18.1 Introduction

Often the discussion of study abroad experiences and their value begins with story of how participating in one as a student was transformative and a highlight of the undergraduate experience for the author. I have no such story to share. In reality until I was well through graduate school and had started my first academic job I viewed study abroad experiences as vacations masquerading as academic courses. I could see little value in most of what I saw. What I heard from students about their experience abroad, especially when they described the very common short-term study abroad experiences, seemed to bolster my impression with the majority of students focused on partying in Spain, traveling across Thailand, and enjoying wine in Southern France, and how much they enjoyed traveling.

These discussions led me to believe that the experiences they had overseas were valuable and had deeply impacted them, but the way students described their experience largely presented them as devoid of content, rigor, or serious academic value. They were clearly an experience that the student had enjoyed and were often transformative in social and individual terms but seemed to have little relationship to the ‘learning’ the University claimed to be providing.

These discussions with students led me to the core question of this chapter, and one that I have grappled with as a faculty member that has led numerous short course study abroad experiences. Can short-term, approximately 7–14 day, study abroad experiences provide both the experiences that many students described, as well as a rigorous academic learning experience. If they can, what can be done to ensure that it happens. In this chapter I first explore the pedagogy surrounding experiential education and study abroad, then relay my experience in grappling with this question and share how I came to believe that the answer is yes it is possible. I then share a set of principles I have used in building study abroad experiences that at least attempt to ensure a positive academic and life experience for the students that participate.

18.2 Changing Perspectives

During the first semester of my first academic job, it became clear that our department wasn’t currently and hadn’t offered a study abroad experience and I was encouraged, to plan a short-term summer study abroad in collaboration with several other departments to demonstrate that we were actively supporting the new ‘experiential’ mission of the University. This encouragement coupled with some fortuitous external funds I had raised allowed a very small group of students, just two on that first study abroad, to spend 10 days in London and Scotland exploring at least nominally comparative politics and economics.

On that first study abroad, I took my impression of study abroads as lacking academic rigor with me and while we had a great time and both students expressed high levels of satisfaction with the experience, I was left with a nagging sense that something was missing and that the experience could have been much better. Those students had left the country for the first time and that experience was valuable, but as I reflected became clear to me that had to be a better way to both design and execute a study abroad that could combine the experience of being abroad with academic learning.

As in often the case in departments once you’ve done something once, you are now the expert and I was again encouraged to plan a study abroad during my second year. Armed with the intuition I had developed from that first trip I started the planning process focused on what I thought the students should learn on the study abroad. This second trip was to Athens and Rome and was designed to be an overview of the influence of the Greeks and Romans on modern conceptions of government, democracy and the philosophy.

It was on this trip that I started to develop both a respect for the potential of short course study abroads to have academic value. I also began to develop a set of principles that I believe provide students with both the experience of being abroad and navigating a foreign culture alongside rigorous academic learning. Learning that is enhanced by the location rather than the new experience serving as a distraction from it.

Since these first study abroads I have planned and led numerous additional formal study abroad and travel based short courses. The entirety of my experience in this area is leading short courses of 7–14 days most often immediately after the end of spring semester and so my suggestions and experience should be viewed with that lens in mind. The semester long study abroad experiences differ in both form and substance and I hope others will have taken up the exploration of these longer form courses and identified principles for ensuring they serve as a valuable life and academic experience for students.

I no longer view these experiences with as much skepticism, and I no longer categorically reject the potential for academic learning. That learning, however, is predicated on a well-designed set of learning objectives where a sense of place enhances the ability of students to both experience the new location and uses that sense of place to enhance their understanding of the academic material. This change in perspective has been reinforced by my experience with experiential education generally and the process by which experiential education enhances student learning.

18.3 Understanding the Pedagogy of Study Abroad Experiences

The development of Study Abroad programs especially the short form version emerges from a focus on experiential education that has gained traction in higher education and has become the increasing focus of many initiatives at institutions across the country.

