Curriculum Design

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Course plans should take advantage of the international setting while ensuring academic rigor. It is vital that instructors re-conceptualize their teaching by focusing on the development of the whole student and rooting their class in the unique experiential learning opportunities on location. The curriculum should drive the planning and the program site should enhance the courses taught and provide environmental and cultural elements.

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Further, the experience on site (including any accompanying excursions) planned during the study abroad program should enhance the course(s) the students are taking and should not lead, or be the focus, when designing curriculum.

The course design should reflect the target student population’s interests and needs. Programs may employ a narrower curriculum, honed in on specific discipline or focus on a topic versus a broad curriculum that has general appeal and may recruit more students. Consider how the courses proposed will impact the curriculum of correlated academic departments. Each of these program types may have its own advantages and disadvantages, and these should be considered when determining how to market the program.

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For example, the process of curriculum design may include the following points[Adapted from “Neuroscience behind Intercultural Learning” by Kartoshkina (2017)]:

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• Start preparing students for cultural experiences before going abroad

• Immerse students in a variety of experiences to stimulate different parts but try not to overwhelm them

• Provide regular opportunities to help process new experiences and create shared meanings through guided discussions

• Provide time for personal reflection to strengthen newly forming connections

 

 Learning Outcomes

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We encourage a holistic approach. A good example of a Faculty-Led study abroad class starts with clear learning outcomes based on course structure and subject matter, and incorporates additional deliverables that can be gained from field trips and site specific activities.

 

Class meetings should be designed to also prepare students for the site specific learning experiences beforehand and enable them to process and understand those experiences afterward. When developing learning outcomes, consider that students should be able to:

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• Articulate a reasonably nuanced knowledge of the host culture and country

• Express an understanding of the student’s home culture and country identity in comparison to the host culture and country

• Understand and analyze their own developmental process as they study and learn abroad

 

 Attendance, Contact Hours and Credit Earned

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Usually, fewer absences (or no absences) should be allowable on short-term study abroad programs.

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Study abroad is an academic experience, and each program should account for contact hours and credit appropriately. Due to the experiential nature of Faculty-Led study abroad, contact hours will include time spent directly in lecture in a classroom will be combined with hours spent engaged in field experiences, site-specific teaching and practical engagement with material. It is standard practice to reduce the number of classroom contact hours required for credit when the learning is taking place abroad, but each institution should develop some sort of minimum standard course hours based on your accreditation procedures.

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Contact hours must be directly related to instructional time, docent-led visits to museums and organizations, etc. See below for guidelines on determining appropriate credit and contact hours for Faculty-Led study abroad programs:

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• Standard course hours taught directly by the faculty or instructor count as 1:1

• Best practices dictate that cultural excursions and activities (including company/site visits and service learning) should count as somewhere between 2:1 and 3:1 depending on the quality/intensity of content and the qualifications of the person delivering the content. Be aware that 2:1 could be too generous and may create too much free time on an otherwise structured program.

• Time spent in transit may count if pertinent material is being covered (i.e. a guide speaking over a microphone on a bus or a faculty member leading a group discussion)

• Group meals may count when directly related to the course or the local culture

• Some best practices suggest a maximum number of contact hours per day to ensure that the students’ time is not excessively scheduled to the point of being counterproductive.

• You may also choose to limit the amount of credit allowed per length of program

For example, one USG institution uses the following guidelines:

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• 3 credit hour course = 37.5 contact hours

• 1 lecture hour = 1 contact hour

• 1 lab hour = 1/3 contact hours

• Field trips and field work count as labs and so 3 hours of field trip = 1 hour of contact

• 1.33 credits can be accumulated per week abroad (e.g., a 5 week program can only award up to 6 credits)

Each institution should adhere to their registrar’s policies, and/or work with their Institutional Study Abroad Committee or Curriculum Committee, if applicable, to determine how many contact hours are required to accumulate credit hours and follow institutional policies for awarding credits to degrees. It is especially important that courses offered abroad follow institutional policies or they run the risk of being considered less valuable or less rigorous. The rationale for a program’s determination of credit hours should be part of the program’s initial proposal that is approved on campus.

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Remember, that all study abroad courses which earn credit must adhere to SACS Academic Compliance. This means that the qualifications of all faculty must be documented with CVs including degrees and fields, teaching experience and academic posts on file. Additionally, syllabi may contain some ‘tentative’ information but at a minimum must include any prerequisites, student learning outcomes for the course, specific information on the nature and number of assignments, means of evaluation, and grading scale.