well when left to their own devices. Avoiding meaningful contact with locals, traveling through the experience in groups of other withdrawn and culturally marginalized U.S. students, using English whenever possible, and complaining about the inferior teaching: too many of our students fit the profile because they simply don’t know how to go about learning in a different culture.
Like many of you, I’ve come to believe that most students benefit from different types of intervention. In fact, I think a strong case can be made that, in the absence of active intervention in their learning, most U.S. students just don’t learn effectively while abroad. They need us to actively intervene. The debate has shifted a long way from where it was not so long ago. Most of us—all the presenters who are delivering those “maximizing learning” workshops and sessions at the Conference, and many others—are no longer arguing about whether students do or don’t need active interventions. Now we’re convinced that they do, and we’re sharing and urging one form or another of active intervention that we’ve found effective in supporting and promoting student learning. We’ve come to focus on what it is that we want and expect our students to get out of studying abroad, rather than simply trying to figure out how to get increasing numbers of them out of the U.S. We’ve reached the point where we no longer assume that our students will somehow learn…something…while they’re abroad. We understand that the way we organize their experiences, the sorts of activities, courses, and facilities we provide for them, will have a significant impact on what, and to what extent, they learn.
Summer is the season for taking stock, a time to think back on the previous year while making plans for the year to come. As I’ve been reviewing the notes I made during visits to a number of our Study Centers this past year, I’ve been struck, again and again, by the clear connection I observed on-site between well-designed and -delivered interventions, on the one hand, and engaged and curious students on the other. Many of the specific interventions in Prague, Seville, Hyderabad, Paris, Rennes, Santo Domingo, and Santiago were creative and effective. However, I won’t be focusing today on the courses, activities, and exercises that our resident staff are delivering in those locations—we’ll be hearing a lot about specific interventions from a variety of people at the Conference. What I’ll offer today are my reflections about two conditions that I believe are necessary if intervention in student learning abroad is to be effective.
First, when we talk about intervening, we’re clearly talking about being learner-centered. And if that over-used term means anything, it means focusing squarely on learning outcomes—on the knowledge, skills, perceptions, values, and anything else we want students to get out of the experience of studying abroad. It means that in designing programs, we need to start by identifying the learning objectives we want students to achieve, and only then proceed to identifying the courses, activities, and exercises we organize on their behalf. This is clearly a departure from the way that study abroad programs have traditionally been developed. Most existing programs focus all too little on what it is that students are supposed to get out of them. Faculty and advisors on home campuses do of course expect students to do well in the courses they enroll in abroad. However, as most of us are fond of saying, we expect students to get more out of studying abroad than simply doing well in their courses.
Don’t we really want them to learn, and to learn in ways that they won’t if they stay at home? If not, what is it we’re talking about when we tell people that the value of study abroad isn’t only in the courses the students take, but in the “holistic learning” they engage in while abroad? What I’ve seen during my site visits this past year is that the chances that students will in fact learn differently than at home are greatly increased when we identify what we want and expect them to learn—well before we send them abroad. We also need to get the students to engage in this business of taking learning goals seriously. Here again, what I saw this past year was convincing. Resident staff who require students to identify their own learning goals as soon as the program begins, and who meet with students thereafter to review the goals and help them reflect on their own learning, make it much more likely that they will in fact meet their goals.
That last point—the importance of meeting with students beyond the orientation period to review and adjust their goals and behavior—brings me to the second condition that I believe needs to be met. Put simply: intervention, if it’s to be effective, cannot be a one-shot deal. We need to continue to intervene actively in student learning throughout the program. Too many existing study abroad programs limit intervention, in any sort of focused and intentional way, to pre-departure orientation sessions alone, or to pre-departure sessions that are supplemented by further orientation during the first days or weeks following the students’ arrival. After this, they’re left to their own devices. This is simply ineffective. No matter how well designed the orientation sessions, no matter how skilled the facilitators, a few orientation sessions delivered in the early stages of a program won’t get the job done, where getting students to focus on their own learning, and on learning effectively in a new cultural context, are concerned. Let’s face it: unless we give students the tools to learn effectively in another culture, they’ll likely continue to learn like they do on the home campus. And it takes time and effort for most students to acquire the tools.
In short, to help students learn in new and different ways, we need to engage them over time through effective facilitation. We need to help them focus on their learning goals, and on the process by which they are or aren’t meeting those goals. We need to provide them with a basic understanding of intercultural communication in order to allow them to actively and intelligently process the experiences they’re having in the new culture. This past year, I’ve seen a variety of effective approaches to conducting meetings with students throughout the term: at one site, students can opt to take for credit a challenging course in intercultural communication. At other sites, resident staff meet regularly and informally with students, working with them on their goals and providing a space where the students are able to process daily experiences that, they progressively come to recognize, are intercultural.
I’m hearing a few skeptical voices: “Yes, it’s all well and good for CIEE to train resident staff so they’re able to facilitate student learning throughout the program. And I agree that students learn effectively when they get this sort of support. But how can my colleagues and I, in our study abroad office, hope to develop programs that intervene early and often in our students’ learning? Where am I supposed to get the money to hire the additional staff this would require?” Having spent most of my higher education career in study abroad or international program offices, I understand the dilemma. At a lot of institutions, study abroad just isn’t organized for student learning, especially those that have historically promoted direct enrollment as the preferred option, with little or no on-site support provided. The important on-campus business of recruiting, preparing, processing, and re-integrating students leaves little time to focus on student learning abroad. It’s easy to understand why this is the case: study abroad at most institutions came into being when it was generally assumed that students learned well abroad when left to their own devices. However, times have changed. A lot of study abroad professionals I know on home campuses now describe themselves as international educators. They’ve come to understand that most students need us to intervene if they’re to learn effectively—not only prior to the program abroad, but during the program as well. And many of them are working to the same end at their campuses: to convince their presidents, provosts, and deans that the organization and funding mechanisms of their study abroad offices need to change if the learning needs of their students are to be met.