This focus on experience while newly ascendant is not a new innovation. John Dewey’s seminal Education and Experience (Dewey 1938), laid out the basis of experiential learning theory. While all learning is experiential in some sense (in that learners incorporate knowledge according to their own experience), experiential learning theory explores learning outside traditional and abstract methods of teaching–lectures, textbooks, etc. Instead, experiential learning generally occurs through hands-on, real world experiences. Joplin (1981) lays out eight characteristics that define experiential learning: it is student rather than teacher based, personal, oriented towards process, self-evaluated, focused on holistic understanding, organized around experience, perception rather than theory based, and individual.

Although experiential learning has been viewed as occurring outside of contexts in which a student interfaces with teachers, experiential education does not necessarily require the absence of some teacher mediation (Moon 2004, pp. 76–77). The reality is that experiential education is now prolific throughout undergraduate curricula (Katula and Threnhauser 1999), and is in large part how Study Abroad experiences are marketed and justified.

Most of the discussions of experiential education generally and study abroad experiences specifically, lack course specific academic learning outcomes and often the experience itself is viewed as the outcome. My own experience with the potential value of experiential learning leaves me sympathetic to the potential value of encouraging students to have these sorts of experiences. At the root of my sympathy is my experience in developing and undergraduate research program at Utah State University in the Institute of Political Economy.Footnote 1

That program was rooted in the idea that direct experience was key to learning the process of research and that by directly engaging in that research the academic training occurring in the classroom focused on statistics, research methods, as well as theory would be enhanced as students engaged in direct application of those skills. Experiential education like this doesn’t replace the academic experience but instead becomes a testing ground for applying the academic skills.

The experiential education literature suggests that this approach can yield meaningful student learning. Craney et al. (2011), for example, asked undergraduates who had participated in social science research to rate the potential benefits of undergraduate research from one to five, depending on how strongly they agree that undergraduate research gave them that particular benefit (five being the best). Of the benefits, the following received an average rating over four: develop communication skills, formulate research questions, contribute new knowledge to society, strengthen interest in advanced study, and improve chances of admission to advanced study. The remaining benefits all rated over 3.5: develop problem-solving skills, earn prestige, provide an opportunity to publish, provide a realistic career option, and improve employability after college. These results are largely replicated in a survey reported by Lopatto (2010).

What is often forgotten is that even when surveying the students about their satisfaction, the researchers have identified learning outcomes that they think the experience should have provided. For undergraduate research these outcomes focus on research learning objectives and strongly suggest that approaches when experiences are used to supplement the academic learning environment student learning outcomes can be improved.

Likewise, a similar logic is found in work-based experiential learning and the relationship between academic learning and the experience associated with it (Chisholm et al. 2009). The value of linking academic knowledge to workplace activity is multifaceted (Lester and Costley 2010). Problems and experiences encountered on the job allow students to apply and contextualize previously abstract concepts. Internships that encourage students to take the critical thinking skills developed in their classes and begin to use them outside the context of the classroom have been demonstrated to have particular academic value (McCormick 1993). Internships that allow students to work with some autonomy offer better post-graduate employment opportunities, reduce the ‘reality shock’ associated with entering the workforce, and help young professionals to conceptualize their own workforce identity (Taylor 1988). Empirical work has confirmed that students who do internships during their undergraduate degrees are both better prepared for post-graduation jobs and enjoy those jobs more (Gault et al. 2000).

What is often missing from the discussion of designing experiential education and is essential to the achievement of positive outcomes is a clear and direct link between the learning objectives of the academic programs and the experience being offered. What is common among the most successful programs is that a clear and purposeful link between the experience and the learning objective are necessary for the experience to have meaning in an academic context.

Like the other areas of experiential education, the ability of Study Abroad experiences to have value to the academic learning is predicated on a strong connection between the experience and the academic learning objectives.

