Point: Counterpoint

Programs That Travel

The Developing Trends in Education Abroad

By Bill Hoffa

One of the more pronounced trends in study abroad is the growth of programs that take place in more than one country and see travel as an important part of study. According to the latest IIE data, enrollments in such multi-site programs have quadrupled over the last decade. More than a hundred such programs (year, semester, and short-term) are listed in the 1997-98 IIE and Peterson guides.

Traveling programs challenge the traditional assumption that travel is antithetical to what study abroad programs should emphasize. They are usually tagged as a type of tourism--a chance for students to see a lot but to understand little. Serious educators know, however, that all educational programs deserve to be judged by their own pedagogical premises. Is a program that does not have as its goal full language and cultural immersion in a single country--but rather encourages comparisons between countries--necessarily an inferior program, as seems widely believed?

Travel-based programs start from different assumptions than those of immersion programs. At a NAFSA regional conference session I led on what several such programs had in common, I was thanked afterwards by one of the presenters for “taking on the full immersion mafia.” This remark, as well as the contentious nature of the session, made me aware of the need for more discussion about travel-based programs. Specifically, we need to explore what sorts of students are well served by them, what qualitative standards might be applied to distinguish good programs from poor ones, and the relative pedagogical advantages and disadvantages of multi-site programs in comparison with more orthodox, one-country programs.

On behalf of this magazine, I recently asked directors and sponsors of programs with a strong travel dimension to answer these and other questions. Following is a summary of their responses.

• Most multi-site programs focus on current global issues that need to be examined from multiple perspectives. Population growth, environmental pollution, changing world trade patterns, the transfer of world capital, tribal and ethnic conflicts, the spread of mass communications and popular culture, disease and health care, and many more topics are seldom the province of a single discipline. As noted in the recent ACE report, “The citizen of the global village must understand how these international systems interact with one another to shape the world.” Since these questions take different forms from country to country, as do the approaches to them, a comparative perspective is needed.

• Intellectual guidance and accountability remain essential ingredients of the learning process. Credit is earned not for travel alone, but rather for demonstrating that what is seen is understood in its historical, cultural, and intellectual context. The effectiveness of a program is not determined by the number of sites visited or length of stay, but rather by a conceptual orientation and opportunities for students to demonstrate what they have learned.

• Traveling programs posit that instruction can also be provided by a variety of local cultural informants. Some such teachers are admittedly not academic in their training or perspective--wherein lies their special insight. The teaching such instructors offer takes place on-site, using the local environment.

• In traditional programs, the experiential dimension is usually seen as something extra--something that happens after class, and which can’t be guided or measured. Cultural interaction in traveling programs, however, is seen as central to the learning process.

• Student satisfaction with multi-site programs is extremely high. Students describe and exemplify the same maturation as students in more traditional programs. The same proportion say they want to go abroad again.

Such premises do not of course assure program quality. Nor do they describe the huge variety of differences that exist between programs. An assessment of the quality of a given multi-site program must also take into account the following:

Duration: Programs vary from a full academic year (the International Honors Program) to an academic semester (HECUA, Semester at Sea, St. Olaf Term in Asia) to short term, often only a week or so. Obviously, more can be accomplished in a program of longer duration. The key is judging whether goals can be accomplished in the time available. Also of note is the amount of time at each stop.

Size: The logistics of travel tends to keep groups small. Many programs with a single leader enroll only 10-20 participants, others use the number of seats in train carriages or buses (40-50) as the upper limit, while some programs--such as Semester at Sea--are huge (500-600 students per semester). Larger programs can offer more courses and tours but sometimes at the expense of group cohesion, focus, and adaptation to local communities.

Geography: Some programs have extensive travel itineraries that cover large portions of the globe (e.g., International Honors Program, Eastern Michigan Univ. Cultural Tours, Semester at Sea, St. Olaf’s Global Semester). Others limit themselves to a few contiguous countries in a given region. Many institutions sponsor “European Studies” programs. Further afield are programs such as U-Puget Sound’s Pacific Rim/Asia program (Korea, Japan, Vietnam, China, India); SIT’s programs in the Middle East (Israel, Jordan, Palestine Authority), Tibetan Studies (Dharamsala, Kathmandu, Tibet or Bhutan), and Western Samoa (Fiji, Hawaii); HECUA’s Urban Semester programs in Latin America (Columbia, Guatemala, Ecuador) and Europe (Norway, other parts of Scandinavia, and the Baltic).

Focus: Many programs are cultural tours, offering a general exposure to the art, music, history, geography, and people of different countries. But, increasingly, travel programs feature a distinct focus, theme, or problem. Many of them represent the outgrowth of campus academic or pre-professional studies. The Associated Colleges of the Midwest’s Program in London and Florence focuses on European art history and architecture. Union College’s summer program compares the national health systems of Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Hungary. Antioch’s Comparative Women’s Studies program meets with counterparts in Britain, the Netherlands, Poland, and Germany. HECUA’s Culture and Society in Latin America examines social change and development issues. The International Honors Program concentrates on global ecology.

Modes of Contact: Given the limited time for each stop, numerous programs make special efforts to involve students in the local community through service projects, internships, seminars and working groups with local officials and citizens, family stays, social events with native students, and a host of other integrative means. These may not result in true immersion, but they are a far cry from the touristic glance.

In sum, there are many advantages of programs that travel. It is not an accident that such programs are growing in number and attracting more and more students. For many students, the traditional range of one-site program models will suffice. But for some students, active learning while traveling is more appealing and more productive.

BILL HOFFA is an independent consultant in international education.