The literature on short course study abroads most often touts, increased appreciation for diversity, global awareness, openness to differing ideas, as the primary outcomes of the study abroad experience (Cubillos and Ilvento 2018). While these outcomes may be desirable they are often not the claimed learning objectives of the course and there is a wide and growing literature that explores the possibility that many academic courses are not appropriate for the short study abroad format (Cubillos and Ilvento 2018). Often this short-term study abroad experiences are viewed as an opportunity to primarily experience another language, culture or circumstance rather than having strong academic purposes outside language or culturally focused courses (Lewin 2009; Cubillos and Ilvento 2018).

In contrast others have suggested that academic learning beyond these experiences in language and cultural exploration may be possible in short term study abroad experience, if they are well designed (Barkley and Barkley 2013). What is clear from the literature surrounding both experiential education generally, and the study abroad pedagogy literature specifically is the clear reality that the direct hands on approach where academic learning is combined with experiential learning can form a successful learning process.

For study abroad experiences that hands-on reality is deeply tied to the location and place where the learning is occurring, however it is common that the learning outcomes that are actually achieved are not necessarily those of the academic course that is purported as being taught. It is my view that the most successful study abroad experiences are those that are rooted in that sense of place and actively work to connect that sense of place with the academic learning goals of the course being taught.

18.4 The Role of Place as Experience in Learning

One of the few things I remember from the literature classes I took both in high school and college is that a sense of place is key to the development of good literature and serves as a way to hook the reader into the story. I recall Mrs. Anderson at the front of a high school classroom attempting to explain what place meant to a group of 11th graders who had no desire to read any of the classic literature she required and while I did not enjoy (and still don’t enjoy) the writings of the Bronte sisters, having read them it is now clear to me that without the sense of place they created there would have been no story, and virtually nothing to have been learned from them. Wuthering Heights (Brontë 1847), for example, is intimately tied to the sense of place that the author develops, and the ability to connect to that place becomes one of the primary ways in which the story is carried on. Creating a rich sense of place becomes as essential as any of the characters an author creates, and the reader develops a connection to.

People are naturally tied to the places and experiences we have. Our understanding of the world is often directly shaped by our sense of place and our lived experience with that place. Often in academic endeavors as we attempt to understand abstract ideas we are left without a connection to the place and circumstance where the ideas were formed and developed.

Among my favorite study abroad courses to teach is one focused on the Scottish Enlightenment and the influence it had on the development of modern economics and philosophy. Many of the ideas that have influenced the modern era developed during the Scottish enlightenment (Muller 1995; Herman 2001; Broadie 2001).

One of the challenges of teaching something like the Scottish enlightenment generally and the thinking of Adam Smith and David Hume specifically is that for students their writings are divorced from them in time but also in place. Often students have little sense of the issues that drove them to write, what the source of their ideas were, and little motivation to discover them. Their ideas while powerful on paper are often esoteric and disconnected for the average undergraduate and given that disconnect many students fail to grasp their importance and do not internalize the debates that led to the thinking of Smith, Hume and others.

One of the solutions I have found to this disconnect is to inspire in students a connection both to the ideas but also to the place where these discussions were occurring. This sense of place can develop by walking where Smith and Hume walked, seeing their graves, visiting the places where they lived, taught, and were heavily influenced. This experience provides a context that when harnessed and connected well to their writings can motivate students towards a deeper understanding of their ideas and connecting students tangibly to those ideas in ways that simply reading and studying them cannot.

I first became convinced of the value of this connection to place during a study abroad focused on western civilization, where the course learning objectives were focused on understanding the influence of the thinking of the Greeks and Romans on modern politics and democracy. Having an in-depth discussion of Plato’s Republic while standing in the Agora of Athens after having walked among the ruins of what might have been where Socrates delivered his lectures the ideas from the Republic, the Socratic dialogues were suddenly directly in front of the students. While we stood among the ruins discussing those ideas an energy and life came to them that hadn’t occurred during our more standard lectures.

Similarly, in Rome discussing the role of Christianity and particularly the Pauline epistles to the development of western thought at the Areopagus (Mars Hill) brought context both to our discussion of the role of Christianity in Western Civilization and to our broader discussions. From the discussion that started standing at the base of the hill students began to make connections between the core ideas of Pauline Christianity, Greek notions of democracy and civicness, the role of the Roman Empire. A wide ranging and at times heated discussion emerged that pushed to students to explore the ideas in ways that were not immediately apparent in the more traditional classroom approach.

A similar situation emerged among a group of students at the cemetery at Canongate Kirkyard standing around the grave site of Adam Smith after having earlier visited the Old Calton Cemetery where David Hume and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenment are buried. The reality of the lives of these thinkers and the direct connection of being physically at their final resting places brought conversations about how they might agree, where their disagreements may have been, and why given the reality of their time and place they arrived at the conclusions they did. These conversations were lively and deep, and much more animated than those I have had in a classroom about the same subjects. This type of experience is common when there is a clear connection between place and the academic course being taught. Place when directly tied to the learning objectives becomes as valuable a tool in learning economics as it is for the novelist in crafting a story.

It is in this intersection of the direct experience of place, and in the design of the academic course that I have found an opportunity to improve the academic outcomes of a short course study abroad. My own experience and the principles I follow in the practical planning of these courses attempt to harness place as a motivating factor to draw discussion and explorations from students that may not otherwise occur.

18.5 Key Principles for a Place Focused Study Abroad

While it is clear that experiential learning can be a valuable tool and serves to enhance student learning, implementing these approaches is not necessarily intuitive or easy. Over the years I have struggled to implement them well, but through leading short course study abroads I have found a set of principles that I work to implement in planning and executing them. In general, they are consistent with the wider experiential pedagogy literature and seek to implement academic learning objectives alongside the experiences that students most often identify as being the part of study abroad they most value.

  • Start with the end in mind

  • Identify class material for each activity that is enhanced by the place

  • Formal and informal discussion each day

  • Clarity about mandatory activities

  • Opportunities for free time and add on experiences

The first principle, is one that applies in every course that is being taught whether abroad or in the classroom at home, is to start with the end in mind. At first glance this would appear to be such a commonsense bit of advice as to be completely pedantic. What is powerful about it is that the tendency to simply assume things will develop that will allow students to connect place and the academic goals is both unrealistic and unlikely to yield satisfying academic results. Students will likely enjoy the trip but whether they have learned anything substantive ends up being left to chance and often leaves the instructor unsatisfied with the academic part of the trip.

In practice this means that each formal part of the trip has to be thoughtfully connected to the academic course, and clear expectations for participation and discussion laid out. When well implemented this principle brings a sense of purpose to each activity and ties the student’s involvement both to attending but also to what learning is meant occur.

There is a potential risk to over plan and schedule, and what this principle suggests is not a set of busy work that students have to complete at each site, and indeed I rarely require the worksheets or journaling that some suggest as assignments. Instead I use the end I want to achieve as a guide to the discussion that occurs during the activity. With that goal in mind the I can guide the discussion, pose questions, challenge ideas and push the students to deeply consider the academic content and the experience of place together.

To implement the first principle well the second principle of a clear set of texts selected specifically because the places to be visited can enhance student interaction with them and because they are tied in some meaningful way to the place is essential. Connecting these texts directly to individual activities and experiences is key to learning.

For place to be relevant it must have clear connections to the materials students have read, and it must be possible for students to see those connections. I have led some trips where multiple disciplines are present and where several faculty members are teaching different courses, and two potential pitfalls have become clear. The first is to simply have no course material the students are required to engage during the trip, this leaves students without substance to explore and place simply becomes a tourist experience rather than an academic one.

The second is to simply assign an overall set of readings and do little to directly connect those readings to individual activities, this leaves the students in the position of grappling about what parts apply to which activities and often leaves them unable to apply the readings in a direct and effective way.

If the learning goals are clear, and the course materials have been well tailored to the activities connecting place with learning during formal and informal discussion is readily achieved. These discussions are essential to achieving the goals for learning in the course. Having some time each day devoted to a formal discussion led directly by the faculty member teaching the course helps to contextualize and highlight what is important for that day and provides a basis for the informal discussions that occur at each site. These informal discussions become the mechanism by which the experience of place becomes integrated with the formal academic learning. During the study abroads I have taught, we start the day by having a formal discussion over breakfast that sets context for the places we will visit and introduces the readings the students should be thinking directly about during those visits. Then at every site, or experience we pause to discuss the ideas and the experience, and when the formal discussion has been well presented and participated in the informal discussions at the individual sites and activities are at their best.

These first three principles lay out a study abroad agenda that appears intense, and it is. However, not every minute of every day can or should be focused on the mandatory activities that form the basis of these discussions. Identifying what things are essential for students to meet the academic goals of the course and making them mandatory rather than having every possible activity required provides students with both the necessary learning and the opportunity for experiencing the country directly and in a self-directed way. Clearly identifying what experiences students must participate in also allows the instructor to have clear expectations and allows grades to more easily be assigned for participation and discussion.

The opportunity for some self-directed discovery and exploration is an important part of study abroad, but not every student is comfortable with simply being turned loose. As a result, my final principle is to have potential activities alongside the option for free time beyond the mandatory events. For students who are uncomfortable with simply exploring on their own having the option to participate in activities with a group often enhances their experience, and for those who are comfortable exploring independently free time provides the experiences they often report as transformative.

My experience and approach have been that the additional activities I plan are most often the list of things I want to do that are experiences that are not necessarily connected to the academic course but that I think have value or will be fun. They aren’t mandatory or included in the cost of the study abroad allows students to select the level of structure they desire. It also gives students who may be uncomfortable with exploring a new country on their own the opportunity to explore and as they gain confidence they are often more willing by the end of the trip to explore independently than they were at the beginning.

These principles: (1) Start with the end in mind, (2) Identify class material for each activity that is enhanced by place, (3) Formal and informal discussion each day, (4) Clarity about mandatory activities, (5) Opportunities for free time or add on experiences, have been particularly useful for me as I have led multiple short course study abroads. In general, these principles have left me with the belief that even short course study abroads can be academically valuable and still provide the experiences that students desire, also known as being ‘fun’.

18.6 Implementing a Place Focused Study Abroad: “How the Scots Invented the Modern World”

The study abroad I have led most often has focused on the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment and their influence on modernity. I have generally titled the course; “How the Scots invented the Modern World.”

To understand the course, a sense of the daily structure is helpful. Each day that isn’t primarily a travel day starts with a mandatory discussion over breakfast typically at 8 AM. This discussion is jointly led by both the instructor and a student who is assigned to present the materials, including the assigned readings. This presentation becomes part of the grade a student receives for the course. This coupled with the participation in all mandatory activities and the informal discussions during them comprise 50% of the total grade, the remainder being a final paper. This more formal discussion asks students to directly address the assigned reading and raise questions they have regarding those readings and the ideas they present.

Following breakfast, a series of site visits begins with informal discussion occurring at each site. These discussions are focused on how the site visit relates to the themes from the readings assigned, the larger themes of the course, and whether visiting the site raises additional questions that were not immediately apparent form the readings and formal discussion. Typically, these site visits occur from 9:30 am to 12 pm with a break for lunch that often continues the discussion and sets context for afternoon and again from 1 pm to 4 pm. At around 4 pm (earlier on days where city exploration is explicitly noted) the students are free from mandatory activities. Each day a series of add on activities are available that students can choose to participate in. On the Scotland/England trip these add-ons have included tours of Royal Palaces, theater performances, trips to traditional English pubs, Scotch Whiskey tours (tasting only for those students over 21 per university regulations). Most often students break off in small groups (with a minimum of 2) and it is not uncommon for many of the participants to attend the add on activities and then do additional things in the later evenings.

Each night students are required to check in by text or email by midnight (unless other arrangements are made), and attendance at the breakfast discussion every morning is mandatory. These extracurricular add-ons and other experiences often come up during the informal discussions during the day and have served to provide additional insight as students work to draw connections between their unstructured activities and the course itself.

For “How the Scots invented the Modern World” most typically I have designed the trip to have 10 days in country with 2 travel days between the US and the UK. My current version of this course uses a number of books and supplemental materials. These include; The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and The Wealth of Nations (WON) by Adam Smith (1981, 1982), How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman (2001), The Scottish Enlightenment by Alexander Broadie (2001), and Adam Smith: In His Time and Ours by Jerry Z. Muller (1995). These books are supplemented with other readings that aid in understanding the Scottish Enlightenment.

Appendix Table 18.1 contains a sample course itinerary. It indicates the trip is focused around sites that are directly connected with the themes of the course and readings are assigned daily that have relevance to the sites visited with the goal of implementing principles identified above from the outset.

As is clear from this itinerary, students have a clear sense of the mandatory activities early on, for each trip the extra-curricular activities vary by what is available during the dates we are in country and what things I have identified as being of interest to me. Further students are encouraged at pre-trip meetings to obtain a good guidebook and identify things they may want to do that are not part of the academic site visits of the trip and explicitly plan for those activities well in advance.

In planning a specific trip, a more detailed daily schedule is provided so that students know exactly where things are located, how to arrive there if separated from the group, as well as any adjustments that become necessary during the trip.

As each day of the itinerary begins there is a morning discussion of the readings, the places we will visit, and the key themes, students are expected to have read the materials before the trip and have brought the books (or an e-copy) as we often refer back to them during the discussions.

Students have a clear sense of the purpose of the visits, as well as the expected discussion for the day and so as they read the assigned material they can carefully consider the discussion topics and prepare for the daily formal sessions. From those formal discussions and the informal discussions at each site along with seeing and experiencing them, students are better able to engage the material deeply and experience the power that place can have in the learning process.

18.7 Planning and Logistics

One of the most intimidating parts of leading a study abroad can be the logistics and planning, and nearly every university has an office of study abroad that aids in the planning of these sorts of trips. They can be helpful for the first-time leader. For the study abroads I have led I have taken the lead in planning and designing these trips coordinating with Study Abroad Offices but relying little on them for substantive assistance beyond aiding in the process of trip approval, payment collection, and ensuring the course is registered in the University system. I find that the greater amount of direct oversight I have, the better the study abroad trip is both academically and logistically.

All of the universities I have worked at have been public institutions where students are highly cognizant of the costs of attendance and one of the first questions my students always ask is how much does it cost? Having run the trip numerous times, the costs to students have varied. I have generally been fortunate enough to have had alternate funding to cover my travel costs, and I have generally not taken salary for leading these trips, which left students with an approximate cost of between $1000 and $1250 excluding airfare, add-on activities, and tuition. The cost of faculty travel increases the costs and unless a relatively large number of students participate can be the single largest individual line item in student costs, and thus cost prohibitive.

18.8 Conclusion

While I have no story about the transformative power of a study abroad I participated in as an undergraduate, I have come to value the opportunity that short-term study abroad courses can have when they are well designed and work to use the place where they are occurring to enhance the learning experience. Having led the same trip multiple times, much like teaching a course multiple times the “How the Scots Invented the Modern World” study abroad has improved much over the course of its delivery and the readings and discussion themes have and continue to evolve over time. But what has become clear is that the work of connecting the place to the academic content is as necessary as it is rewarding and that students can have both a rigorous academic experience and have ‘fun’ on these study abroads.